Sand Mandalas

 From the time my daughter was very small, we would come to a small some what beat up resort on Native land on the Peninsula of WA.  The whole drive there was through beauty, and we would enjoy the huge waves beating down on the shore and the gigantic old growth driftwood that had been driven long ago up on the shore and served as permanent jungle gym for children.

When she was older my then husband and stepson joined us, and we would build sandcastles on the beach.  As you know, the ocean often reclaims them.  The first time this was to the children’s horror and upset.  So, we began the practice of preparing them for the cycle of building, destruction and reclaiming from Mother Earth.  I learned the hard way that if we built too far back it took a long time (past lunch) to watch the reclaiming, and too close and the reclaiming would happen before we had finished. (I also learned it is good to learn the high tide/low tide schedule.)   For my stepson the frantic attempt to build walls and protect and bail the moat was even part of the fun.  Till a moment where he would surrender and even smash down the moat.

After this practice was well established, I learned of Tibetan Buddhist monks practice of the sand Mandala.  With different color sands they make elaborate beautiful pieces of art, all done in prayer, Mandalas.  And when the work is finished – they also ceremonially destroy it.  This is for them a practice in non-attachment – an important teaching of Buddhism.

This has been an important spiritual practice for them and for me.  It is matched with another one, the stone throwing.   We pick up BIG rocks, of which they are many.  We silently name a burden we have been carrying and we throw it in the ocean, giving it back to the universe to carry and to hold.  Even this must be done in sync with our sisters the waves.   One must watch their comings and goings, so you don’t go up the edge to throw only to have a wave rush in and soak you.   But also, when they are all the way out you cannot throw far enough to get it in the water.   Thus, you must wait till the water has come in and when enough has come in that you can throw it in and enough water will carry your rock back out.  As a therapist I can testify that this rhythm is the rhythm of how we release a great hurt or trauma.  This picking of timing matters.   With one or two horrible problems I was horrified to see the wave did not remove it and I had to retrieve it and try again to release it.   (Like some kind of ground hog and its shadow this was a too true predicter of how hard that one was to let go of.)   The rock ritual is also about releasing things.   Not being attached, even to our grief and our loss.  It is a reminder that there is something bigger than myself to carry this when it is too heavy for me.

There are 3 beaches all heavily forested that one passes before you get to the peninsula where the resort is and a small Native neighborhood.    I have not been able to come for two years because it was closed for the pandemic.   This time as I came I found numerous road wide cut ins to the forest that has been logged.  I became very upset.  And then between beaches two and three a huge whole city block area on both sides of the road logged of every single tree with big slash piles.  (Loggers oddly “neaten up” by pushing all the loose bits into gigantic piles that are often burned.)  I began screaming NO, NO and crying.  It looked like a war zone.

The next day I returned to one of the cut ins.  And I walked to the tree at the end that was the closest to the edge, a survivor of a horrific massacre.  I asked the tree permission to talk which it eagerly gave.  I just started saying:  “I am sorry.  I am so, so sorry.  I am sorry for the dumbness of white people.” And I leaned it to it, is supported my weight like two hugging people and I just cried and cried.   I believe the tree cried too and felt good to be witnessed.   Trees communicate under ground through their mycelium, so I am sure the death and dying they witnesses was a trauma for them.

Later I timidly asked at the office why this had happened.  The woman there explained to me that they cannot safely get the children out of the school and on the evacuation bus in time for their tsunami warning drills.   (I think this is a polite way of saying under sea level rise they will be under water.)  They had been asking for decades for more of their land back because their whole reservations was two square miles.  Finally because of the flooding problem, in the last year of the Obama administration a bill was passed and signed to relocate them to this land on 2^nd beach.  The bill states that they will grant permanent access to the public and the Federal park dept for the trail head down to the beach and the parking at the top.  The block size clearing I saw was so they could build a new school and will be building housing for everyone who has to move.  I said:  “Builders like to clear every tree because it is easier for them to build that way, but they don’t have to do it that way.   Why didn’t some trees get left?”   “I don’t know,” she said, “I guess some people are just so greedy they have to take every last tree.”  Then I realized that the developers had done this. The BIA was in charge of the relocation and their process does not ever or now include hearing what the tribe wanted.  Yet one more rape of Native lands.

I am not a Buddhist.  I am not unattached.  And I guess I was not ready to release this beautiful place that has been sacred to me for decades.  I still am grieving.   I will now have to do the stone ritual again and throw a number of things into the Ocean.   It is hard to live in climate change.  I am acutely aware that the oceans will literally sweep away more and more castle’s built by men on shores, and that I will have more and more stones to throw in the Ocean.   It is better how ever to give this back to the power of the universe that try to bear it in my single heart or on my sole shoulders.