The impermanence of life and art

The gentle scratching sound of metal instruments echoes through the public art gallery as two Tibetan monks create an intricate and multi-coloured mandala from sand.

Just to their left, two more Buddhist monks work quietly, dipping their fingers into cold water as they shape coloured butter into petals to create three-dimensional images of flowers on small painted boards.

It’s a scene of peace and serenity, two very Buddhist-like qualities, but very unlike their homeland.

“In Tibet there is no peace. People are killed. There is no freedom,” says Geshe Lobsang Chodak.

Chodak is a Tibetan monk who was born in the Himalayan mountains and now finds himself half a world away from home. Actually, his home now is a monastery in India where he resides with the other four monks who have made the journey with him to Vancouver Island.

All five have been exiled from Tibet by the Chinese government which controls and rules their mountainous homeland. They are visiting Canada on a “Sacred Art Tour” to raise money to help run their monastery and to spread the word about the political situation in Tibet.

“The Tibetan people are living poor conditions. They have little food – there’s no human rights or freedom of speech,” Chodak says in broken English and with the help of an interpreter.

Phuntsok Kakho accompanies the five monks as their guide and translator. He points out that people can still visit Tibet, but the visas are tightly controlled by the Chinese government which ensures that tourists only see the “positive and beautiful” of Tibet and not the daily miseries of its people.

“It is very controlled,” he says.

The monks recently spent nine days in the Campbell River area, with visits to Quadra and Cortes islands. They sold handmade butter sculpture flowers and beaded jewellry to raise money for their monastery, played traditional music for audiences, and even bestowed their blessing on Campbell River’s new Spirit Square, located beside the downtown art gallery.

And then there was the making of the mandala which takes several days to create. Using metal tools – kind of like tapered chopsticks – brightly coloured sand is poured into the wide and open end, and the other stick is used to scrape the bigger one which causes the sand to gently empty through a tiny opening, a few grains at a time.

This allows the monks to create the intricate mandala image.

And this is more than art-making, it’s a spiritual and cultural practice that has gone on for centuries.

But the mandala is not here for long. Soon after its completion, the monks conduct a blessing, dismantle it and then release the sand into a clean stream or sea to demonstrate the impermanence of life.

On Wednesday, the monks and their hosts took the sand to Discovery Pier and let it fly into the wind to settle in the waters of the sea passage.

“I would like thank the art gallery and the people of Quadra, Cortes and Campbell River...friendly people,” says Kakho with a gentle smile.

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