And on a symbolic level, it was. A crowd of 300 gathered at the Ackland Art Museum Friday to witness the dismantling of the Medicine Buddha sand mandala, which took four months to create.
Sand mandalas represent the universe in a microcosm, effectively blueprinting Tibetan Buddhism's ideas on a two-dimensional surface. In this instance, the mandala sought to exemplify the "impermanence" - or fleeting nature - of life and material well-being, making the dismantling ceremony as important as the four months it was constructed, said Barbara Matilsky, curator of exhibitions at the museum.
The Venerable Tenzin Thutop and the Venerable Tenzin Deshek, monks from the Namgyal Monastery in New York, spent about two hours dismantling the mandala. The ceremony consisted of a series of chants, followed by an organized dismantling of the mandala. The pair then walked to Bolin Creek off Airport Road to pour the remains back into the water, completing a process they began in March.
"Like many of the objects in the exhibition, the mandala is a sacred object to convey lessons," he said, before the ceremony began. "As an exhibit, we brought it as a sacred object to convey pleasure."
But Matilsky added that while the mandala was taken out of its natural context -
