Symbolism
OM or AUM represents the indivisible, indestructible, primal essence of all and everything. Hindus believe that as creation began, the divine all-encompassing consciousness took the form of the first and original vibration manifesting as sound "OM" THE BELL is an homage to the Present through sound. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bell represents the principle of ‘the perfection of wisdom’ that directly realizes emptiness “Time is a slippery fish” ROBERT FRANK BONES“Remember that you’re alive” JOE STRUMMER “You don’t have to abandon things because there is something destructive in them. There is the Buddhist story of the arhat, one of the Buddha’s disciples with self-realization, who goes to the charnel ground, a burial ground in India. There he picks up one human bone, and he ponders that. He sees that a bone comes from death, and death comes from birth, and birth comes from desire, and so on and so on. Finally he works out the whole chain of causality from this one bone. We could work in the same way in our own situation. We don’t have to reject or abandon anything. We could work on the creative aspect of situations” CHOGYAM TRUNGPA “Live your life, life your life, live your life” MAURICE SENDAK “We are standing on a whale, fishing for minnows” POLYNESIAN SAYING CHAIN LINKS “At the heart of compassion is the vision of the inseparability of all existence” UNKNOWN “Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world” JOSEPH CAMPBELL “The We of Me” CARSON McCULLERS CIRCUMAMBULATION “Never mind the Internet, I am receiving all manner of information from the wind and clouds, the rains and streams, the birds and the sky. Circumambulating is the cream of this appreciation of where I live and who I am. I think any walking contributes to the wordview. Consciously walking with open spirit and the intent to connect to a greater self is a boon and a blessing on one’s life.” Striving in Circles- MATTHEW DAVIS DAGGERS are made in honor of Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom who holds the flaming sword of discriminating wisdom that cuts through ignorance and the entanglements of conceptual views. It cuts away ego and self-created obstacles. It can cut into two, but it can also cut into one, by cutting the self/other dichotomy THE DOT is almost everything in almost nothing. In Tantric metaphysics and cosmology, it is the symbol of the undifferentiated absolute, both holding within itself the whole cosmos and transcending it “See the world in a grain of sand and to transcend it, to open, that is, one’s soul both to the plentitude and the absolute pure void” ANDRE PADOUX With no beginning and no end, THE ENDLESS KNOT symbolizes the underlying reality of mutual dependence and the interconnectedness of all things EYES “And the trick is to stay propped up for 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 years. Yes eyes open while the flies get stuck in the paper and the great paintings are stolen and the faithful wives run off with the unfaithful lovers, all to die in the morning, unclasped and cold and kissless” CHARLES BUKOWSKI FEATHER BONE, DISC & SHELL wall hangings were created out of process and the raw, spontaneous, fresh imprint of a fingerprint made in clay. Look closely GARLANDS are an offering of reverence to the world. I imagined them as becoming part of the landscape, and how beautiful they would be, moving in the wind, with the ever-changing background “HOLY forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity! Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!” ALLEN GINSBERG Love Fearlessly “You’ve got love to burn” NEIL YOUNG JEWELS, QUARTZ & PRISMS“Like a wish-granting gem that refracts myriad rays of rainbow light, the nature of the light is one, although its aspects of illumination appear to be many” ROBERT BEER KALI “Praise to the wrathful mother who tramples on the enemies of complacency and self-deception” UNKNOWN A KORA is performed by a practitioner walking around a sacred site or object and the term is often used to refer to the entire pilgrimage experience THE MIRROR is an ancient Buddhist symbol for clarity, completeness of perception, and purity of consciousness “I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. Whatever you see I swallow immediately just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike” SYLVIA PLATH MONO NO AWARE is a Japanese term pointing to the awareness of impermanence and the beautiful sadness of things passing “Participate with joy in the sorrows of the world” JOSEPH CAMPBELL Hey let’s go shovel snow into the well! Because without the bitter there would be no sweet. Impermanence and interconnection, cherry blossoms and fireflies, rabbits and moons, stars and clouds NEEDLE & THREAD The inseparable union of method and wisdom. The diamond path, skillful means and the wisdom of emptiness “You can do it like it’s a great weight on you, or you can do it like it’s part of the dance” BABA RAM DASS OM MANI PADME HUM is the mantra of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, known in India as Avalokiteshvara and in Tibet as Chenrezig. The mantra is difficult to translate but is often translated as ‘Om The Jewel in the Lotus Hum’ PEACE May peace radiate there in the whole sky as well as in the vast ethereal space everywhere. May peace reign all over this earth, in water and in all herbs, trees and creepers. May peace flow over the whole universe. May peace be in the Supreme Being Brahman. And may there always exist in all peace and peace alone. Aum peace, peace and peace to us and all beings! RADIANT “Close both eyes; see with the other one. Then, we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments, our ceaseless withholding, our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened, and we find ourselves, quite unexpectedly, in a new, expansive location, in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love” FATHER GREGORY BOYLE “I see my light come shining from the west unto the east, Any day now, any day now, I shall be released” BOB DYLAN THE SUN, THE MOON & THE STARS “If you don’t strive for it at all, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness” CHARLES BUKOWSKI “Looking out the westward window, I saw it: a fat yellow disk in an even slate-blue background, hanging motionless over the city. I found myself marveling at Earth’s good fortune in having a moon so large and so beautiful” ISAAC ASIMOV Awe, Reverence and Gratitude “God, the sun the moon and the stars, everything in motion” PATTI SMITH SKULLS “Whether we die enmeshed within our hopes and fears or free ourselves by recognizing the selfless luminosity of our innermost being, impermanence lies at the heart of all existence. In illness or in health, in life or death, the body is the greatest teacher of impermanence” UNKNOWN The word ‘Self’ is a designation to you, like the word ‘River’ is to flowing water SPIRAL VORTEX the coils of manifestation, create a center and a whole. It does not ever need to be seen as a symbol for the absolute because by its very nature it is never complete. Life is a path through time, a continuum. “But the right way back to the beginning is by going on” JILL PURCE “The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon” ZEN KOAN TARA is the Bodhisattva of compassion and action. She is a protector who comes to relieve us of physical, emotional and spiritual suffering “As Avalokiteshvara, the great compassionate one, looked upon the sorrows of the world, his tears formed a lake in which a lotus sprung up. When the lotus opened, the goddess Tara was revealed” UNKNOWN Mama Love. Her seed syllable is Tāṃ and her full mantra is OM TARA TUTTARE SVAHA WEB Cosmic Soup WHALE TEETH & TUSKS “Under the world there’s broken skulls, crushed feet, cut eyeballs, severed fingers, slashed jaws, Dysentery; homeless millions, tortured hearts, empty souls” ALLEN GINSBERG WRATHFUL WEAPONS and implements have their origins in the wrathful arena of the battlefield and the funereal realm of the charnel grounds. As primal images of destruction, slaughter, sacrifice, these weapons were wrested from the hands of the evil and turned - as symbols - against the ultimate root of evil, the self-cherishing conceptual identity that gives rise to the five poisons of ignorance, desire, hatred, pride and jealousy. In the hands of deities these implements become pure symbols, weapons of transformation and an expression of the deities wrathful compassion which mercilessly destroys the manifold illusions of the inflated human ego” ROBERT BEER VISION “is sometimes a terrible thing. Ideas are easy to come by, they spring effortlessly out of the vacuity of the mind and cost nothing. When they are held and projected onto one’s self or others they become a project. When the project is enacted it becomes the work, and when the work is completed it appears to be self-existent. Creation is the process of form manifesting from emptiness, where that which arises from the mind comes into existence. Yet the distance between conception and realization may be enormous, as vast as the distance between stars” ROBERT BEER “I don't know why, and yet, why not?” MARY OLIVER “Oh, I'm lookin' for my missin' piece, I'm lookin' for my missin' piece, Hi-dee-ho, here I go, lookin' for my missin' piece” SHEL SILVERSTEIN “Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth” DAVID BOWIE “Yes” YOKO ONO “We can start where we are” PEMA CHODREN www.mquan.com