Women and Fibromyalgia

” At the museum a troubled woman destroys a sand painting meticulously created over days by Tibetan monks. The monks are not disturbed. The work is meditation. They simply begin again”, Susan Griffin

I have recently had the honour of watching Losang Samten, a Tibetan scholar, develop (over days) and then begin the dismantling (in a few minutes) of a mandala. It was awe inspiring. It was created from sand with different colours to represent the symbolism of the mandala. This one represents the Wheel of Life with a message about how to overcome individual sufferings.

This mandala’s middle has blue as the colour to represent space as well as our inner consciousness. There were  three animals which according to Buddhist thought are the root causes of all human suffering. The Pig represents Ignorance. The Pigeon represents Greed. The Snake represents Anger. I have never been fond of those three animals. But, the colour blue is a favourite of mine. I need space in my inner consciousness.

The mandala is dismantled when it is complete to “help one understand that everything is impermanent”. While I am not a Buddhist I was struck by the quiet respectfulness of the large crowd who surrounded Losang Samten during the dismantling. An unassuming, kind and patient man, the aura was one of  peacefulness. The children were given brushes to help with the dismantling and we were all given a small amount of the sand to take away with us. It was a meditative and moving experience. Once more I was left with the ideas of overcoming the suffering of fibromyalgia through an understanding of Buddhist thought, which is not a religion but a philosophy of living, a way of  peaceful being in the world.  Buddhists meditate to achieve enlightenment; many neuroscientists call it a practice for changing the brain. I believe the terms mean the same.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Buddha's Brain, Buddhism as philosophy, buddhist thought, changing the brain, enlightenment, Fibromyalgia, Losang Samten, meditation, peacefulness, sand mandala, suffering of fibromyalgia, wheel of life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.