Tibetan Buddhist Monk Passang Gelek will offer a class on “The Making of a Sacred Sand Mandala” at Unity of Fayetteville beginning Monday, October 15 at 7 PM. Passang was trained at Drepung Loseling monastery in South India. He recently arrived in Fayetteville for an extended stay from his previous home in San Antonio, Texas.

A sand mandala is a two, or sometimes three-dimensional (if the sand is sculpted), geometric pattern that is first laid out with compasses and chalk lines and straight edges, and then filled in with colored sand. Mandalas are by no means unique to Tibetan culture, although the Tibetan monks have taken them to a visionary and aesthetic level that has rightly distinguished them on the international stage. It was not until 1988, when the Dalai Lama first decreed that these mandalas could be constructed in public, that anyone in the West was able to view one as it was being assembled. The construction of a mandala is essentially a meditation, and a very powerful one at that, and so they have traditionally been done within sacred environments and only around a very select audience of monks and other clerics.

Class participants will learn this form of active meditation as they become familiar with the mechanics of constructing a sacred mandala.  Depending on interest, the class may be expanded to include the making of other items including traditional Tibetan sculptures and prayer flags.

There will be a fee for this workshop.  Contact Martin Jardon for more information.  He can be reached by email at mjardon(at)uark.edu, or by phone at 575-2509.