With the wisp of a brush, the intricate layers of the colorful sand design called a mandala, which took days to carefully create, was swept into a pile.
Ritualistically, the Tibetan Buddhist monks had spent hours each day of last week at the Hopkinton Town Library adding layer after layer of sand to the mandala. Once the design was complete, the community was invited to its ceremonial dismantling on Sunday, which was faster than the construction but equally as important.
The creation and ceremonial destruction of the mandala are meant to symbolize the delicate and temporary aspects of life itself. But for those unfamiliar with this philosophy, watching a colorful, detailed work of art change into a pile of sand can be a little disconcerting.
“A lot of people don’t like that,” said Lisa Garside, who’s hosting the seven monks at her home in Contoocook. “It just looks so different, so artists get a little upset. It’s about impermanence, so they have to show they put in 100 percent work doing it, and they are not attached to the results or what happens to it after. They don’t even keep any of the sand; they give it all away.”
The monks, from the Drepung Gomang Monastery, are here as part of a Sacred Art Tour, intended to introduce Tibetan culture, traditions and religion in the United States. The tour is also a way of raising funds for the monastery for the thousands of monks living in exile in India.
During Sunday’s ceremony, with rhythmic chanting from the monks, Geshe Ngawang Damcho used a brush in a fanning motion to sweep the sand to the center of the design, where community members were allowed to take spoonfuls home in plastic bags.
After the Hopkinton mandala was dismantled, it was ritualistically spread into the nearby Contoocook River. Now, the monks will spend this week creating a new mandala at St. Paul’s School.
On Thursday, the monks will host a free public demonstration at 6:30 p.m. at the Raffini Commons at St. Paul’s, in which they will work on the mandala, give a chanting demonstration and discuss the role of Dharma within Buddhism.
As their host, Garside has gotten an inside look at these unique customs and colors. Once, she had a career in mutual funds, but 15 years ago, after her 1-year-old son nearly died from an auto-immune blood disorder, she rearranged her priorities and gained a new perspective on life.
Garside left the corporate world and opened a yoga studio, and in 2012 brought her children to Canterbury to hear the monks chant and see their artwork.
“We just loved them, so I decided I wanted to go to their monastery in India,” Garside said. “I taught them English twice a day. It was life-changing.”
She hosted them five years ago and she’s doing it again this month. This has given Garside a birdseye view of how monks work together in her kitchen, which, full of activity, gets pretty crowded come dinner time.
“They search your cabinets for any pan possible, and they just go to town,” Garside said. “Every pan I own, even in the attic, was out, and they clean up really, really quickly.
“It’s been five years, and they’re back now, so that’s very exciting.”