Monk Creates Sand Mandala

Seated against the panorama of the Missouri River Valley behind the wall of glass at the University of Mary, the Venerable Ngawang Chojor delicately rasped together a pair of narrow iron funnels.

Rasping the ridges on the top of the chakpur, as the funnel is called, causes the sand inside them to vibrate and pour.

From a miniscule opening in the bottom of the chakpur trickled a thin stream of crushed marble the consistency of the finest sand. A multicolored sand mandala — Sanskrit for “circle” — was taking shape under the tip of the cone, this one a collection of symbols of the Buddha of Compassion.

In the quiet, the rasping of the chakpur might have been the crickets or grasshoppers in the riverbottoms below, signaling autumn. Students and visitors were invited to ask questions of the Tibetan Buddhist monk creating the mandala, but watching the sand stream out in intricate designs seemed to hush the watchers.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that to witness a mandala being created fosters purification and healing within the watcher.

This mandala, outlined as a thin etching on a blue wooden board, will bloom with the symbols of the Buddha of Compassion — a lotus in the center, surrounded by eight lotus petals and colors of the four cardinal directions was part of the first day’s work. Ven. Chojor dipped the chakpur into the containers of sand — blue, rose, pink, yellow, white, green, black — and worked like a moving hourglass to fill in each space in the mandala with background and a delicate filigree of dots, branches and petals.

Ven. Chojor is very exacting; the goal of the construction is to be as perfect as possible, said Karma Tensum, the monk’s translator.

“Everything has a plan, a meaning and a story,” he said of the symbols covering the mandala.

Over four days, Ven. Chojor will work from about 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Thursday, and then complete the mandala on Friday morning.

Strange to the Western mind, Karma Tensum said sand mandalas are dismantled, swept up and undone after they are finished, to emphasize the impermanence of life.

For centuries, Tibetan mandalas were seen exclusively by the monks and nuns of Buddhist monasteries. In 1988, however, the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, decreed that a mandalas be constructed for the public to witness.

Ven. Chojor is a senior monk from Namgyal Monastery, home of the Dalai Lama, now living in Madison, Wis. Karma Tensum accompanies the Ven. Chojor on his travels as translator and also is the founder the The Tibetan Children’s Education Foundation, founded in 1995 for the preservation of Tibetan culture by supporting Tibetan schools and school children in exile from their homeland.

A convocation is planned at 11 a.m. Thursday by Karma Tensum on the plight of Tibetan people under Chinese rule, “Challenges of Tibetan Cultural Survival,” in Heskett Hall on campus.

The creation of a sand mandala begins with a consecration ceremony; during the time Ven. Chojor is working on the mandala, visitors are welcome to sit and watch, take photos, and ask questions.

After the completion of the mandala, at about noon on Friday, the sands so exactingly placed will be swept up and undone; sand will be distributed to those who want it.

Blue “mandala” signs on campus will direct visitors toward Chick’s Place on campus, which is adjacent to the Leach Fieldhouse. A grant from the North Dakota Humanities Council is supporting the visit.