The Aya Fiber Studio at the Fish House Art Center is honored to be hosting the Drepung Monastery Monks Sacred Arts Tour June 12 – 17th. The Opening Ceremony takes place during the day on June 12th followed by a separate Evening Reception on the 12th at Marker 23 Gallery and Tattoo Studio. The Monks will be creating a sand mandala in the Gallery from the 12th through the 17th. There will be workshops at the Aya Fiber Studio during the week and a Cultural Pageant on the Saturday, June 16. On Sunday, June 17, the mandala will be dismantled at a Closing Ceremony that will bless our local waters. This will be an event that you will always remember! The Rickie Report shares the details and some sneak peeks.
Fish House Art Center
4745 SE DeSoto Ave., Port Salerno (Stuart)
The Tibetan Monks
of
Drepung Gomang Monastery
June 12 – 17th
OPENING CEREMONY:
TUESDAY, JUNE 12 12:30 PM
OPENING RECEPTION:
TUESDAY, JUNE 12 6:00 PM
STOP BY AND SEE THE MANDALA BEING CREATED!
WORKSHOPS THROUGHOUT THE WEEK
CLOSING CEREMONY:
SUNDAY, JUNE 17 1:30 PM
RSVP: 772.888.3827
Sacred Arts Tour
The monks of Drepung Gomang are sharing the compassion and wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism, to demonstrate the artistic accomplishments of the people of Tibet, and to generate funds to insure the survival of the Tibetan culture. Drepung Gomang Monastery uses all donations and proceeds from the sale of Tibetan crafts and jewelry to house, feed, and educate everyone wishing to study at this monastic center of higher learning, including orphans and refugees fleeing Chinese-occupied Tibet. The monastery is working to establish a Food Foundation Fund, which will help the monastery provide a continuous food supply to the student monks in years to come. Please remember and embrace that they are refugees from Tibet. After this year-long tour, they cannot return to their own country…they have a monastery in India that they will return to.
Stop by, Participate and Experience
Colored Sands
At the Opening Ceremony, the monks will chant powerful prayers for peace, prosperity, and healing in traditional overtones—the chant master intoning a full chord of three notes. Their chants will be accompanied by delicate hand gestures, cymbals, drums, horns, and flutes.
Drawing The Lines
What is a Mandala?
The Mandala, Tibetan sand painting, is an ancient art form of Tibetan Buddhism. The mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning cosmogram or “world in harmony.” Mandalas are drawings in three-dimensional forms of sand. In Tibetan, this art is called dul-tson-kyilkhor which means “mandala of colored powders.”
Sand painting is an ancient Tibetan art form. The sand mandala is carefully constructed from dyed sand particles to represent the particular esoteric, textual traditions of Buddhism. It is a transient art form, thought to have originated in India and been transferred in the middle ages to Tibet. The sand mandala is constructed as vehicle to generate compassion, realize the impermanence of reality, and a social/cosmic healing of the environment.
Chanting and Preparation
In Tibetan Buddhism, a mandala is an imaginary palace that is contemplated during meditation. Each object in the palace has significance, representing some aspect of wisdom or reminding the meditator of some guiding principle. Various scriptural texts dictate the shapes, forms, and colors of the mandala. There are many different mandalas, each with different lessons to teach and blessings to confer. Most mandalas contain a host of deities, symbolic archetypes of the landscape of the mind.
Among the Tibetan arts, painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite. Millions of grains of colored sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of several days, forming an intricate diagram of the enlightened mind and the ideal world. In ancient times, powdered precious and semi-precious gems were also used. When finished, to symbolize the impermanence of all that exists, the colored sands are swept up and poured into a nearby river or stream where the waters carry the healing energies throughout the world.
Using the colored sands
More About Mandalas
In general, all mandalas have outer, inner, and secret meaning. On the outer level they represent the world in its divine form; on the inner level, they represent a map by which the ordinary human mind is transformed into the enlightened mind; and on the secret level, they predict the primordially perfect balance of the subtle energies of the body and the clear light dimension of the mind. The creation of a sand painting is said to affect purification and healing on these three levels.
Creating the mandala
Every tantric system has its own mandala, and thus each one symbolizes an existential and spiritual approach. For example, that of Lord Avalokiteshvara symbolizes compassion as a central focus of the spiritual experience; that of Lord Manjushri takes wisdom as the central focus; and that of Vajrapani emphasizes the need for courage and strength in the quest for sacred knowledge. Medicine Buddha mandalas are created to generate powers of healing.
The creation of a sand mandala begins with an opening ceremony. Monks consecrate the site and call forth the forces of goodness through chanting mantras accompanied by flutes, drums and cymbals. The construction of the mandala begins with the drawing of the design on the base, or tek-pu. The artists measure out and draw the architectural lines using a straight-edged ruler, compass and ink pen.
Finishing the mandala
The mandala is a formal geometric pattern showing the floor plan of a sacred mansion. Once the diagram is drawn, in the following days you see millions of grains of colored sand painstakingly laid into place. The sand, colored with vegetable dyes or opaque tempera, is poured onto the mandala platform with a narrow metal funnel called a “chakpur” which is scraped by another metal rod to cause sufficient vibration for the grains of sand to trickle out of its end. The two “chakpurs” are said to symbolize the union of wisdom and compassion. The mandalas are created whenever a need for healing of the environment and living beings is felt.
The monks consider our present age to be one of great need in this respect, and therefore are creating these mandalas where requested throughout their world tours. When finished, to symbolize the impermanence of all that exists, the colored sands are swept up and poured into a nearby river or stream where the waters carry healing energies throughout the world.
Culinary Evening with the Monks
For more information:
For information about Drepung Gomang Monastery and their North American tour is available on their website: www.drepunggomang.org and www.gomang.org
For a Description of the ceremonies and setting up the site where the Mandala will be created:
http://www.gomang.org/mandala.html
For more details about these events, classes, upcoming workshops:
Contact Suzanne Connors at: (336) 693-4606
or visit:
Marker 23 Gallery & Tattoo Studio
For coverage of your events, to place an advertisement, or speak to Rickie about appearing in The Rickie Report, contact:
Rickie Leiter, Publisher
17019 SW Sapri Way Port St. Lucie, FL 34986
