In the Palazzo Vecchio's Grand Ceremonial Chamber in Florence, Italy there is a mural which was commissioned by the ruling Medici family and painted by architect and painter Giorgio Vasari during a remodeling of the hall in 1563. In one of the battle scenes depicted in the mural there is a tiny flag with the words "Cerca Trova", seek and ye shall find. This small flag, to a San Diego engineering professor by the name of Mauricio Seracini, has been taken as a clue, a cryptic message from the 16th century as to the whereabouts of one of Leonardo da Vinci's legendary masterpieces, "The Battle of Anghiari", which had adorned a long wall of the hall but disappeared after the remodeling. For decades, painters such as Raphael were said to have travelled to the hall to study the mural, which was Leonardo's largest painting, three times the width of "The Last Supper", but then it vanished. Sercini postulates that Vasari, known to have admired da Vinci's work, found a way to preserve the mural behind his own, leaving a clue on the small flag as to it's whereabouts. A scientific team, led by Sercini, has already found evidence to support this theory and, after obtaining permission from the government of Florence, intends to spend the next year using sophisticated high tech equipment to prove it definitively. It is then hoped that the Vasari fresco can be carefully removed to extract Leonardo's masterpiece and then replaced. How astounding that this missing masterpiece could have been so very close over all these centuries, hidden by the masterful fresco which covered it. 

I can't help but point out the obvious analogy here to our own personal quests to be a human version of a "masterpiece", whatever that may mean to any of us individually in terms of success, intellect, beauty, wealth, spirituality or altruistic qualities. We consistently and doggedly search outward, never quite finding that masterpiece we look for. Perhaps, though, we are looking in the wrong direction. Perhaps, right beneath the surface of our astoundingly complex human exteriors, in the stillness of inner space, our masterpiece waits to be discovered.

Cerca Trova.

Many years ago I attended a closing sand mandala ceremony. For two straight weeks, monks from a Tibetan Buddhist monastery had worked tirelessly to create an exquisitely intricate sand mandala in our local museum of Asian art. Millions of tiny grains of colored sand were painstakingly tapped from their small metal instruments, working from the center of the mandala outward. The entire mandala was about five feet in diameter and mesmerizing in its complexity and detail. I arrived about a half hour before the closing ceremony was to begin and was astonished to see the monks still laboring on the outer edges of the mandala, patiently, steadily, tap, tap, tap, each tiny detail completed with full attention and great love and care.

Mandalas are considered sacred in Buddhist tradition, representative of the interconnection of all things and the great web of life. The monks who worked on this one were doing so with clearly evident joy and enthusiasm; their smiles were as broad as their fingers were nimble. As time for the closing ceremony drew near, they quietly completed the finishing touches on the mandala without fanfare. By this time quite a crowd had gathered to admire this awe-inspiring and incredible work of art. The moment was brief, however, for the closing ceremony soon began. Ritual blessings were offered and then the mandala, this beautiful, exquisite mandala which had taken two full weeks of work to complete, was swept up into piles and small vials of the multi-colored sand were filled for the attendees. Quietly, reverently, we lined up to take our vials, the receipt of which is considered a great blessing in Buddhist tradition.

The lesson of of the mandala, of course, is the lesson of impermanence. The vast intricacies of our lives are all, like the sands of the mandala, eventually swept away. Nothing is forever; there is no permanence, no enduring thing. All of life is ephemeral, fleeting. To acknowledge this, to really know this truth and take it into your heart deepens you, enriches you, allows you to appreciate the grand web of life, complete with all its joys and its sorrows. This lesson, learned well, connects you in a very profound way with all people and deepens your compassion. When we cling too tightly to life, when we fear death, when we resist change, we struggle and we suffer. The Buddhists call this dukkha. The quality of non-attachment, which flows from the lesson of impermanence, is essential for an enlightened, joyful life, and allows for a vision of life in all its glory and wonder from a far higher vantage point.

