Color This Peaceful : What do you get when you introduce Buddhist concepts to the MTV crowd? Puzzlement. And gratitude.

East is East--a cloistered Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the foothills of the Himalayas--and, in this case, West is Watts.

And the twain definitely have met.

It’s happening through August at the Watts Towers Arts Center, where four monks in scarlet and gold robes (Trojan colors, someone noted) are teaching Buddhist tenets of compassion, discipline and respect for all living things.

The vehicle: The mandala, the sacred sand “painting” that dates to 600 BC as an integral part of Buddhist teaching rituals.

In one room, the monks are creating their Wheel of Compassion mandala, a design as exquisite as fine embroidery.

Starting at the center of a circle, they draw a lotus flower with eight petals--homes of the deities of compassion.

Within them, they will “paint” blue thunderbolts (for strength), a yellow gem (for wish fulfillment), a wheel (for transporting ideas) and a sword (for cutting through ignorance).

Nearby, the youngsters are bent over their own mandala. In the center, they draw a peace symbol.

Within the petals they paint the names of their heroes: Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr. . . .

“Very creative,” says monk Champa Lhunpo, helping a young artist straighten an errant line with a wooden scraper, or shinga . Lhunpo knows about Malcolm and King, but who is this other name . . . Spike Lee?

“Imagine, if you can, two more diverse cultures,” says Barry Bryant, the program coordinator and founder of New York-based Samaya Foundation, whose mission is to bring Tibetan culture to Westerners.

Sheila Batiste, the Watts center’s education coordinator, puts it a bit more directly: “At first the kids thought the monks were a little weird.”

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The project, originally called “Healing Violence Through Art,” has traveled a rather bumpy road since it began Aug. 2. By consensus, its name was changed from the lofty “Healing Violence Through Art” to the more realistic “Healing the Causes of Violence Through Art.”

What do you get when you introduce Buddhist concepts to the MTV Generation? For one thing, puzzled looks. Tibet? Where’s that? Compassion? What’s that?

This is an inner-city pilot project for Samaya and, coming in, Bryant was a bit naive. Says Mark Greenfield, director of the Watts center, “You’re dealing with children who are desperate for attention” and will act out to get it. “He thought they’d all just fall in line.”

It took half a day just to establish order. Greenfield suggested a little Eastern meditation; it worked.

Still, the first day, 30 kids came; the next day, 15 returned. This is Watts. Transportation is a problem. Competing summer programs provide free lunch and, Greenfield says, “If that’s the only meal they get that day, they’re not going to give it up.”

On a given day, five or 60 may show up. The Carter kids--Melva, 14, Duncan, 11, and Haywood, 6--come every day. Melva has caught the spirit: “I took time out and just loved.”

So has Arnisha Duffey, 15: “I’m learning to do something that I’ve never done before.” He knows about violence: “I’ve had some gangbangers shootin’ at me.”

One day, about a dozen Probation Department kids are brought in. One, trying his hand, balks when told to fill in a square with red sand; his gang color is blue.

At the monks’ mandala, Tenzin Thokme explains the mandala’s function both as a teaching tool and as a collaborative exercise. Two other monks bend over the 6-foot-by-6-foot tabletop, filling in a pattern they’ve drawn with a silver Magic Marker.

This is not some exercise in unbridled creativity. The monks have spent four or five years memorizing the designs of some of the thousands of mandalas that initiate them into the teachings of Buddha.

The monks dip a chakpu , a cone-shaped funnel with a corrugated spine, into the cups of dyed sand and, resting it lightly in the palm, rasp it with a second funnel. The vibrations force the sand out the tip. The lines and circles are virtually faultless. In the event of a rare error, they place a cloth over the larger hole at the top of the chakpu and suck up the sand.

Two of the monks, Thupten Choephel and Tenzin Kalsang, came here from India. Lhunpo is from the Ithaca, N.Y., Institute of Buddhist Studies, a branch of the Dalai Lama’s home monastery, Namgyal, in Dharamsala, India. There, monks teach Tibetan Buddhism. Mandala-making is “sort of our part-time job.”

Thokme, 33, is at Santa Monica College, studying architecture, a skill he’ll need “when we get our country back.” He speaks of “our country” even though he has never lived in Tibet; in 1959, a Tibetan rebellion was crushed by Chinese troops, monasteries destroyed and Buddhism suppressed. The Dalai Lama and 100,000 Tibetans fled to India.

There, in 1973, artist and filmmaker Bryant first saw a mandala. Eager to introduce it to the West, he asked the Dalai Lama, who said “no, no, no.”

But, with growing Western interest in Buddhism, monastic secrets were being spilled--and misrepresentations spread. The Dalai Lama relented. Since 1988, the monks have done numerous exhibitions at museums and galleries. Indeed, there’s a cottage industry in postcards and calendars.

L.A.’s Cultural Affairs Department liked the Watts project and provided staffing plus $2,500 of the $40,000 to cover costs, including the monks’ housing and travel costs. The Flow Fund, a Rockefeller philanthropy, gave $20,000, and private donations helped.

Bryant’s still short, but money isn’t his only challenge. Right off, he found himself confronting “Buddhist speak” versus “Watts speak.” He spent a week with the monks “just talking to them about how to simplify this.”

When Bryant first asked the kids to name their protectors, “I got blank stares.” One boy said, “There’s nobody but me who’s going to protect me.” What about your dad? Bryant asked. The boy had never seen him.

One youngster drew in each of the lotus flower petals a small heart and R.I.P.; another, Jordan 33 (as in Michael). One kid suggested Michael Jackson as a protector; the others just laughed.

In the final week, the kids will make a circular 75-foot lawn mandala out of recycled objects. The lesson: Respect for nature.

Then, on Aug. 30, the last day, they’ll stage an original rap opera. Finally, the monks and their proteges, following Tibetan ritual, will dismantle the mandalas, sweep the sand into an urn and empty it into the sea.

This is closure, not destruction. The mandalas will have fulfilled their purposes. The deities will be asked to return to their celestial abodes. The consecrated sand will purify the water; the water will evaporate into the clouds and a cleansing rain will fall.

Although Batiste would have liked to see more focus on respect than on combatting violence, she thinks the project is valuable if only “to get some kids to have an attention span that lasts more than two seconds.”

And, she adds, “The kids probably have a better rapport with the monks than with any adult figure they’ve seen in a while.”

“It could be Santa Claus,” says Bryant, and they’d still be wary.

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These free workshops for ages 5 through 16 will continue from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays at Watts Towers Arts Center, 1727 E. 107th St. The public is welcome from noon to 4 p.m. Sundays.

* This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.