"Nothing is permanent in life, and you don't know what will happen moment-to-moment."

"It will spread to other parts of the world and bring peace. It is not just for us to enjoy."

Learn more about the Tibetan Center in Chicago.

Magazine
Summer/Fall 2001

Beauty, However Fleeting...

Art Howe '82 remembers how tough second semester can be at Wabash, when students feel both the stirrings of spring and the pressures of nearing finals. The Chicago attorney hoped to offer a respite, and some insight, through connections he and his wife, Susan, have nurtured with that city's Tibetan Center.

So for five days in April, hundreds of students, faculty, and townsfolk witnessed the creation of a sand mandala by a senior Buddhist monk from the Dalai Lama's Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India. Surrounded by the sounds of Tibetan music, the tinging of prayer bells, or a restful silence, visitors watched intently as the Venerable Ngawang Chojor lightly rubbed metal chaqpurs together to draw the fine lines of the mandala with colored sand.

"Making the mandala is a form of meditation for the monk, who must sit all day and concentrate," Tashi Puri of the Tibetan Center explained. "It acts as meditation for the viewers as well."

The monk finished the mandala after almost 52 hours, and on Friday afternoon a capacity crowd pressed into the College's Permanent Collection Gallery to witness a celebration of the impermanent nature of art.

"Nothing is permanent in life, and you don't know what will happen moment-to-moment," Puri explained. "That's what this ceremony is about: the artwork is beautiful, but it's the discipline and enlightenment that's important, not the art itself."

Chimes rang, the monk chanted, and the past 52 hours of creation were swept into an urn. That sand was spread over the waters of Sugar Creek moments later.

"It will spread to other parts of the world and bring peace," the monk explained. "It is not just for us to enjoy."

Professor David Blix '71, given the honor of placing a prayer cloth over the monk during the ceremony, said student time with the monk was an extraordinary learning experience. The dismantling ceremony's dramatic demonstration of beauty's ephemeral nature had been difficult for some to watch, Blix said: "It was really very moving."

Religion professor Hall Peebles, who has traveled extensively to religious shrines in Asia, said he'd never witnessed such a ceremony.

"It's funny, but I've traveled to China several times, and to Tibet, but to see a mandala created and dismantled, I had to come to Wabash."

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