Mandalas are sacred symbolic images traditionally used in Buddhism and Hinduism as aids for meditation. Mandalas have come into wider use in the West for healing, for spirituality, for art.
When His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in San Francisco, to honor his esteemed presence, the Asian Art Museum had a Tibetan cultural exhibit that was truly wonderful. One of the most moving aspects of the exhibit was the creation of an intricate, mosaic-like sand mandala by two Tibetan monks over a period of several days. Most astonishingly, at the end of the exhibit, the monks took the gorgeous, multihued masterpiece and simply threw it into the wind at Ocean Beach. We Westerners were thunderstruck. How could they possibly destroy this beautiful, spiritual art piece that took so long to create? The monks were quite jolly about it, laughing a lot and seeming quite unconcerned. They explained to the confused onlookers that “all of life is ephemeral and this act emphasizes nonattachment.” While the sands are now mixed into the sands of the entire world, the wisdom associated with it has remained.
This six-step ritual taught by the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan monks has been handed down through centuries in the Himalayas. The process for making sand mandalas is a reflection of the concept of the “sacred circle.” These mandalas are actually a way of “initiating” large groups of people, as the monks believe that Buddha intended enlightenment for all beings.
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