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Pan box in the shape of a duck
late 17th to early 18th century Deccan, India |
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Pan box in the shape of a duck
late 17th to early 18th century Deccan, India |
Dust cannot gather
If there is no mirror there.
Some people have compared a pure soul to the unsullied brightness of a perfect mirror.
Others have retorted that if there is no mirror there in the first place, then there cannot be anything to be sullied. The soul is empty.
We should not think of our souls as discrete and separate from the rest of creation. We are indeed one with everything, so there is no need to think of our souls as isolated entities. Thus, it is the concept of the soul as separate being that is empty.
Ir is impossible to live in this world and not be sullied by it. The red dust will settle on you no matter how often you clean. It is good to strive for purity, nut if you conceive of purity as a fight against the filth and the dust of the world, you doom yourself to obsession and futility. The only way to achieve actual purity is to realize your essential oneness with all things. If you are one with everything, then even filth is pure. For this to happen, you must transcend all distinctions in yourself, resolve all contradictions. With this erasure, the mirror-bright soul and the dust are all dissolved in a single purity.
emptiness
365 Tao
Deng Ming-Dao
Daily Meditations
Pan box in the shape of a duck
late 17th to early 18th century
Deccan, India
Tin alloy inlaid with silver and brass (Bidriware);
H. 5 5/8 in. (14.3 cm), D. 4 1/2 in. (11.4 cm),
L. 7 1/4 in. (18.4 cm)Metropolitan Museum of Art
Possibly inspired by Chinese ceramics, this charming, chubby duck resting his head on his back is a "pan-dan," or box, used to hold pan-rolled betel leaf stuffed with betel nut, lime paste, and spices. The native Hindu custom of eating betel leaves (to aid digestion and freshen the breath) was introduced at the Mughal court in the seventeenth century by palace ladies, probably Hindu wives of the Mughal rulers. It is rare to find objects executed in the bidri technique in a shape other than that of metalwork. Bidri ware is named for the city of Bidar in the Deccan (about seventy-five miles northwest of Hyderabad in Delhi), the chief center of its production from the seventeenth to nineteenth century. Four artisans collaborated to make this box: a molder who created the shape using the lost-wax technique; an etcher who drew the designs on the surface; an engraver who chiseled out the areas around the designs; and an inlayer who applied the silver and brass. The surface was then blackened to enhance the beauty of the inlay, used here to define the duck's various feathers. The origins of this elaborate process remain unclear; however, long-standing oral traditions suggest that it was imported from Iran.