ephemeral existence
"An Architecture of Enlightenment"... 
a sand mandala, created painstakingly out of millions of grains of coloured sand, poured grain by grain over a four-day period by the Drepung Loseling monks.
they started on monday.. they'd just begun with the inner circle.. couldn't see them on tuesday.. went to sneak a peek on wednesday and this is what they'd progressed to!!
I returned to (an absolutely packed) gallery today, for the closing ceremony.. the chantings and instruments took me back home.. made me yearn for the ceremonies that I had, once upon a time, rejected as archaic and backwards... the gongs, drums, flutes... the guttaral chantings... the deep bass that reverberates into your chest and resonates with your heartbeat.. there's something there for sure! Need to explore that thought and feeling some more...... but I digress...
The closing ceremony ... there were all the chantings and prayers and then the senior monk took a brush and just brushed away the sand mandala. didn't even flinch! ouch! damn! ... he calmly, single handedly (brushedly??), swept up four days of meticulous and agonisingly delicate labor.
What does that mean?
beauty is evanescent?
life is fleeting?
don't cling to it, don't worship it?
all you retain are the memories...
coz everything else withers and dies or is swept away?
a sand mandala, created painstakingly out of millions of grains of coloured sand, poured grain by grain over a four-day period by the Drepung Loseling monks. they started on monday.. they'd just begun with the inner circle.. couldn't see them on tuesday.. went to sneak a peek on wednesday and this is what they'd progressed to!!
I returned to (an absolutely packed) gallery today, for the closing ceremony.. the chantings and instruments took me back home.. made me yearn for the ceremonies that I had, once upon a time, rejected as archaic and backwards... the gongs, drums, flutes... the guttaral chantings... the deep bass that reverberates into your chest and resonates with your heartbeat.. there's something there for sure! Need to explore that thought and feeling some more...... but I digress...
The closing ceremony ... there were all the chantings and prayers and then the senior monk took a brush and just brushed away the sand mandala. didn't even flinch! ouch! damn! ... he calmly, single handedly (brushedly??), swept up four days of meticulous and agonisingly delicate labor.
What does that mean?
beauty is evanescent?
life is fleeting?
don't cling to it, don't worship it?
all you retain are the memories...
coz everything else withers and dies or is swept away?
posted by anuj at 6:02 PM. permalink
1 comments - Comment On This Post
1 Comments:
Wow.
Were you physically there? It was near here? Did you go alone? Do you have more pictures?
Beauty is as beauty does? There are at least three objects of beauty I discern: the painstaking attention over four days, the product, its erasure. I imagine there was a hush with a quality you could feel among the crowd when the senior monk brushed it away . . .
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Steph, at
Tue Nov 22, 10:59:00 PM EST
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