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Om
mani padme hum...
The
devout chant while circumambulating the Dalai Lama's home
in Dharamsala.
Om
mani padme hum...
A
prayer flag flutters, sending a prayer skywards.
Om
mani padme hum...
A
prayer wheel turns, emitting a prayer of compassion for all
sentient beings.
Om
mani padme hum...
Literally,
Om jewel in the lotus hum, this Buddhist mantra
invokes compassion for all and pays tribute to the Dalai Lama,
who is believed by Tibetan Buddhists to be an incarnation
of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of compassion.
Tibetan
Buddhism has no deities in the Western sense. Buddhas are
literally "awakened ones," those who have transcended the
suffering of this world by developing the sort of compassion
exhibited by Avalokitsvara. Tibetan Buddhism has been called
Lamaism in the West after the lamas or "superior ones," monks
who have spent years of their lives in monasteries studying
sutras, logic, debate, ritual, chanting, mudra practice, and
mandala art before attaining what we might understand as a
Ph.D. in Buddhism.
I
recently had the opportunity to meet four such lamas. I found
them at Sister Max, an Indian antique store in downtown Boulder,
Colorado. The monks of the Gyudmed Tantric Monastery, one
of the largest and oldest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, have
been on a United States tour since early this year, teaching,
healing, and demonstrating sand mandala construction.
During
the 1958 occupation of Tibet, the Chinese dissolved the Tibetan
local government, imposed a military rule, destroyed countless
monasteries, and executed and imprisoned thousands of Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama and 80,000 of his followers fled to India.
Since that time, communities of Tibetan monks have struggled
to rebuild monasteries in parts of India and Nepal. Over the
past 20 years, groups of these monks have traveled throughout
the United States to support their monasteries and to demonstrate
one of the sacred arts of Tibetan Buddhism: the construction
of a sand mandala.
Upon
entering Sister Max, I find the four Tibetan lamas at work
on the mandala. It is roughly a four-foot in diameter elaborate
work of art in colored sands centered on a one-foot high platform.
The monks surround the mandala, sitting cross-legged next
to cups of the medium. Over a span of days, they create intricate
designs in the layering of the colored sands using traditional
metal funnels called chak-pur. A monk holds a chak-pur
in one hand while running a metal shaft along its grated surface,
creating a vibration, which causes the grains of sand to flow
like a liquid from the chak-pur's tiny aperture. As
it flows, the monk moves the instrument, drawing with it.
Lotus flowers, Dharma wheels, elephants, bells, diamonds,
conch shells, vases, gods and goddesses all emerge in brilliant
color.
Actually,
only three of the monks are at work on the mandala when I
visit. Providing stark contrast to the devout manner in which
his companions undertake the ancient and sacred art, the fourth
monk sits on a nearby bench in a relaxed western pose, thumbing
through the pages of PC Magazine.
 I
join him on the bench and strike up a conversation. His name
is Lobsang. He's shopping for a computer, preferably a laptop
as he spends so much time on the road. We discuss such considerations
as RAM, hard drive space, and processor speed. He's interested
in creating a web site that showcases and explains the monastery's
work with the mandala, and he's already registered a domain
name: monksart.com. I tell him that I am a web designer and
would be happy to help design his site. We exchange email
addresses and agree to contact one another in December, when
he will be finished with his tour.
I am interested in the elaborate and beautiful sand mandala
and I ask him about it. They've been working on it for five
days and will probably continue for another five until it
is complete.
"Then
what?" I ask.
"Then,
we will disperse the sand."
Mandala
construction, along with other forms of Tibetan ritual art,
came with Buddhism from India during the 8th century. The
construction of the mandala is at once an artistic illustration
of the Buddhist universe and a meditative practice. The monks
begin their work each day by reciting special prayers of purification,
reinforcing their motivation to work for the benefit of all
beings.
In
Tibetan Buddhism, the most important quality to strive for
is bodhicitta, "awake mind." It is with this "mind
of compassion" that the individual pursues the attainment
of enlightenment, not for selfish reasons but for the purpose
of liberating all sentient beings from suffering.
As
they apply the sands, the monks visualize themselves as the
deity of the mandala. While working, while discussing the
process with each other, while explaining the mandala to onlookers,
they personify the qualities of the Buddha at the mandala's
center. The four of them emanate a quality that can most closely
be described as compassion. Although the language barrier
keeps me from speaking with all but Lobsang, this compassion
is clearly communicated in facial expressions, gestures, and
an unidentifiable generosity in their manner towards the many
who have come to witness this artistic and spiritual expression.
The
creation of this mandala is an art, but as such it bears little
resemblance to what we in the West consider art. Western art
places its highest values upon innovation and self-expression.
Tibetan ritual art, mandala construction included, most values
the cultivation of a pure motivation to benefit others. The
monks strive for perfect re-creation of the cosmology the
mandala intends to describe, and at the end of each work session,
they dedicate any spiritual merit that may have been accumulated
from this activity to the benefit of all sentient beings.
Art
as we know it is often a means by which the artist immortalizes
him or herself in the work, whereas the mandala is created
as an act of devotion and then destroyed. As a lesson in non-attachment
and a metaphor to life's own impermanence, the sands are swept
up and placed into an urn. Half is distributed to the people
present during the closing ceremony, and half is carried to
a nearby waterway and deposited through which its healing
powers will spread to the ocean and throughout the world.
Imagine
if Picasso, after painting Woman In A Red Armchair, had set
fire to the work, offering its ashes to the air for the purification
of world suffering. Or if noted ceramicist, Peter Voulkos,
after days of labor on one of his large abstract-expressionist
clay pots simply crushed the sculpture into the ground, offering
any spiritual merit accumulated in his creation to all who
walk upon the Earth. Perhaps, instead of publishing this article,
I should similarly destroy it, praying that my efforts might
somehow benefit others.
But
I don't have bodhicitta. And while I hope that some
who read this may somehow profit, I would hardly say that
my motivation holds a focus of compassion for all sentient
beings. Furthermore, I, like many Westerners, am far more
attached to the product of my work, the fruits of my labors.
Our culture is product-oriented. We are often valued more
for what we produce than for who we are. With this focus on
product, the end-result of our work, we lose sight of process,
the actual living that takes us to the product. We lose sight
of the fact that who we are is a never-ending process of learning
and growing. Like four monks demonstrating a sincere motivation
of compassion in a temporary work of art, we too need to let
go of looking ahead to the always-elusive future goal and
find the wonder in our own process - here and now.
 Beneath
an alter of candles and flowers framing a picture of the Dalai
Lama, Lobsang and his companions initiate the ceremony that
will end in the mandala's destruction. Through tantric chanting
and prayer, the deities whom the mandala invoked are now released,
and the monks sweep the sand into its center. The sand is
then carefully gathered and placed into an urn, and some of
it is distributed to those present at the ceremony for personal
healing and protection. We are then led from Sister Max to
Boulder Creek. There, after requesting that the water spirits
accept the consecrated sand for the benefit of all beings,
the monks pour the contents of the urn into the water, where,
even now, it spreads its healing qualities throughout the
world.
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