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Faculty, Staff and Students Welcome to Learn from Tibetan Monks


A mandala will be created at MCC as part of a co-curricular program integrated into an academic course. Students, faculty, staff and the general public will have the opportunity to experience the creation of a mandala, as 11 Tibetan monks create “Akshobhya, the Unshakable Victor for Conflict Resolution and Peace.”

The monks also will teach students in a Humanities honors course, The Nature of Experience, and members of the Campus Activities Board student organization, to create a smaller mandala intended to promote focus and harmony. The entire MCC community is invited to participate.

Monday, Feb. 27 - noon to 8 p.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 28 - 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Wednesday, March 1 - 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

MCC Forum, Room 130, Building 3
Flynn Campus Center

Imagine spending 30 hours rasping a metal rod onto a metal funnel to release a thin stream of colored sand, perfectly placed in a line design about 16 square feet that takes another painstaking three hours to draw. Upon completion, these millions of grains of sand are whisked into a heap and discarded into a flowing body of water.

Why bother? Because the very nature of its impermanence is the reason for its creation. Its destruction symbolizes the impermanence of life itself.

“In our society, we lose more than we gain in a multi-tasking, fast-paced life,” says Kathleen O’Shea, who co-teaches the Humanities course. Adds colleague Cathryn Smith, “All we have is now. The mandala offers us the ability to be present to something that is about the creation rather than the product.”

During the process, O’Shea and Smith suggest that visitors remain “present to the senses.” Watching each fine grain of sand drop to the tekpu (base on which the mandala is created); hearing the tick-tick of the chak-pur metal funnel; feeling the monks’ every rhythmic breath of air.

The monks are members of Drepung Loseling Monastery. It was originally established in 1416 in Tibet to preserve and transmit the ancient Buddhist arts and sciences, and shortly after the Chinese communist invasion of Tibet in 1959, re-established in exile in southern India. Monks participate in the Mystical Arts of Tibet (the name of the touring group that creates sand paintings and performs the Sacred Music Sacred Dance) in the hope of making a contribution toward world peace and toward greater awareness of the Tibetan situation.

The MCC event will include an opening ceremony (Monday at noon) at which time lamas will consecrate the site and call forth the forces of goodness; during the closing ceremony (Wednesday at 4 p.m.) the sand will be swept into an urn and deposited in the Genesee River near MCC to disperse the healing energies of the mandala throughout the world.

Jodi Oriel
Campus Center
02/13/2006


Attachments:
icon mandela sand monk ver 2.pdf