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Artwork Like A Castle Made Of Sand

Tribune photo by KLINT LOWRY

Lama Konchok Gyaltsen makes a slight adjustment to the sand he just set down on the mandala being created at the Pasco-Hernando Community College West Campus Conference Center.

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By KLINT LOWRY

The Suncoast News

Published: November 21, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY - This week, west Pasco has been offered a glimpse of an ancient culture and its art and religion.

Tibetan Buddhist teachers, called Lamas, were in the lobby of the Pasco-Hernando Community College West Campus Conference Center creating a sand image as part of the college's Peace Week activities.

The lamas made a colorful 5-foot-wide image, known as a mandala, entirely from colored sand.

Three monks spent 10 days slowly, precisely crafting the image, using traditional tools and putting in about 300 man-hours.

"There are many levels of interest here," said PHCC Professor Michael Sadusky, who teaches psychology and religious studies and sponsored the event. "You can be interested in it as a religious symbol. You can be interested in it as a piece of art.

"For many people this is a once-in-a-lifetime activity," Sadusky said of the opportunity to see a sand mandala being made. "I've had students come over and just sit for an hour watching this."

Today, the ritual concludes at 5:30 p.m., when the monks with help from spectators, will wipe out the mandala, taking turns swiping the sand with their hands. Small, portions of the sand will be given to participants, and the rest will be poured into a nearby stream.

This is the last symbolic gesture to a practice that is filled with symbolism.

The monks are from the Ratnashri Sangha of Tampa Bay, which follows the Kaygu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.

Drupon Thinley Ningpo Rinpoche, who spent the first 40 years of his life in Tibet and is now the spiritual director of Ratnashri Sangha of Tampa Bay, led the project with Lama Konchok Gyatsen, a fellow Tibetan, with Venerable Konchok Shenpen assisting.

Sand mandalas are part of a centuries-old Buddhist ceremony in Tibet.

"It comes from the Buddha," Ningpo said. "Basically the same design every time, slightly different interpretation."

There are several symbolic elements to the design of a mandala. In one sense, it can be looked at as a blueprint of a residence for a deity. The word mandala is Sanskrit for "mansion." Other definitions include "circle" or "completion," and their design is meant to be an interpretive representation of the universe, often used in meditation.

"It's something that, especially in Tibet, is passed down, teacher to student, so it comes down from an unbroken lineage of masters," said Shenpen, a young American student of Ningpo, who worked on his first sand mandala. "That's how it maintains its integrity and how the design stays the same."

It's the same, but with slight interpretive differences every time, Ningpo explained.

It is often a shock to Western sensibilities to see such a carefully crafted piece of artwork destroyed right after it is finished. But that's the purpose, to symbolize the impermanence of all things in this world.

"That's why I wouldn't make a good Buddhist," said Sadusky, who saw a similar demonstration last year at the St. Petersburg Art Museum and decided this was the kind of cultural experience PHCC should have.

"I'm not trying to turn anybody here into a good little Buddhist or anything like that," Sadusky said.

Instead, Sadusky said: "We are very interested in diversity and exposing ourselves and our students to other cultures, and other religions, and other groups and ways of thinking. That's what the college is all about. What a marvelous example of cultural, ethnic religious diversity this is."

TODAY'S EVENTS

WHERE: 10230 Ridge Road, New Port Richey

FOR INFORMATION: Call (727) 847-2727

8 a.m. in R151: Mandala on display

9 a.m. in G110: "The Mantra of the Buddha of Compassion," talk by Richard Weissman

10 a.m. in G110: "Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Global Warming," Paul Mayer, chemistry instructor

11:30 a.m. in G110: "The International Crisis in the Use of Child Soldiers: Defining the Problem, Seeking Solutions," David Smith, senior program officer in United States Institute of Peace's Education and Training Center, Domestic Programs

3:30 p.m., location TBA: Teaching on the sand mandala

5:30 p.m. in R151: Dissolution of the mandala

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