Mandalas

By Mary DeMocker
Web Exclusive - February 20, 2009

I am here to witness the destruction. Five Tibetan monks are about to destroy the sand mandala that has taken them a week to create. To dramatize the impermanence of all existence, the monks will sweep up the mandala, carry the sand to the nearby river, and pour it into the rushing water.

Inside an area cordoned off with black satin ropes, an elderly monk hovers at the elbow of a novice. Bent over the mandala, the younger one rubs a rod along the ridged spine of a metal funnel. Out flows a tiny stream of yellow sand that the monk directs onto the sand painting very slowly, the way he's been doing hour after hour, day after day. He looks as if he could be decorating a cake, and the colors, too, are birthday-cake-bright: fuchsia, lime green, tangerine. He puts down his metal funnel and slips from the room. The mandala is finished.

This takes place in the student union of my local university, part of the annual folk festival on campus. The instant I saw the announcement, I asked my husband to watch with our toddlers so I could attend the ceremony. Rundown and fragmented, I am desperate for space from children, housework—all of it. My identity is gone, and there's no one to charge with the theft.

Returning to my alma mater doesn't help. Reminders of my former, interesting student-self surround me. When I graduated from here eight years ago, it was with big plans for a life of creativity, world change, and spiritual growth. Now I try not to glare with stark envy at the students around me unencumbered by toddlers. I used to speak other languages, bona fide foreign tongues, not just baby talk. I traveled to other continents. I even performed solo harp music at this very same festival a decade ago. But at this moment, someone else bows to applause on the main stage.

I guess it's fair to say I am the perfect candidate for a little contact with more-enlightened-than-I Tibetan monks. I'm not a practicing Buddhist; in fact, getting to this ceremony feels like the closest thing to a spiritual act I've performed since becoming a mother. But I've heard just viewing a sand mandala is believed to transmit blessings.

Aware that there are just these few moments between the mandala's completion and demise, I drink in the sight of it: A perfect circle five feet across, it rests on a black table and resembles a colorful, fragile earth hanging in space. Concentric squares and archways dominate the center, suggesting a temple. Tiny flowers bloom everywhere. Miniature clouds float in royal blue air, and near them soar little birds, wings afire with gold and orange feathers. The whole luminous circle, with its complex lines and curves, radiates symmetry and balance. I don't understand what the picture depicts, but it doesn't matter. I'd still like to climb inside all of that vibrant color to bask in the organized beauty. This, I learn later, is what the monks want their deities to do: every mandala is home to anywhere from a dozen to several hundred gods.

A student organizer welcomes us. People shush each other, and I'm overjoyed that no little voice beside me demands attention. The student explains that Tibetan mandalas have many different meanings and purposes. This one is designed to heal an environment and every sentient being within it. The monks will pour the mandala into the river to send healing energies out to the ocean, and throughout the entire world. Those that live in the river, or next to it, may receive stronger blessings. Seated only a few feet from the mandala, I'm counting on the power of proximity to help heal my spirit.

At last the monks file in, adorned in magenta robes with saffron wrappings and canary-yellow hats that curve up and forward, like waves about to break. The room falls silent, and all eyes are on the procession that surges to the front. A barrel-chested monk starts to sing in a voice incomprehensibly deep. I try to enjoy the primordial, not-quite-human sound, but it is guttural and rough, lacking the usual melody or harmony to please the human ear. It is music intended for the deities residing in the mandala.