work / new perspectives

ENJOY THE PROCESS

If you’ve never seen a sand mandala, I suggest you put this book down and look up a picture of one right now. A mandala (Sanskrit for “circle”) is a work of art that Buddhist monks use to contemplate the impermanence of life. They’ll spend hours upon hours, for days and even weeks, crafting an elaborate and impossible work of sand art—only to, upon completion, blow the entire thing away. All that work, all that meticulous effort, is gone in seconds.

So why do it in the first place?

Sometimes the work is the journey, and the process is the part we’re supposed to learn from. Like the mandala, the results of our work may one day be gone, too, but that shouldn’t discourage us from undertaking it.