Photos by worldhistory.org
The picture you see here is not a painting. It’s a mandala made from sand. In several cultures, a mandala is a geometrical configuration of symbols. It has many uses such as a spiritual guidance tool, focusing attention, essentials in sacred places, and aid for meditation. Each symbol in a mandala represents deities so the more complex geometry, the more deities are portrayed in a mandala.
In Tibetan Buddhism, there is a tradition of making mandalas by monks from colored sand and dismantling them after it’s done accompanying ceremonies and viewing. It usually takes more than one monk and several days or weeks to complete. A mandala is supposed to be a three-dimensional structure but flattened to be a two-dimensional picture. Its creation requires an immense amount of patience and cooperation. Therefore, the monks create a sand mandala to enlighten their minds.
Originally, the monks don’t use sand but instead, they use the crushed colored stone to create the mandala. In modern days, they create the mandala from plain white stones that have been ground down and dyed.
Placing the sand by hand would be difficult to achieve a highly detailed geometry. Hence, they use tools called chak-pur to apply the sand onto the mandala. It is a set of cone-shaped hollow tubes with ridges on the sides and various diameter holes at the end to achieve certain narrow lines. In order to drop the sand slowly, they use a piece of wood to tap the chak-pur or rub the ridges smoothly.
Sand mandalas are believed can transmit positive energies to the environment and people who see them. After the sand mandalas are completed, used in ceremonies, and public viewing is over, the monk will destroy them with another ceremony. Its destruction is done by sweeping the sand to the side in a certain order. This beautiful work of art is dismantled to signify impermanence. It represents that nothing lasts forever and everything in life is in constant change. Then, the sand is sometimes also thrown into a river so it will spread far away.
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