Walking up the stairs, the room buzzes with the sound of vibrating metal. School children sit cross-legged in a silent circle, watching as the monks bend forward working, legs folded and chests to the floor, surrounded by plastic buckets of colored sand -
said Ngawang, who has lived in the United States for five years.
When speaking to a university class, he was shocked by the way the students reclined, placing their feet on the chairs. Ngawang said Tibetans have a greater respect for their teachers.
The monks are students themselves, but their education lasts 25 to 30 years.
About 20 percent of Tibetan Buddhists join monasteries, and though they are free to leave any time, many enter as young as age 8 and stay their entire lives. After graduation, monks go on to become teachers at monastic universities, McDaniel said.
Learning how to make mandalas is part of the monk's education and can take up to three years. First, they memorize the designs, and then learn how to crush and die the sand. Then they specialize in creating one specific part of the pattern, Ngawang said.
The monks will sweep away the sand mandala in a ceremony at 4 p.m. today. The deconstruction shows the impermanence of life and teaches that humans should not be attached to material things, despite their beauty and the work involved. 17
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Emily Patterson
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The completed sand mandala created by Tibetan Buddhist monks sits on the second floor of Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium yesterday afternoon. There will be a ceremony at 4 p.m. today in which the mandala is swept away, showing that humans s
