A Monk, a Mandala, And the Meaning of School

Part of schools' task is to help students discover what is different about them.

By Tom Bonnell

After setting up a table to one side of our lobby and readying his tools, Lama Tenzin worked with quiet concentration, gradually arranging small grains of colored sand into a design of increasing complexity. Our students stood around his table between classes, fascinated by this strange process and the beautiful patterns swiftly emerging from the experienced hands of its small, orange-robed creator. Lama Tenzin would cheerfully stop his work and answer the students' many questions.

By Friday, the weeklong work of creation was finally finished. But the manner of its completion was a shock to some. Aided by a small group of students and teachers, Lama Tenzin carried the mandala the five blocks to New York's East River and, with ceremony and reverence, brushed the mandala into the waters of the river. An unusual end for any work of art.

Why destroy something on which so much labor and time have been lavished? Part of the answer comes from the Buddha himself, who taught that all things are characterized by impermanence and that it is our clinging to them which is the root cause of our suffering as human beings. The destruction at the end of a mandala's creation is a powerful...