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Today I went out to Terrey Hills in Sydney where I saw the 'art' of Sand Mandala. Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning circle, community or connection. In Tibetan Buddhism, a mandala is an imagined palace that is contemplated during meditation. It is a symbol of a perfect world and its energy; a representation of an enlightened being's place of residence and everything contained within it.

The mandala is constructed on a hard flat surface using copper funnels filled with various colours of dyed crushed marble. With extraordinary concentration and patience, the monks delicately pour the sand onto the board to create an intricate design. Each object of the mandala has significance, representing some aspect of wisdom, or reminding the meditator of some guiding principle or state of mind that he is trying to accomplish.

Here are some pics from this morning:

One of the friendly Monks:


Concentration and detail:


Up to four Monks can work on this at a time. The most we saw were three:


The product when I left it:


What else I found intriguing was that when it is completed. The whole beautiful creation is swept away in a matter of seconds. The dissolution of the mandala symbolizes the impermanence of all phenomena. After all the effort, time and concentration put into creating the mandala, the dissolution teaches that things undergo change, and helps us to let go of our grasping to a sense of permanence.

Hope u enjoyed

An interesting documentary series, Geoff, very nice. Really enjoyed reading the accompanying explanation too.

How intriguing. The colours in all the shots are brilliant. At least what you've captured, won't be swept away.

Nice work Geoff

Nice story telling images. Well done.

Alex

Geoff, I hope you don't mind me adding to your thread.
Here is a finished mandala made by the Gyuto Tibetan Monks when they were in Hobart last year.
They took about 8 days to make this and a simple disolution ceremony at the end of their stay.




Cheers
John

John - don't mind at all, sure is incredible!! Thanks for sharing.

Here is a picture of a similar one BigV took when the monks came up here (I think they were the same monks - on a tour of Australia). We saw them a couple of times and they were excellent. When they make a mistake they put a cloth over the end of the tube and suck it up.
We went to the dissolution ceremony and it was very interesting - they gave us all a small package of sand to keep. Apparently they have to learn the mandalas off by heart.

Fascinating - thanks for sharing that!

On which note, is anybody here up for a challenge to spend 8 hours setting up a photo, submitting it here and having it hosted for (say) an hour, then getting the Admins to remove the thread while we delete the photo from all storage media?

Yeah... thought not! Me either, to be honest

That is a cool idea, lets do it..
Here is the one they did at Renmark..

Here's mine...

National Folk Festival, Canberra, 2005

Those monks sure get around...