Rising from the mud

After class today I went seeking a place of peace to touch in to some wisdom on dealing with war and violence. I got on my bike and pedalled to a nearby temple. When I got there I thought Ah, I have arrived. 

They had a museum so I took my shoes off (as per the entrance requirements) bought a ticket and went in, following instructions to circle the rooms anticlockwise. 

The first room was full of luxurious scroll paintings, abundant scenes of tropical forests with ornate birds brightly painted on grey papers. Each scene really drew me in - I went under water and saw the roots of the lilies and the sparkling fish, I saw the dusting of snow being gently shaken off a thin branch by the landing of a turtle dove, the vivid spring call of one blue bird to it's mate. 

There were three huge scrolls depicting the Buddha, one was riding a ferocious blue tiger who was being reined in by a servant man. I sat down and admired the bushy mane around the tigers head which had been painted with ornate curls. I thought about everything the Buddha dealt with in his life, his struggles, imperfections, rejections, conflicts, losses. I felt relieved remembering that this fellow had lived through hardship and come through it wiser. 

Then I went into the second room, all around it were small ancient horizontal scrolls depicting one horrendous violent scene after the next - I won't describe it vividly but by the tenth metre of looking at it I felt quite sick and extremely disturbed. Although these simple ink illustrations were centuries old it felt like not much has changed. It's easy to feel despair for humanity in times of war. 

I told my friend that I had gone in search of peace and found violence. He said 'good things arise from muddy ground', and on reflection I thought that those beautiful exquisite nature paintings and the serene Buddha felt denser and more needed in light of all the chaos in the illustrations. It's not that the world needed the horrors to appreciate the peace, but rather just that this is what happened, and because of it the contrast was greater, the preciousness was more obvious.