Relics Scroll 8: What Goes Around Comes Around

For my RELICS exhibit, I made ten scrolls bearing American English platitudes that could be construed to have philosophical or spiritual meanings. See all of the scroll posts here.
________________

"What goes around comes around" we say, especially when it seems like someone is getting away with doing something unethical without consequences. The phrase can also be applied when someone does a good deed without reward. We say "what goes around comes around" to indicate that eventually someone will do a good deed for them as well, that their good karma will return to them.

My own feeling about this is that our good or bad deeds might or might not come back to us in our external lives, but that "what goes around comes around" applies more accurately to a cycle of thoughts and actions that happens constantly inside each of us. I chose a quote about this inner cycle from the Upanishads:

As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

One of my own primary spiritual practices is to keep an eye on my thoughts and desires and try to catch the ones that might harm me or others before they become deeds.

Tech notes:  The two-toned background was created on an uncarved block using both a mask and a stencil for the middle ring of circles. The gray in this piece is liquid graphite, which has a subtle sparkle to it that I really like. The large text was stenciled, the small text rubber stamped.