After contemplating Chapter 3 of the Tao te Ching, this is the resulting mandala. As I worked, different thoughts would come to me, even as my mind stilled:

The Sage Mandala

In recent months, I’d made a shift to going within and working on this mandala project. My journey always seems to be “roundabout.”  

As I contemplated Ch. 3 even more, I thought of several themes. Western society has progressed based on the oppression of others. It started with slavery, building up the plantations, producing the cotton that would fuel trade and industry in the north. But exploitation persists even in the modern context. The iPhone that I own has parts that may have been mined by children in far-off lands. Certainly towns in poorer parts of the world have had to endure the sub-par and unsafe jobs the “capitalists” have created, changing the life of the townspeople forever.

Even clothes. A $3 shirt was made by someone in a factory making so little money, those of us in the US would wither and die on. 

Mitigating Impact

Despite all this, society plods on and I’m part of it, on my own journey. I do what I can to mitigate my own impact.

But I encountered a profoundly spiritual theme in this chapter. When I first started working on the mandala, as usual, I didn’t know where I was going with it. I decided to let the feelings of uncertainty go and trust the process. What emerged was a mandala I didn’t like (even as I tried to withhold judgement of it) that became something really neat. I enjoyed working on it to fruition. The process evolved and became my teacher.

The lessons of patience, non-judgment, and social justice came to light with this piece.