The idea behind Back to Bindu, the last book of the Garden Path Summa Ludo Logica trilogy published in 2024. is to inspire what Michelangelo called the ingegno, or creative genius, of young people living in today’s fast-paced and ethnically diverse urban environment by offering them the contemplative and artistic tools needed to simultaneously slow down and dream up meaningful change within themselves and their communities. At Falling Sky Studio, which is home base for this experiment, we teach the practice of Mayachitram, or Mystery Painting, as an initiation into the Garden Path way of seeing and being.
We encourage participants to explore their creative self-awareness in order to overturn the false narratives of groupthink-corporate con men like Mayhem Meister Munk and his celebrity apprentice Diaper Don Trump, and instead, identify within themselves a treasure called ‘Bindu’. Bindu is zero, the number of unlimited potential. This elusive, empty open space is where miracles take place every moment every day. Through the cultivation of their Bindu potential they will discover creative space within themselves and their community.
We ‘start with art’ having learned through years of working in conditions of war and natural disaster that art is a form of play with which we all can connect. No matter how dire the times may be young people, under most conditions, take naturally to play in the form of painting, poetry, story creation, music and theatre. By cultivating the inner world of their imaginations they discover what is meaningful in their lives and thereby how to massage meaningful change into society at large.
Allow me to recall a tidbit of ancient Irish folklore my mother tossed my way in a flashback during the Hungarian revolution in 1956, when I asked her if the potato cellar in our basement would provide adequate shelter to survive impending nuclear attack. Betty, our housekeeper, was Hungarian. She kept me informed about events in Budapest while she waxed and polished the kitchen floors on Friday afternoons. I was nine years old and with big ears and, some sibs would say, a mouth to match.
“Never mind your heroes talking tough in the trenches,” mother advised when I shared the breaking news from Budapest. “Think peace, son. Be peace. Fighting with one another is what we do when we’ve lost our way. Look where it’s got us. More lost! But let’s not forget what the little people tell us,” she said, squinting up from the dough she was kneading and shaking a stern finger at me. “Even if the sky falls there will be a tiny hole to get out through.” For me the tiny hole was creating art as antidote to mental and emotional suffering, but sadly the sky keeps falling.
We survive one apocalypse and there’s another waiting on the doorstep. In my own lifetime I can remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, the American War in Vietnam, the carpet-bombing of Cambodia and Operation Barrel Roll in Laos where hundreds of thousands died. Remember that? Followed by the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and one civil war after another in Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, Syria, and Sri Lanka, to name but a few. There’s a definite pattern here yet it’s still easy to lose count of how many lives were lost. Now we have a reverse role replay of the Holocaust with the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza cunningly calculated to make the arms industry and its lobbyists trillions of dollars in the name of democracy, peace and justice. All that plus – as an addled bonus – an endless trail of tacky updates on President Trump’s mental oscillations delivered 24-7 on YouTube and in the legacy media . Who knows what’s next?
How about daily shock therapy sessions, folks? Learning to live in peace while cultivating deep roots of compassion in the time we’ve got left. It may be the only goal worth living for. “We must love one another or die” is how W.H. Auden summarized our prospects. It’s the only idea that matters .
From 1983 to 1994, with a team of artists, therapists and medical doctors in Toronto we created the Spiral Garden for children with disabilities at the Hugh Macmillan Rehabilitation Centre. What I learned at the Spiral Garden I brought with me to Sri Lanka where, from 1994-2014, I collaborated with local artists to establish the Butterfly Peace Garden of Batticaloa and the Monkey’s Tale Centre for Contemplative Art during the turmoil of a protracted civil war and the tsunami of 2004.
And now there’s a new branch on the old tree, Falling Sky Studio, where I’ve taken shelter in Toronto, getting lost there to find myself. In an ironic twist of fate, here I am back at the beginning, where the Garden Path started for me. With support from the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research at York University, I adapted a series of workshops which we had designed, delivered and documented at Kalabala Bindu Garden in Sri Lanka in 2006 for Toronto today. Given what is happening south of our border, it may be time for Canadians to correct course and lose themselves for a while on the Garden Path too.
The grim reality we experience today is one of war, genocide and climate upheaval as the fairy tale future we have promised our children withers and dies in a poisoned ecosystem. Unscrupulous politicians and corporate profiteers distort truth and drown out the voice of reason with a relentless barrage of media misinformation. We face complete social collapse if we buy into their self-serving propaganda, and for the most part we already have.
Though we come from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds and may not share the same politics, there is no denying that we share the same planet and are collectively responsible for whatever happens here. We now find ourselves at a critical tipping point and must stand resolutely together.
The time has come to reconnect with one another at a deeper level of engagement. If we want to survive, we need a new story to carry us down the road and a Climate New Deal implemented in law without delay. How do we do this? Paradoxically, we slow down in order to catch up with ourselves. We stop chasing the old tales in order to find a new tale. We take time to play and make art and in so doing we learn from one another to create a new story to live by.
Play is the default learning modality for all primates. Being glorified monkeys we’re really good at it and, to be honest, the situation is too serious to do anything else. British rock icon Brien Eno put it this way…”Play is how children learn; art is how adults play,” Must be time to rock and roll, grandpa!
The dance of starting over in the midst of mental mayhem and political chaos ruin is called the Bindu Backstep. It’s something the butterflies teach at their peace garden in Batticaloa. Though we may feel that all our efforts seem superficial and will come to naught, or bindu, in reality this is actually a time of unprecedented opportunity. In Hindu metaphysics, bindu is the point at which creation begins flowing back into unity. Mindfully engaged, the obstacles we face become blessings that show us the way home.
Poho
March 2025
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