On Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 the week long mandala painting in Lankford's Grand Ballroom came to a close. The Closing Ceremony began at noon with a Tenzin, the group's translator, with an introduction about the plight of Tibet and the meditative and healing atmosphere surrounding the mandala. Tenzin also talked about the healing effects of living a meditative life. Part of this lifestyle is understanding the mandala themselves. The mandala, Tenzin explained to an involved crowd of spectators have three levels of meaning. The first level is the outer, which involves representations of the Buddhas themselves. The second layer of is the inner meanings. The inner meanings relate to the ways to reach the Buddha through love, compassion and wisdom. The final and secret meaning of the mandala has something to do with the "ultimate way of our own being," a concept that involves insight into what is called the "actual nature of reality."
Following the beginning of the ending ceremony there was a loud instrumentation which closely resembled the opening ceremony, but instead it was broken by certain deviations in music and revolutions made by one of the monks around the mandala. Afterwards, the mandala had paths cut in the sand with the very implements used to tap sand into the pattern that had created the mandala. Along these lines, a monk came forward and brushed the sand of the mandala in a spiral to the center of the table. The larger part of the sand was then scooped into an urn and wrapped in a black cloth and other decorations. The remainder of the sand was given in small bags to audience members and the monks prepared to leave by van for the Appomattox River. Joined by devotees and just curious observers, the monks stooped down to the muddy bank of the river and laid their sands into the river for dispersal by the rain.
The mandala was an event that was always understood to end this way. The point is a spiritual exercise that involves the creation of something incredibly intricate only to be destroyed. There is a bit of what anyone can understand about Buddhism simply from the process of the mandala. Life is exposed as something that can easily dissipate. And all of the efforts of life, all of its intricate and organized meanings can be summed up not in the opening and the careful planning of the mandala, but in its final dismantling.
Organizer of the event and Performing Arts Director Anna Rigg was able to speak after the event was over. Rigg said, when asked about what she had to do in organizing the event, "I had to meet with them on Sunday and make sure they got all of their things up here to the Student Union. Let them know about their hotel reservations and such, helping out with their opening ceremony, talking to them, making them feel welcomed. Making sure they had meal plans over in the dining hall during the week." Recounting that Lancer Productions paid to get the monks here and making calls a week in advance to secure the details of the monks' stay, Rigg considered the possibility of a repeat next year. She said, "I think that by Friday we realized what a hit it was … We saw people posting pictures of it on Facebook, talking about how cool it was. So we talked about potentially doing it again next year … W don't know if it would be quite as much of a hit just a year afterwards … So we may shake it up and try something new."
Graced by these new revelations of life and informed of the unsure status of even the most organized activities, among which are those that brought the monks here, we come to appreciate their former presence even more.
