(20) Ross West: Mandala
A half-dozen Buddhist monks from India labored in the rotunda of the public library in Eugene, Oregon, stooped over, using specialized tools to meticulously place vibrantly colored sand on a platform about four feet in circumference, conjuring as if from nothing a geometrically complex mandala—intricate as a Mayan calendar, bright as a tie-dyed Tshirt. Rope barriers kept us in the crowd of onlookers back far enough to give the red-robed monks plenty of room to work. Their years of preparation for this most delicate art were evident in their careful and precise movements and the meditative attention they paid to position each grain. One of them explained that the sand mandala is the monks’ way of fostering enlightenment by demonstrating the impermanent nature of created things: their transitory arrangement of sand into a meaningful pattern is a unique event in the history of the universe, existing only at the moment that is right here, right now.
And demonstrate impermanence they did. After three days of painstaking work and a short ritual, one of the monks put a brush to the museum-quality mandala and in a few strokes swept it into a drab little pile. What had gloriously been was suddenly gone.
The monks put some of the sand in small envelopes they offered to wide-eyed kids, who excitedly extended their hands as they might for Halloween candy. They also presented packets of sand to adults who, maybe, had a deeper understanding of transience and the need to come to terms with life in a negotiation where life holds all the cards and bargains from a position of absolute indifference. The monks took some of the sand to the Willamette River and sprinkled it in, launching it on a slow journey north to the confluence with the Columbia, and from there eventually out to the Pacific, where, they were sure, the rainbow-colored grains would radiate blessings to all the world.
Ross West has placed fiction, essays, journalism, and poetry in publications from Orion to the Journal of Recreational Linguistics. His work has been anthologized in Best Essays Northwest, Best of Dark Horse Presents and elsewhere. He edited the University of Oregon’s research magazine, Inquiry; was senior managing editor at Oregon Quarterly; and served as text editor for the Atlas of Oregon and the Atlas of Yellowstone.