Ancient Rite : Tibetan Monks Labor 6 Weeks on Artwork, Then Destroy It

For six weeks, the Buddhist monks at the Natural History Museum labored over their multicolored sand mandala, painting it, molding it, sifting the fine grains into a dazzling representation of the legendary “Wheel of Time.”

On Thursday, they destroyed it.

Closing out a demonstration of a 2,500-year-old religious rite, four Tibetan monks from the Dalai Lama’s Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India, swept up the sand, poured it into a glass vase and headed for Santa Monica Bay.

There, after chanting prayers, they offered their project as a blessing to marine life by dumping it into the Pacific Ocean.

Spiritual Empowerment

The ceremony--a ritual of spiritual empowerment and tranquility said to have been first taught by Buddha himself in 600 BC--marked only the second time the crafting of the “Kalachakra,” or “Wheel of Time,” has been witnessed in the United States.

But Los Angeles is only the first leg of a nationwide tour in which the monks will perform the ceremony. More than 500 people jammed the museum Thursday morning to watch them add the finishing touches to the wheel, which was seven feet in diameter, and then destroy it.

“We are very glad to bring a precious and ancient tradition to the people here in the United States,” said the Venerable Tenzin Yignyen, one of the four monks, as he stood on Santa Monica Beach. “We are happy they can see this.”

Resides at Center

According to the monks’ beliefs, the “Kalachakra” mandala houses 722 deities, each a facet of the major Kalachakra deity who resides at the center of the wheel. The monks start each day of painting and sculpting with a prayer of purification to the deities they believe live within their artwork and continually beckon to them as they sculpt the mandala.

The art of fashioning the “Wheel of Time” was introduced to Yignyen’s native Tibet in the 11th Century, and it has been transferred from Buddhist teachers to their students ever since.

When conducted at the India

temple, the ceremony is performed in May in conjunction with the third month of the lunar calendar, said Barry Bryant, the artistic director of a New York foundation that helped sponsor the demonstration.

Bryant said the tradition has teetered on the brink of eradication since China invaded Tibet in 1959.

“It’s very important that their culture--which is in jeopardy--is accessible to the American public,” Bryant said. “The tradition survives only in (the Namgyal Monastery). In Tibet, they are forbidden to practice this.”

The monks began the project on July 6 in the museum’s North American Mammal Hall. They used between two and three quarts of crushed limestone to create the disk, Bryant said.

While the purpose of the ritual was lost on some who watched the monks destroy the mandala, many said they viewed the ceremony as the monks did--as a warning against developing attachments to temporal possessions.

‘Good Lessons’

“I’m attracted by the idea of impermanence,” said Dick Smith, 45, of Los Angeles. “I think there are good lessons in this for us Westerners. We are awfully attached to our belongings.”

Dr. Randall Roffe, a chiropractor from Florida who said he spent much of his childhood in the Orient, said the ceremony would leave a lasting impression in the minds of many witnesses.

“This is a very beautiful way of expressing that beauty and truth--although impermanent--do have lasting impressions,” said Roffe, who attended the ceremony with his girlfriend. “What artistic expression is there that won’t ultimately be destroyed? The impermanence of the artwork is what deepens their message: It’s not destroyed, it’s form is just changed.”

Not everyone gleaned spiritual insight from the rites.

A regular during the six-week ceremony, Tammee Bauguess gasped in shock as she watched the monks remorselessly sweep their project into the vase.

“I can’t believe it,” said the woman, who works in a gift shop in the museum. “I didn’t realize it was going to be piled up and thrown into a jar. I thought they’d take it down to the beach (intact) and dump it. This seems futile.”

Hard to Do

Jodie Fritsche, who works with Bauguess and accompanied her to the ceremony, said destroying the sand mandala “would have been real hard for me to do after I’d been working on it for six weeks.”

Maintaining that the time spent on the mandala contributed to the beauty of its dismantling, Roffe said demonstrations such as Thursday’s have compelled him to leave Florida for Los Angeles.

Explained Roffe: “I’ll probably move here because these sorts of activities go on more in Los Angeles than in most parts of the world.”