At the core of any Buddhist tradition is the philosophy that life is impermanent. One day, everything in existence will end, and for that reason, everything in that existence is sacred.
So, too, was that philosophy at the core of the final event held by six Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery during their Compassion Way Durango tour on Friday. The goal of the visit was to share their culture and philosophy with the community and to raise funds for a new school back in Southern India, before they left for the next stop on their journey – this time in Joshua Tree, California.
The monks had come 10 days prior, and for all that time had been working doggedly to create an intricate sand mandala – the physical manifestation of a prayer of compassion for the well-being of all sentient things.
Some 50 community members stood shoulder to shoulder to witness the final blessing of the mandala by the monks before they poured the vibrant, consecrated sand into the Animas River.
Ahead of the ceremony, monk Geshe Phuntsho addressed the gathering.
“I want you to rejoice,” Geshe Phuntsho said. “Remember this blessing. It will always lift up your energy.”
He went on to explain that according to Buddhist philosophy, meditation is meant to conceptualize the hugeness of the universe, and that everything in the human experience is insignificant and fleeting by comparison. He compared Earth to a single tiny mustard seed. But, he said, that does not make life lose its meaning – in fact, it gives it.
“Meditation is to humble oneself,” he said. “Ego, pride and gasping makes us feel like this (life) is such a huge entity, but we are not even a dot in this huge universe. Meditation is the mentality to find peace and happiness in the hugeness.”
He explained that the creation of the mandala was a form of that meditation – in which the monks prayed for the peace and happiness of all living things on Earth that somehow, in that universal grandeur, had come into existence.
He encouraged those in attendance, Buddhist or not, to be compassionate toward their fellow humans.
“Compassion is the universal human religion,” he said. “Whatever you’re faced toward, do your best. Deep down, know that whatever I’m doing, I’m doing the right thing.”
With that, the monks began chanting a final prayer over the mandala, consecrating the sand through verses of chanting punctuated by the ringing of bells, crashing of symbols and the blowing of a conch shell, before Geshe Phuntsho and another monk, Lobsang Khamchok Rinpoche, began brushing the intricate mandala into a pile.
They handed small bags of the sand to attendees, then walked beneath a rainbow through the rain-dampened streets of Durango to the Ninth Street Bridge.
In the early winter sunset, the monks chanted again, then sprinkled the sand and flower petals into the Animas River below, sending their prayer for the well-being of all living beings downstream.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
