Calabasas : Mandala Ceremony Caps Lesson in Peace

Nelson, a 16-year-old incarcerated at a youth detention center in Calabasas, believes he has found a way to break the cycle of failure that has been his life. And he says he owes it all to kindly Tibetan monks.

With the monks looking on, he stood on a pier above the surf in Malibu on Thursday, scattering the contents of an urn into the wind. A greenish plume was all that remained of a brilliant, multicolored sand painting, or “mandala,” created by Nelson and other boys at Camp David Gonzales.

The mandala, which had adorned a table at the detention center, took weeks of painstaking work to create. But on Thursday, in an elaborate ceremony, Nelson and the other boys destroyed the painting, sweeping it off the table and into the urn.

The making of mandalas and their deliberate destruction are designed to teach patience, the monks said. But patience is in short supply among the youthful inmates of Camp David Gonzales.

The monks have come to the center regularly for the past month in an experiment designed to help the boys break free of the cycle of crime and violence and find inner peace.

Gloria Newell, principal of a school at the camp, says the program seems to be working. “I’ve been checking, and I don’t see any discipline problems among any of the children in this class,” she said.

The scattered sand, the monks said, will be carried on the tide to bring peace to people in faraway lands. Nelson and about a dozen boys who were allowed to attend the ceremony at the pier were sad to see their work destroyed. But they were also happy that the sand might bring happiness to others, he said.

“It’s like making a wish, and my wish is to be peaceful,” Nelson said.