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Tibetan monks return to W&J to create sand mandala

3 min read
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It’s allergy season, so if you venture to Washington & Jefferson College’s Olin Fine Arts Center over the next couple of days, be very careful when and where you sneeze.

That’s because monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery of Tibet are there again, painstakingly creating an intricate and fragile sand mandala. One errant sneeze could erase hours of work.

They’ve previously visited the college in 2008 and 2011, spending much of their days laboring over a mandala, using colorful grains of sand to represent the palace of a deity. Though the hours spent on the mandala are long and one demands the most acute concentration, it will be swept away in a dissolution ceremony Friday, before the robe-wearing monks depart. The sand will be given to visitors, or deposited in a creek or stream near the campus.

Spending all that time on the mandala and then casting it to the four winds represents the impermanence of all things, said Geshe Phuntsho, a monk from Bhutan who is directing the monks’ tour.

“It represents one’s own life,” Phuntsho explained Tuesday morning. While some of the monks must deal with aching muscles and strained backs while working on the mandala, none is ever frustrated when it is swept into memory – it’s about creating a sacred space while they are at the college and illustrating the transitory nature of life.

Washington & Jefferson College has brought the monks to campus about once every four years to introduce a new group of students to them, according to Karen Oosterhous, a spokeswoman for W&J. “This brings the world to our campus,” she said. “It’s part of our mission to provide our students with these kinds of opportunities.”

The stop at W&J by the Tibetan monks is part of a weekslong tour that is going to take them through Pennsylvania and New Jersey, then down the East Coast into the American South. In addition to constructing the mandala, mingling with students and visiting classrooms, they are set to offer a free lecture at Olin’s theater, “World peace and the unity of all religions,” at 7 p.m. today. At 7:30 p.m. Thursday, they will perform a Tara Puja and tea offering rituals at Olin’s theater. The Tara Puja is carried out in Tibetan monasteries on a daily basis, invokes the Buddha of Compassion and involves chanting and musical instruments. A question-and-answer session will follow.

The Gaden Monastery was founded in 1409 in Tibet. Another monastery of the same name was established in India in 1966.

More information about the Gaden Shartse Monastery of Tibet can be found at www.sacredartsoftibettour.org. Additional information on the group’s visit to Washington & Jefferson College can be found at www.washjeff.edu or by calling 724-223-6546.

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