Tibetan Monks Mandala Sand Painting at the Woodland

Thoughts sent.

Lovely photos. So sorry I missed the closing ceremonies... :-(

I'm so grateful to have had a chance to experience this in person. My husband had mentioned that it was a shame that the mandala couldn't be preserved somehow, but I disagreed since the beauty was in the creation of it, not in the object itself. Seeing this in person, seeing the intense concentration of the monks as they created it, seeing something as simple as colored sand become something so detailed and intricate was truly a blessing. And when the kid's table wasn't crowded I tried my hand at it myself. The process was one of those things that, as the saying goes, takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.

We took two bags of Mandala sand (sorry).

We will distribute one next week at the Jersey shore, into the ocean.

The other I will hand off to my brother, who will distribute it into the waters off Newburyport, Massachusetts. I was happy to send him the "link" to the live Mandala construction, to watch last week.

As I understand it, that distribution is part of the experience, and a way to share it.

I believe the clearing away of the sand is meant to be symbolic of the ephemeral nature of life: Nothing lasts. It's a Buddhist concept we have a lot of trouble with in our culture, where we tend to accumulate so many things and hang onto them forever, while accumulating more things. Human nature seems to have a lot to do with wanting good things to last forever. But they can't. Buddhists focus on that and the present moment. It hurts to see something so beautiful, created so painstakingly over so many hours, swept away in a moment. But that's life...

At least, that's how I understand it. I wish I could have had a bag of sand to scatter somewhere in CT. Maybe off the ferry into Long Island Sound the next time I travel to my mother's house to keep working on clearing it out for sale.