Let me tell you a factual truth. We live essentially in two worlds. Tragically, most people don’t realize that reality. Most think that we live in a singular world. If you think we live in a singular world, you have missed the reality of duality. Now, I’m not the first person to posit that belief. Plato wrote about in the Allegory of the Cave, which addressed the dual world theory.

The Cave

Plato’s point was that knowledge that was found or seen though a person’s senses wasn’t real knowledge. If one wanted to be wise, one must see the world through logical reasoning. Everyone is aware of the allegory, but few understand it beyond merely an allegorical story. Plato contends that merely the use of one or more of our senses isn’t a valid means to see the world.

The haunting question for some people was how to see the real world…outside the cave? Nearly two and a half millennia after Plato, George Santayana wrote, “A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.” Santayana wants children to go to school outside the cave of the classroom.

I don’t know how Plato, Santayana, or some others escaped their caves. Nevertheless, I am fully aware of why I escaped my cave located in Mt. Lebanon. I have written about feeling dumb and poor due to my family moving from Pennsauken, NJ to Mt. Lebanon just outside of Pittsburgh, PA. My father got a promotion, but it meant moving from the corporate office in Philadelphia to the Pittsburgh office. We moved to the 19th best school system in America and the richest community in Western Pennsylvania. We moved from a middle-class community outside of Camden, NJ where I was doing well in school. Moving to Mt. Lebanon radically changed my Weltanschauung. I now wrestled with the question what happened to me? That haunted me for a large part of my life. However, after graduate school, I spent a year doing post-graduate studies at New College at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

I discovered another world beyond my cave-like life. My entrance into the new world started in the late 60s and has continued for the rest of my life. One moment prior to my fully grasping that insight was when I was in my senior year at Muskingum College. I had taken a 10-hour art history class in my junior year and was asked to be the teaching assistant of my professor during my senior year. I taught several subsections weekly, wrote and graded the midterms and finals for that year. I love the arts. I have written many articles about how my home looks like my version of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, which is the pièce de résistance of art museums.

On my second trip to Myanmar, I had four private tour guides in that country. One was Than Tun Oo. Before leaving him in Mandalay, he gave me an oil painting, which he did of the teak bridge and a pen and ink drawing of myself. They are both treasures.

Before my third trip, I commissioned Than to paint a portrait of Dr. Sabedra, Ginger’s vet, who essentially saved Ginger’s life, a painting of Ginger, three drawings of my granddaughters, and another of the teak bridge.

Than is a great painter. He is as talented with all the various media like oils, watercolors, etc. and can paint all subject matters: portraits, still lifes, and scenery. However, there is only one thing that Than doesn’t paint—sand paintings. However, Than suggested some of his colleagues around Bagan who do sand paintings.

Sand paintings in Myanmar were invented in the wake of the earthquake in 1975. The story as I understand it was that some local painters started to reproduce murals from some of the shrines outside of Bagan that had particularly destroyed. However, the subject matter has expanded to all sorts of subject matters beyond the murals. The process of sand paintings is to draw the subject matter of the painting on a piece of cotton cloth. Then the picture is painted with a type of acrylic glue, which is covered with a thin layer of sand. After the glue has dried, the artist can add color to the picture.

This is a sand painting from a previous trip to Myanmar, which is of the pagodas, stupas, and shrines in the World Heritage Site of Bagan.

This is one of three sand paintings of Buddhist monks that a bought on my last trip to Myanmar.

There are several reasons for wanting sand paintings. If I were still teaching art history, I would address the contrapposto issue. It is seen in all Renaissance visual arts. The sculpture of David by Michelangelo is an excellent example.

David

Painters used the S-shaped curve, which is a more distinct form of contrapposto. Ghirlandaio’s painting An Old Man and his Grandson.

An Old Man and His Grandson

However, another reason for wanting this sand painting addresses the issue of broadening who we call our family. We tend to define our families as those who either live under the same roof or those others that are relatives of ours. Some may feel comfortable with that definition. However, unless we reach out to others, both we and those others will live lives void of the joys of broadening our extended family. I have written about my family in Myanmar. The words like joyful or wondrous do not come close to expressing my feelings.

Let me approach this from another avenue, which is expressed in this sand painting. Buddhists are a significant part of Asian. This is a photo that I took early one morning when Buddhist monks went out to get food from the locals in Luang Prabang, Laos.

This monk had gotten some rice from offerings of villagers and saw a young teenager who had some sort of problem with his legs, which were deformed. The monk shared what he had with that teenager. I have recalled that picture many times during the decade since I took this photo. It sensitizes me to be more expansive.

Do you want some evidence of having to be more expansive? The coronavirus came from Wuhan, China. The theory is that the virus crossed from bats or other animals sold at “wet markets” to humans.

Bats for sale

Since humans haven’t built up an immunity to these foreign viruses, it accounts for the pandemic spread of the coronavirus. Therefore, the poverty associated with these wet markets, resulted in the entire world becoming victims. Had we been more concerned about our sisters and brothers facing poverty in Wuhan, China, we might not be suffering also. This is a teaching moment for all of us.

Wet markets

Since humans haven’t built up an immunity to these foreign viruses, it accounts for the pandemic spread of the coronavirus. Therefore, the poverty associated with these wet markets, resulted in the entire world becoming victims. Had we been more concerned about our sisters and brothers facing poverty in Wuhan, China, we might not be suffering also. This is a teaching moment for all of us.