Mandala Sand Painting

For the past week I have watched nine Tibetan monks working in our University Union. For 4 days, they have worked in shifts on a beautiful Mandala sand painting. Grain by grain, color by color, the monks made this beautiful piece of art in front of our very eyes. You could walk by at any normal hour of the day and see them working diligently with specialized metal tools. Each grain of sand was put into its proper place by the monks, and the mural was gradually created. It took the monks 30 hours, working over the course of 4 days to complete this Mandala. They finished just Thursday, and it looked beautiful. All the work could be seen in the tiney details. Since they had finished, they held the closing ceremony, so I decided to watch the end of the ritual. I spent a half hour watching them perform the closing ceremony, where they finished the chanting by brushing the sand art into a sole pile nothingness.

Talking to others about it, they were shocked that this is what the monks did, exclaiming that they wouldn’t just go and destroy what they have been slaving over for the past week. They would keep it as a memento of all the hard word. This is understandable, but the monks were following their ritual. The ritual exemplifies impermanence of life; that at the end, all of our work is wiped into a pile of blurred colors. The monks then distributed the sand to the audience, and then went to continue their ritual by placing the remaining sand in a river nearby. The sand was given to us in the audience to represent healing, and the sand to the water represents a healing blessing from the monks to the earth itself.

I sit here in my room now, looking at the bag of sand in front of me. It is a plethora of colors, blending together. I see grains of red, blue, green, yellow, and clear grains; all of which once consisted something beautiful, and now are jumbled together in a blur of color. I know that these grains of sand will never be what they once were, for that is impossible. They once created a beautiful piece of art, and now they are just a memento of another day in my life.

I guess the sand that remains can represent some old things in my life. At the time, I swore up and down that I what I saw was art; that these things in my life would be great to see forever. I knew that I would be friends with the same people forever. I knew that they would not change, that everything would be permanent. I knew that that was as good as it was going to get. But then, things changed. Friends drifted away, addresses changed, life turned out to be not the piece of art I thought. But even though I knew it couldn’t get better then what I had at that point, I came to realize that life ended giving me things better then what I had. I on before.know now I have a whole new group of people I can rely on. I know generally what path I am heading down in life, and I know the road is better than the one I was on.

It reminds me of the Men in Black quote, where they say “Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat […] Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” I look around at the things I think I know, from the things I want to do with my life, to the people I know I can rely on, and realize how finite they all are. They are here for me now, but I am coming to realize that I cannot expect everything to be the same later on in life. I can pray for the best, and I guess that is the best I can do.

All that is left when it’s all over and done with is the bad of sand; just bits and pieces to remind me of a once great piece of art. I can do two things with the sand I have left: I can dump it out, separate it grain by grain into its appropriate colors, and attempt to remake the art I once saw, but that would be useless. Most of the other parts that made up the art are gone, and there is no reason to try in vain to put it back together. Instead, I will leave the sand in the bag, and look for new art, new things, new people. I know that I can keep the sand to remember what I once saw and what I once had in life, but it will serve to remind me of the fact that I need to move on and not linger on things that have been dismantled. Instead, I should enjoy what I have now, for what I have now in life is whole.

SSG