a surprise in washington square park
Saturday, June 12th, 2010Leroy and I went to the park yesterday but when I started turning right to leave, he pulled hard to go left. He is a stubborn poodle so I said, “Okay, we can walk around the fountain that way today,” and to the left we went. Where there was a huge crowd gathered around and lot of buzzing conversations. Then I saw what was going on — there were literally hundreds of boxes sitting on the ground under the big famous arch at the end of Fifth Avenue. Every box was wrapped in a coral colored cloth with a bow on top — a Japanese kind of wrapping thing. It looked amazing and beautiful. People were all excited and taking the boxes. I looked around to see if it was a giveaway from some big company like Revlon or something but, no. No big promotional thing happening. So I thought, I’ll take a box, too. I picked one up and then I thought, “No. I don’t want this. I don’t want more stuff.” So I put it down and started to walk away and then I saw a tiny sign that said:
EMPTY IS NOT EMPTY. FULL IS NOT FULL.
Well, that hooked me right then and there because it was obviously a rephrasing of the most important Buddhist sutra, the Prajna Paramita Sutra, which begins, “Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form.” So I picked up a box. It was very light. It was obviously empty. I hesitated. I wondered if I should try another box that was heavier so I could get one with someone in it and not one with nothing in it. It was not because of my nonattachment-like nature but because I felt embarrassed to be seen in public ( even though there was no one there that I knew…) picking and choosing which box to get, that I did stick with that very light, obviously empty box. I sat down on a park bench and opened it up. It was fun to unwrap the coral colored cloth. It was a cardboard box that would be the right size for a baseball cap. Inside was a piece of paper which said:
“YOU CAN DO ONE SMALL AND GRACEFUL THING TO SAVE THE PLANET BY REUSING THIS BOX AND CLOTH. THE CLOTH IS WASHABLE AND IRONABLE.
SUGGESTIONS: USE THE CLOTH TO WRAP A PRESENT, TOTE YOUR GROCERY, FASHION INTO A PIECE OF CLOTHING, OR USE YOUR IMAGINATION.”
IF YOU’D LIKE TO LEARN ABOUT BOJAGI USES, GOOGLE BOJAGI OR BOJAGI WRAPPING.
THANK YOU,
UJIN LEE, ARTIST
WWW.UJINLEEART.COM
I left the box on the park bench. Leroy and I walked home with the cloth. We saw people blocks away from the park carrying the boxes, still wrapped. I guess they were waiting until they got home to open their surprise package.







There are so many open hearted, curious, smart people with us this weekend and a large percentage of them are experienced yogis and experienced meditators. Ten years ago it would have been the opposite percentage. Pretty cool to see how much yoga and meditation has infiltrated our culture.





