"That's Impermanence, Folks!"

“That’s impermanence, folks,” the hippie professor said to the large group of laypeople, ethnic Tibetans, venerable monks, anthropology students, and reporters who had gathered in a large meeting room of the Unitarian church to watch a demonstration of the creation and destruction of a Buddhist sand mandala.

     My three-year-old son had broken free from my firm grasp and bum-rushed the exhibit as soon as the flashbulbs started going off. Like Curious George, he shoved his little monkey hand into the intricate particulate structure and pretty much destroyed the lower quadrant. At once, more than a hundred voices gasping, “HuhhhhhOhhhhh!” My child was shamed by a mob. I scooped him up and took him out of the room so quickly, the hippy was the last person I heard.

      I saw nothing but his confused face and then he was bawling. So apparently I missed the part where all the monks started chuckling. Only the Americans were mortified, and embarrassed as I was, I knew this was really my own fault. I brought a toddler to cultural event and he acted like a toddler. Unlike the times when I brought his father to the symphony and he acted like a ten year old, I couldn’t very well expect a three year old not to get excited and thrash the place. Hell, at that time I couldn’t trust him not to thrust his fingers into cakes at weddings and birthday parties. It was foolish to expect him to be quiet or stationary for more than 20 seconds at a time.

            A group of monks followed me into the courtyard, with one of the event organizers in tow. I vaguely recognized him from other Tibetan events. It turned out they wanted to tell my son it was ok. They had to destroy the mandala anyway; that’s the point. They were happy to have the opportunity to fix it; now the audience could see how the monks painstakingly dropped grain by colored grain of sand into a design that represents the universe. After a ceremony, the monks destroy the mandala with a few ritual strokes, much like my son did, except with a ceremonial bell thingy (vajra) instead of a bare hand.

The grains all get mixed together and dumped into the nearest body of water (which would have been Eagle Creek). The whole exercise is a lesson in the truth of impermanence: All things are constantly moving in a state of flux. Nothing lasts forever. What is now here will soon be gone and so forth.

All of this was conveyed in Tibetan by a robed monk and translated by the professor to my little boy and me. They asked us to come back inside. My son stared at the oldest of the monks the whole time with wide eyes. “Monkeys,” he said. Professor translated, they laughed. The old one reached out his hand and patted my child on the head. “You are a good boy,” he said. Several others followed suit. And then they went inside and put on a fascinating ceremony complete with horns and tall yellow hats. They were from Drepung Gomang.

            Whenever I “f “something up, lose something of importance, thrash a good pair of shoes, discover rabbits have eaten my dahlias, or generally feel as though the rug has been pulled out from under me, I hear that guy responding to the indignant, shaming gasps of the smug American crowd with that pithy little slogan about impermanence. It’s a good mantra. It keeps things in perspective whether the change in question regards a broken antique plate or a broken relationship. All things change. Change is the rule, therefore there is no point in clinging to anything. “That’s impermanence, folks.”

            It’s certainly a mantra that’s gotten a lot of use around here these last few days. On Friday, I discovered an entire sector of the kitty: website was lost. I have no idea how, when or why, but the Peace channel was somehow irretrievably lost in its entirety. WTF! At first I was shocked to find it gone. The crux of our publishing mission disappeared as if it were never even there.

There is no back-up version to revert to. I don’t even have hard copies of what the pages looked like at one time. Reconstruction is my only recourse. “That’s impermanence.” Some of the blog entries were dashed off in situ, meaning essentially there is no record of them even in nascent form in My Documents. “That’s impermanence.” The magazine is losing revenues from the missing pages. “That’s impermanence.” There is a breach in design continuity, and surely a bunch of broken links. “That’s impermanence.”

            The mantra is totally existentialist. It’s absurd. When I’m faced with having to upload all that code, it’s not helping. It’s not illuminating at all. I hate when time gets wasted more than anything. It’s beginning to remind me of the old Mr. Robinson’s Neighborhood sketch from SNL where Eddie Murphy rattles off a list of woes and his probable solution: “Heat don’t work? Kill my Landlord. Got no job? Kill my Landlord, Kill My Landlord….”

     I giggle, knowing I will eventually get over my shock and disgust ("This too shall pass"), quit cussing and put the Peace channel back together. I’ll stop staring blankly at the screen wondering how the hell that happened. Instead, I’ll ask people if they remember what was there, and maybe what they want to see in the new version. I’ll come up with new features and musings, because like Mr. Robinson’s endless complaints, my dharma mantra regarding the changing nature of all phenomena will fade into something else, like “Light a candle, curse the glare!”