Cultural Event #1: Sand Mandala

Life is not forever. We are on this earth for a relatively short period of time. Many of the things we do and see will never be done again the same way, or seen in the same light ever again. I think that many times people, including myself, take for granted the simple beauty that surrounds us every day. At Chico State University the Tibeten monk, Losang Samten, worked on the Kalachakra sand mandala to spread this message along with a message of peace.

I walked by the area where he was working not knowing what he was doing. Sitting cross legged for over a month, using the two rods that you see above to place colored sand onto a mate. Slowly but surely as time went on more and more people gathered around to look at what he was doing. The sand mandala was an amazing piece of art. Samten sat in the Bell Memorial Union at Chico State University almost every day for over a month. Grain by grain the blank mat slowly filled up with sand that became an unbelievable work of art. I could not begin to understand the amount of patients Samten must have to complete the piece of work.

 After completing the mandala, Samten along with other onlookers brushed the sand into the middle of the table and gathered it up in a jar. He led people to the ampitheater at Chico Creek. As he said a prayer he poured the sand into the rushing water. The act of doing this was almost disheartening because he worked so long and hard on the mandala, to see it just wash away was hard. However it had to be done to show how life is not permanent, and the things that we do and see are also not permanent.

The buddhist view of an impermanent world is one that I think should be seen more often. It is so easy to go through life not noticing or caring about the simple things around us that won't always be there. Like the sand mandala that Losang Samten made, our time here is not forever. However beautiful and perfect something might be, it may not always be around for us to enjoy.