Mandala Marks Asian Heritage Month

Four Tibetan monks are spending 10 hours a day hunched over a 4-by-4-foot wooden crate as they meticulously create from sand a colorful religious symbol called a mandala at Cal State Fullerton.

One of the artists, Losang Tsultrim, said the work that goes into making the mandala, the opening and closing ceremonies dedicated to it and its destruction symbolize the impermanence of life. A mandala is a work of geometric designs containing images of gods and symbolizing the universe.

“A lot of time and effort will go into this beautiful mandala,” said Tsultrim, 29, who was born in Tibet, became a monk when he was 7 and fled to India in 1985. “At the end, like all things in life, it will be dissolved.”

The artists began work Monday after a chanting ceremony in which about a dozen Buddhist monks performed healing rituals.

“The ceremony is to remove all those obstacles and negative factors in people’s lives,” said Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen, director of Thubten Dhargye Ling Center in Long Beach, where he teaches Buddhism and the Tibetan culture.

The finished artwork will be a blueprint of the palace of the Medicine Buddha, who represents physical and mental health. It is expected to be completed Thursday.

Before 1959, when Chinese forces put down a Tibetan uprising and drove the Dalai Lama into exile in India, mandalas were made of ground gems such as diamonds, rubies and sapphires, said Lobsang Wangchuk, another monk.

The mandala at Cal State Fullerton marks the beginning of Asian Pacific Heritage Month and the end of a world tour by monks of the Ganden Shartse Monastery. During the past year, the monks visited colleges, churches and museums. Wangchuk said the monks are trying to raise awareness of the Tibetan culture and China’s repression of the country, and to raise money for their monastery in Karnataka in southern India.

Friday, the mandala will be swept up during a closing ceremony, and the sand will be distributed as a health offering, Wangchuk said.

“This represents the highest form of expression in spiritual art,” said Nawang Phuntsog, an assistant professor of education at Cal State.

The public is invited to view the mandala in progress today through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and the closing ceremony at noon Friday. The university is at 800 State College Blvd.