This was the first week where I came very close to missing an Artist Date. I have been in the house nursing a cold, and I had been summoned for jury duty in downtown Phoenix. But since I did not have to report back to the courts on Friday, I got out of the house and went down to the Scottsdale Center for Performing Arts to see the Drepung Loseling monks of Tibet. These ten monks are in town for the Mystical Arts of Tibet tour, which is co-produced by actor and Buddhist Richard Gere.
I attended their free lecture on Friday afternoon titled, “From Confusion to Enlightenment: Steps in Inner Evolution.” The audience laughed with their depiction of confussion by showing a picture of George W. Bush.
Then I spent some time watching four monks work on building a sand mandala which is located in the lobby. Formed of a traditional prescribed iconography that includes geometric shapes and a multitude of ancient spiritual symbols, the sand-painted mandala is used as a tool for re-consecrating the earth and its inhabitants.
The monks will painstakingly lay millions of grains of sand into place on a flat platform over the four days here in Scottsdale.
The closing ceremony is on Sunday, and the monks will dismantle the mandala, sweeping up the colored sands to symbolize the impermanecne of all that exists.
In the lobby there is also a community manadala which everyone is invited to work on for as long as you like. There is someone there to teach you how to use the tools to paint the manadala with sand. This practice of mandala painting helps you "live in the now," and get out of your monkey mind that is always thinking and chatting with itself. I spent a little time coloring in the mandala myself. It does take concentration and patience, and it does help you drop your monkey mind.
We can never obtain peace in the outer
world until we make peace with ourselves.
DALAI LAMA