Remember the old classic Disney film Pollyanna? I remember loving it as a child and taking its very wise message to heart. Pollyanna’s father taught her “The Glad Game” which was, in essence, to find the good in every situation. This game saw her through the toughest of circumstances. When Pollyanna was orphaned and living with stern old Aunt Polly she persisted in finding the good in every situation and seeing the good in the people around her despite their negative outlooks on life and habitually ingrained grumpiness. Sent to the attic as punishment, she admired the beautiful view it afforded. Given only bread and milk for supper she realizes she does, indeed, love bread and milk. Soon, with her youthful enthusiasm and unending gratitude for all life brought her, she melted the hearts of those around her and, by teaching them her secrets to enjoying life, enriched their lives immeasurably. Her perceptions of life changed the lives of those around her. Simple really, and yet a lesson I think we need to revisit time and time again.

 The term “Pollyanna” has entered our language as a description for someone who unfailingly finds the good in life, no matter the circumstances. In today’s fast paced, success-oriented, sophisticated and sometimes jaded world it often takes on a negative connotation, as if finding the good was hopelessly naïve and ignorantly unrealistic. I beg to differ.

 What if we all absolutely insisted on seeing the best in each other? What if we would take each person as they were, each situation as it came without trying to judge? What if we always looked for silver linings and knew, just knew they would be there? What if we took it upon ourselves to always bring good cheer, always lend a hand when needed, and always, without fail, without regard for what was in it for us, love others? Life would be transformed, that’s what, for us and for those around us.

 I aspire to be a card carrying, certified, state of the art Pollyanna. Yes, indeed, that is my new year’s resolution! Anyone else?

I was amused by a story told by a friend of mine about her search for lost eyeglasses. She knew she had misplaced them somewhere in the house but when her exhaustive search yielded nothing she finally gave up and dug out a second pair she happened to have. Her reading done, she then pushed them up on top of her head where, in her words, "they joined the original pair" of eyeglasses.

Lately, I have been wondering if all our searching to become "enlightened" or "spiritual" isn't quite similar in nature, that is, we are searching for something which has been with us all along. We are what we are, aren't we? We  simply miss that because we use a conceptual framework to describe everything in our content-rich world and what we are, the essence of what we are, by its very nature is not a mental construct, it is non-verbal. There is great peace in the idea of "I am what I am". It is the mind which butts in and get us in trouble wanting to paint a mental picture of what can never be described in words. A wave cannot turn around and examine water because it  is the water, it could not exist apart from the water. Yet, the water does not depend on the wave for its existence.

Of course, this is unsettling. It would mean that everything is right here, right now. There would be no place else to go, nothing more to attain, no dreams, no endless searches for the right person to be with, the right job to have, no quest for happiness which, once attained, always leads to a quest for more happiness. It would be the end of the line. It doesn't mean we would cease acting from conviction- feeding the hungry, tending the sick, loving, seeking peace where turmoil rules. It means, in terms of a personal search for meaning, we would stop wasting the energy. What would that feel like, what would that mean for the world? Do we trust in our essence? Do we, ultimately, have a choice?

As I recently listened to an acquaintance talk about her ex boyfriend, the cruel things he'd said upon their breaking up, what a miserable attitude he has, how much he'd hurt her and so on and so forth, we came to the most amazing part of the conversation, the part where she said that she forgave him because he was just, well, an unfeeling ignorant person, not worthy of a second thought. It was this conversational exchange that got me to thinking about the idea of forgiveness and how we apply it in our lives.

The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary describes forgiving as "allowing room for error or weakness". Clearly, my acquaintance was allowing room for her ex-boyfriend to exist, lots of room, as in keep a wide berth, I never want to see you again room. Forgiveness, used in this application, is a concept carefully and sometimes, as in my acquaintance's case, angrily placed on top of judgment. It is the metaphoric equivalent of placing a lamp on the elephant in the room and hoping the pacoderm will pass for a side table. One must, eventually, deal with the elephant.

At a much deeper level, forgiveness can effortlessly arise when we are brutally honest about our participation in a relationship gone wrong, when a true understanding of contributing human frailities and the dynamics of human exchange give rise to compassion for the human condition. At this level of depth, forgiveness serves to dissipate the original judgement entirely and can literally transform life.