Sand and spirit A journey of the soul

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There are all kinds of journeys in life.

The simple ones – driving to the grocery store, picking up children at school – are uncomplicated and transient.

But quests for peace, forgiveness, understanding – journeys of the soul – do not come quite as easily.

A journey of an exceptional kind took place this week on a big blue box under a spotlight in the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville.

Losang Samten, a former monk in the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, created a sacred sand mandala: a piece of art built by layering colored sand, sometimes quickly in large sprinklings and sometimes agonizingly slowly, grain by grain.

The amazing and spiritual conclusion to creation of a mandala is the often-questioned practice of its dismantling. After weeks of work, when the mandala is completed, the sand is carefully swept into a container and poured into nearby waters.

The idea is to return the design to the earth – to which it was dedicated.

“Many people say, ‘This artist Losang is so crazy to be working two to three weeks on a mandala and then remove it,'” Samten said this week. “I try to explain it like a holiday cake. It is not just the creation of the cake that is special. It is the eating – the dismantling – that is important as well.”

It is this process that Samten calls a spiritual journey.

“It teaches us that it is very important to let things go. There are difficulties in life, but we need to release, to detach. And through letting go, we find peace, understanding, even empowerment.”

The sacred art of sand painting was taught to Samten at the Nam Gyal monastery in India, the personal monastery of the Dalai Lama, and Samten was the first to demonstrate the art publicly. That was in 1988 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Since then he has created dozens of mandalas at colleges, universities and museums across the country.

Wrapped in a coarse brown robe, sipping tea from a handleless cup, Samten, 53, likened the creation of the mandala to a physical reminder of what is in our hearts.

“We need to let go, don’t hold on too much and move on to a new chapter,” he said, “especially for the negative emotions like anger and hatred. Life is too short.”

Samten’s own journey began with his family’s flight from Tibet when he was 5 years old. The People’s Republic of China annexed Tibet, a Himalayan kingdom, in the 1950s.

Running for their lives from Chinese invaders, Samten, his parents and his sister, walked for two months over the Himalayan mountains to freedom in neighboring Nepal. There they were joined by other refugee families, and the trek continued to India.

“Those memories are still so alive in my mind,” he said. He quietly recalled leaving his brothers behind – one would later die in prison – sharing but a single piece of bread for the whole family, and the hardship of the journey.

“Anywhere in the world, when they talk about refugees, I truly know what that means,” he said.

When he entered the Indian monastery as a young man, even though the monks had nothing, Samten discovered the bounty of the spiritual. “It was so rich, so wonderful, so meaningful,” he said. “I met such wonderful teachers.”

The monastery is like a great university, he said. “We were taught everything, how to cook, how to dance, make music and art.” He learned philosophy, his life’s study, and watched carefully as a mandala was created in the monastery each year as a spiritual event.

Samten became an expert at creating them, so he made the difficult decision to leave the monastery and come to the United States to share his gift.

“Everyone has a contribution to make to this world. This is what I know and what I can teach. With each mandala, I can make a change. It is so important to let go, to get rid of anger, to find peace,” he said.

“The lessons of the mandala are simplicity: Seek the good quality of life rather than the quality of things,” Samten said.

“Look around this country. You have so many things. In school at the monastery, we shared one piece of bread and one cup of tea for four or five students. My wish is that we would all learn to care for each other dearly, that the mandala would teach us to let go and be free.”

Colby’s mandala removal ceremony will take place at 2 p.m. today at the Colby College Museum of Art, 5600 Mayflower Hill Drive, Waterville. The museum’s regular hours on Saturday are 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Call 872-3228.

Making a mandala

The mandala process begins with a prayer offered to the four directions from each side of the mandala table – the east, west, north and south. Sitting ramrod straight, his hands pressed together in front of his chest, Losang Samten chants in a low voice, hoping the mandala and his work will be blessed.

He begins the design by carefully sketching the outline in pencil. There are hundreds of mandala designs, each for a different purpose, and Samten constructs each one from memory. He then lines up small metal cups filled with colored sand.

The sand is brought from India each year, created by grinding soft rocks he collects by a hot spring in northern India and coloring them with watercolors. He says he can carry enough in a small suitcase to complete a dozen mandalas.

He uses two metal cones, each about 12 inches long, with two different sized holes at the small end. Each cone has a ribbed section on its back. The sand is scooped into the cone and then, by running the second cone back and forth across the ribs, the sand is propelled out in a small stream.

He can control the volume of sand and the speed with which it flows by slowing or quickening the rasping movement.

Each color represents an element: red is fire, green is air, blue is space, white is water.

“The colors also represent bone, feeling, perception, formation, consciousness and the senses. The colors are also an antidote for the emotions of anger, hatred, jealousy, attachment, ignorance,” he says.

He begins in the center and works outward and in layers.

First he carefully places a layer of light blue sand in a circle about the size of a saucer. He then pours an intricate design on top of the blue field with a darker tone, almost teal. Small white mounds come next and are outlined in tiny lines of gray and cream. This becomes the center of a lotus flower which will grace the design.

“This is the design of compassion,” he says. “The flower will open up and release all negative feelings.”

He closes each session of painting with another prayer. When the mandala is completed, he conducts the dismantling ceremony, which involves praying, removing the sand and returning it to the earth.