A friend once told me when monks had completed a mandala and left, the friend placed polyurethane over it to keep it. hahahaha. Still has it, the friend says.
________________________________ From: authfriend <jst...@panix.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wed, 2 June, 2010 11:34:49 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Impermanence CNN has a two-minute time-lapse video of a group of monks creating a sand mandala symbolically representing Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of Compassion, at Emory University in Atlanta: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/02/a-mandala-in-minutes http://tinyurl.com/2ecnmvg Took the four monks six days of exacting work to make the mandala. Then, as per the standard ritual, they swept all the sand up, handing half of it out to the folks who had assembled to watch as a blessing for health and healing, then dumping the rest in a nearby river as a gift to Mother Earth. After I read the story and watched the video, I had the haunting sense that it vaguely reminded me of something, something that had taken place very recently. I finally realized what was resonating. The monks sweep away this spectacularly glorious work of art when it's finished, willfully destroying what they've so painstakingly created, to symbolize the impermanence of life. It's a kind of suicide.
