A view of the incomplete sand mandala. The sketch is visible where the outer two rings have not been filled in yet.
This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and today's suggested topic is the sand mandala created at the Santa Barbara Empathy Center.
The weekend of 9/21/2024 was busy for the Santa Barbara Empathy Center. Saturday was the unveiling of the sand mandala created by five traveling monks from the Ngari Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Village Saboo in India. And in the same space as the sand mandala was being displayed the Empathy Center held an interfaith leadership conference.
Sunday the monks participated in an empathy circle and the sand mandala was ritualistically destroyed. An the public was invited to watch the release in the nearby ocean.
This will be a two part post this week. In part one I’m writing about the sand mandala. And next week in part two I’m writing on the interfaith leadership conference and how the mandala connects to the interfaith leadership conference. So, jump the fold for two videos on the sand mandala.
This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour. How are you doing today? What is for dinner? What is on your mind? All topics of conversation are welcome. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself in the comments below.
Regards,
Jonathan
The comments for this article are are after community links Post.
The traveling monks constructed the sand mandala over a number of days while staying at the Santa Barbara Empathy Center. Kunkhen Thubten explains the intention of the creation of the mandala in the video below. The intention is bring peace and harmony into the world. And to share the mandala tradition with others.
Transcript of above video
Five Tibetan Monks are creating a sand mandala this week at the empathy center it's the site of the old St Mary Seminary near Skofield Park in Santa Barbara. The community will be able to see this mandala until the colorful sand is then released into the ocean on Sunday.
The empathy Center is also hosting a lunch provided by Himalayan families and friends this weekend there will also be discussion between various Faith heart and mind leaders.
Our hope is we doing this in mandala and we hope that every can come join and or not the any any any religions any people who live around here they all can combine and come here to make the prayers and make the world peace and Harmony in the world.
Luncheon is tomorrow from 12:30 to 2:30 at the empathy Center that's located at 1964 Los canoas Road.
YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/VNJ-1t4nz8o
Here is a link to a great article by Robert Bernstein on the sand mandala. With pictures and the video below: https://www.edhat.com/news/tibetan-buddhist-sand-mandala-at-empathy-center/. Robert’s photos: https://swt.org/events/sandmandala-empathycenter-2024-0921/.
The above video was from an article done by Robert Bernstein that has a number of photos. Please see Robert Bernstein’s article at: https://www.edhat.com/news/tibetan-buddhist-sand-mandala-at-empathy-center/.
Sand Mandala Materials and Construction
Historically, the mandala was not created with naturally dyed sand, but granules of crushed colored stone. In modern times, plain white stones are ground down and dyed with opaque inks to achieve the same effect. The monks use a special, extremely dense sand in order to limit interference by things such as wind or sneezes. Before laying down the sand, the monks assigned to the project will draw the geometric measurements associated with the mandala. The sand granules are then applied using small tubes, funnels, and scrapers, called chak-pur, until the desired pattern is achieved. Sand mandalas traditionally take several weeks to build due to the large amount of work involved in laying down the sand in such intricate detail. It is common that a team of monks will work together on the project, creating one section of the diagram at a time, working from the middle outwards.
From Wikipedia: Sand Mandala
