Sand Mandala’s Lesson of Impermanence gets a Head Start
Filed Under Buddhadharma | Posted on May 28, 2007
The little boy who trotted into Union Station behind his mother spotted the pretty pile of colored sand on the floor and couldn’t resist. Slipping under a protective rope, he danced all over the sand, ruining the carefully crafted picture.
Never mind that it was the creation of eight Tibetan monks who had spent two days cross-legged on the floor, meticulously pouring the sand into an intricate design as an expression of their Buddhist faith.
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Monks are bald, so they couldn’t rip their hair out. But were they angry? Did they curse?
No. They simply smiled and started over.
“No problem,” said Geshe Lobsang Sumdup, leader of the group from the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India.
“We didn’t get despondent,” he said Wednesday through a translator. “We have three days more. So we will have to work harder.”That the monks were able to shrug off their setback can be attributed to their religion.
“It teaches us that nothing is permanent,” said Staci Olsen, a volunteer at the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City.
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Lama Chuck Stanford of Kansas City’s Rime Center noted an upside of what most would view as a tragic event:
Well, by now I am sure you have heard about the obstacle the monks encountered after two full days of work on the sand mandala at Union Station. After the monks left Union Station on Tuesday evening, a small two year old boy who was unsupervised was attracted by the colorful sand mandala and thought it would be a good place to do a dance. Unfortunately he destroyed the monk’s two days of work. The good news is that we seemed to have turned lemons into lemonade. Three of the local TV stations along with the Kansas City Star (front page) covered the story. This morning I received calls from both the Associated Press who want to send the story out to newspapers across the country and I also received a call from ABC’s “Good Morning America” who plan to do a piece on it tomorrow [May 25] morning!
In fact, the publicity from the event went even farther. A Google News search on “Kansas City mandala” returns 4 pages worth of stories, from as far away as South Africa. With the exception of the idiotic comment from Paris Hilton, the news coverage provided powerful insight into the power of love and compassion which is epitomized by the construction of a sand mandala:
Although most people would have been furious, the Tibetan monks believe that if you want others to be happy, you should practice compassion.
Without anger or malice, they began rebuilding their sand.
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