American Theatre, Hampton, VA (visited August 6 - 7, 2010)
I visited the American Theatre in Hampton, Virginia, earlier this month to see Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in action, painstakingly adding small amounts of colored sand to a design they had geometrically laid out on a table a couple of days earlier. Sand mandalas are a Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Once it's been completed, it's then ritualistically destroyed. This destruction symbolizes the Buddhist doctrinal belief in the transitory nature of material life, or the impermanence of all things. Even the deity syllables are removed in a specific order, along with the rest of the geometry until the mandala has been dismantled. The sand is collected in a jar which is then wrapped in silk and transported to a river (or any place with moving water), where it is released back into nature. All in all, it was very awe-inspiring and humbling experience to watch the monks methodically add small amounts to sand around and around the pattern. The sounds of the tubes they used to add the sand to the design...each clinking and scraping sound...seemed to fill the theater as they worked. Those of us who were there to witness the monks work were instinctively quiet in our manner and speech, as if any noise we might make would interrupt them. If you ever have a chance to view something like this, please consider it...it's a great learning experience! Tibetan Buddhism is new to me...having grown up in a home where Japanese Buddhism was the mainstay. It is the many aspects of Buddhism in general that attracts me...sand mandalas and their meanings being one of them. :)
