Hillary

“What does laughter mean? ...The greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have tackled this little problem, which has a knack of baffling every effort...”
― Henri Bergson, Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

“Here, however, the comic element is very faint. It is too far from its source.

If you wish to strengthen it, you must go back to the source itself and contrast the derived image—that of a masquerade—with the original one, which, be it remembered, was that of a mechanical tampering with life.”
― Henri Bergson, Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

“The key to awakening, then, is to recognize the appearances in the world as the radiance of the essence ground, and our true nature as the vast awakened universe itself.

The work with the mandala and the five Buddha families returns us to the original luminosity of the ground. We then return home to what is called the Great Mother, the ground of being. The good news is that for all of us who took the second path of confusion, liberation is achievable. All we need to do is stop investing in the dualistic struggle and recognize the true ground of being. The path to liberation is never far from us. We are actually never apart from it. We are simply not recognizing the non-duality as our true condition.

Longchenpa, the great Tibetan teacher of the 14th century, described the mandala as a luminous house, a dome of light emanating from the purely latent ground. The mandala is a means by which we return to our essential wholeness. The mandala practice is designed to help us see our patterns. It is the map for returning to the ground of being through transforming the five poisons into wisdom. It is a method of placing the psyche in a template of luminous wholeness.

There is a deep longing for wholeness in all of us. And from that longing, cultures and religions have created mandala-like forms and ceremonies, architecture, temples, churches, stained glass windows, jewelry, art, gardens, and arrangements of ceremonial food.

Although the human body is its own dynamic mandala, with the heart center, the limbs as the four directions, and so on, we often experience the world and ourselves in a fragmented way. This fragmentation is particularly true in modern times when the collective mandalic centering rituals and dances that healed individuals and communities have, for the most part, been lost.

Meditating on the mandala is a tool or template for reintegration and provides a re-centering experience that unites the fragmented psyche and transmutes the five poisons into wisdom.”
― Lama Tsultrim Allione, Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine

“...we shall not aim at imprisoning the comic spirit within a definition. We shall regard it, above all, as a living thing.”
― Henri Bergson, Laughter : An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic