About seventeen years ago, a first mandala came
to me while meditating. In saying that it came to
me, what I mean is that while my eyes were
closed, an image presented itself so that I could
see it in my mind. I did not know an image would
come to my mind as I was fairly new to yoga and
meditation. The image I could see was of an
equilateral cross with pine cones at the center,
the cones open as they would be after their seeds
have been released.

By the time several years of yoga practice had
passed, other images, mandalas, had come to me
from time to time. Always there was a circle and
often the circle was contained within a square.
One that especially asserted itself was the image
within a square of a circle transected by an
equilateral cross, the arms of the cross being
blue. A green vine twined and grew its way within
the circle.

On Tuesday of this past week, a group of Tibetan
monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery arrived
at the Museum to begin creating a sand mandala
painting. This was part of Tibet week, which
takes place every year at Emory. I recall first
seeing a group of these monks working on a sand
mandala many years ago, at the Carlos Museum,
long before I began to work there, long before I
even had any idea I would one day work there. The
mandala is created out of vividly colored sand
that is deposited by way of special long, narrow,
silver funnels. The funnels are ridged along part
of their length. The opening of the funnel is
quite narrow and the monks coax the sand from the
funnel by rubbing a stick along the ridged part.
I suppose the vibrations excite the sand, making
it flow because as soon as they cease the
rubbing, the sand stops. Colors are placed almost
grain by grain. Creation of the mandala is an act
of meditation, among other things.

Construction of the mandala began with opening
ceremonies. Eight monks in burgundy robes and
draped with saffron colored cloths assembled a
large square table with a black top, then
arranged themselves in a semi-circle along one
side. Two of the monks set metal cones to the
floor and began extracting sections, telescoping
one part out of another until they had two horns
that were probably about 15 to 18 feet long. Two
other monks, on the other end, had smaller horns,
more like trumpets. A monk near the center of the
line had a large drum, held so the drum head was
vertical, the drum head decorated by a
three-armed and very colorful whirling disk.
Another of the monks had cymbals. First (I think)
was a flourish with the cymbals and then they
began chanting, something very deep, reminding me
of bull frogs, the deepness of the tone, anyway.
As they continued, I realized some of the monks
were making two tones. I think that’s done by a
method of circular breathing. Drum beats and
horns and cymbal flourishes continued and I felt
reminded of some piece of jazz music I have,
something by McCoy Tyner, either Atlantis or Fly
with the Wind. I thought, as I listened to the
sounds, that it didn’t seem like too much of a
stretch to think that jazz musicians might well
have heard those sounds and borrowed them. At
today’s closing ceremony, the monks at one point
had moved from that very deep guttaral thrumming
and rhythmic throat chanting to sounds that
seemed to sore and I was again reminded of music
from my past, this time thinking that that part
reminded me of something by Pink Floyd, from the
album Meddle, a song called Fearless. I think
right at the end of that, there are voices that
break away from the song and sore, a capella, in
a similar way.

The monks worked about 8 hours or more a day,
creating their sand painting, in teams of two and
teams of four, laying out colors and shapes and
patterns. The sound of the rubbing on the silver
funnels was also beautiful, in its own way, to
listen to. Sound overlapping sound overlapping
sound ceasing resuming. Color flowed. Greens and
blues and vivid pinks. Yellows and oranges and
reds. Shading appeared. Patterns were dragged
into the sand with special tools, a way of
marking what was to be deposited next. A large
circle began to fill in with more and more
divisions, a large circle within the square of
the tabletop and the circle containing a square
which contained a circle. A kind of equilateral
cross formed with many divisions and colors
shapes and and textures. As the painting grew
from the center outward, I was surprised at how
textural it was. In places sand was deliberately
piled up sometimes to a depth of maybe as much as
3/8 of an inch and in other places it was the
thinnest layer, just enough to completely cover
the black table top. Monks moved back and forth
from the mandala to the table where the many
small silver bowls contained colorful sand.
On Thursday, the road manager/driver for the
monks came to my office. The van he has been
driving the monks in had broken down and while it
was being repaired, he needed to secure a rental
van and had come to ask if we could recommend a
rental company. He sat by my desk for awhile and
we chatted. I asked how long he’d been driving
the monks. Since April, he’d said. He told me he
had driven 10,000 miles just since January. I
asked what it was like to spend this time driving
monks, it seemed such an unusual occupation one
that I imagined would have an impact. He said it
has been an amazing time, that he felt like he’d
learned from them, keeps learning about what’s
important and what isn’t, like he has to because
he’s in their presence and suddenly the person
who cuts him off in traffic isn’t something worth
being angry about. He said he’s driving the
dharma around, literally.

The mandala the monks created is the Compassion
mandala. It is one of many designs, I gather, all
of which have been around for 2000 or more years,
passed down through the ages. At the end of the
week, I knew the ultimate end to its creation
would be to sweep it up and ceremonially return
the sands to some body of water.

Prior to the closing ceremony, there was a talk
to a standing room only crowd about the meaning
of the mandala. I could not hear the talk because
the room was too packed and I was too far away
but I could see a screen onto which was projected
the image of a finished mandala. Words came up
indicating it was an animated explanation of the
mandala and with that, written words ceased to
appear on the screen and were replaced with
animated images. The mandala moved to horizontal
and something grew up out of its center. Then
other things emerged, small shapes became 3 D and
stood up. Periodically the view would shift so
that it was as if you were seeing it from the
side as sections rose, then the view would change
again to something more like an isometric view. I
kept trying to figure out what it was I was
seeing and suddenly it dawned on me that it was a
building that seemed to be growing out of the
mandala. I realized that the mandala is like a
symbolic map of a sacred temple. To say I was
amazed by this understanding would be an
understatement. Suddenly I understood not only
the building within a building but that perhaps
some of the shapes were meant to be clouds in the
air, and the whole building rested on a giant
lotus in full bloom. My mind flashed back to my
earliest recollections of the mandalas that came
to me beginning years ago. As years had gone by,
as circles within squares became images I saw in
meditation and in the real world, it had suddenly
dawned on me one day that the church I had grown
up in, the UU church here in Atlanta on Cliff
Valley is itself a circular sanctuary within a
square building. As I grew up, I often walked the
perimeter of that circle, walked a mandala. Those
shapes had been there as part of my spiritual
center, contained within my religious community.
A circle, symbol of wholeness. The square, the
solid walls that contained that.

That closing ceremony took place this afternoon,
a sunny, cool, and very windy day here in
Atlanta. The monks once more arranged themselves
in a semi-circle, though I noticed that the order
of the men was reversed from what it had been for
the opening ceremonies. Chanting and drumming and
horns played, for about a half hour. The eldest
member of the group picked up small amounts of
sand from each of the arms of the cross as he
circled the table. And finally he took a large
brush and swept the entire mandala into a pile of
sand in the center of the table. All of the
colors had blurred into a state of grayness, no
longer individual colors aglow against the black.
Sand was placed in small bags and given away
until there was no more, save for that which the
monks would take to the creek. The destruction of
the mandala was meant to represent the idea of
impermanence and returning the sand to flowing
water was meant to represent the giving to the
world all of the compassion contained within the
days of drawing meditation, the creek flowing to
a river, the river to an ocean, the ocean taking
the sands around the world, a circle within the
dark vastness of space. After the sand had been
swept up, one of the monks went to the altar that
had been along one wall throughout the week. It
had a number of ritual objects as well as a
picture of the Dalai Lama, and vases of flowers.
The monk picked up a vase of flowers and returned
to the table where the mandala had been. He
placed the vase of flowers at the center of the
table, at the center of the mandala. And I
thought of the mandala that had come to me years
ago, the cross with the pine cones that had
released their seeds. It was like a new level of
understanding to all of these mandalas, to
symbols that have been with me for 18 years now.
One of the Asian studies students asked if I
would hold the door as the monks processed
through, followed by people who’d come to see the
closing ceremonies. I was glad to oblige. First
came the monks with the very long horns, followed
by other monks. I watched as they descended the
stairs, saffron robes aglow in the light. I
thought of that same saffron color which the
artist Christo had used for his recent and
impermanent work of art, Gates, in New York City.
A work that had taken more than 25 years to see
to completion, was on view for two weeks, and
then gone. I held the door and looked at the
faces of people as they passed by, was surprised
when woman stroked my arm, thanked me for
holding the door. And as more and more people
passed, several more thanked me for holding the
door. There was something intimate and personal
in this ordinary act of holding the door, as if
each of us were bound by something. When everyone
was out of the building, I followed. As I rounded
the corner of the building, a mother of a child
who was in a recent workshop walked up to me and
told me that the Pope had just died.
Impermanence. We all assembled on the Mizzel St.
Bridge, overlooking the creek that runs through
Baker Woodlands. A work of art lies there,
through the woods, a work called Source Route.
Two paths that lead down the sloping earth end at
the creek that runs through the woodlands. Two
nights ago, a large tree had uprooted during
heavy rains and fallen across one of the paths of
Source Route. A number of us like the symbolism
of this tree across Source Route and think the
artist would have liked this, too. More chanting
and music and the sand was cast into the air to
settle in the water and on surrounding ground,the ceremony at an end. Impermanence.

Written April 2 2005