Buddhist Artwork Teaches Key Lesson of Faith: "Impermanence"

EVANSVILLE COURIER PRESS
By Jared Council

ZACH NELSON / Special to The Courier & Press Tibetan monks

INDIANA -  "It's beautiful," said Pilar Lopez, a visitor. "They are doing this with so much love and they know that in the end, the culmination is just to dump it into the river." Thuntsok, a monk from India, spent several minutes coloring the flower on the sand portrait known as a "mandala" at the Bodyworks Message Institute Sunday, and he and three other monks would spend another 1,800 minutes (30 hours) through Wednesday before the intricate masterpiece is finished. "After that, they destroy it," said Arjia Rinpoche, a Tibetan Lama and the director of the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind.  "The idea is, the mandala comes from nature so we have to send it back to nature." [link]