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This is a sand mandala created by the Gyuto Monks of Tibet when they visted Hobart this week. It is made entirely from coloured sand and is about 1.5 meters in diameter. It took 2 or 3 monks working up to 6 hours a day for 9 days to create this. The mandala is truly beautiful. I hope I captured some of the beauty in this image. You oughta see the detail in the mandala. This one gets printed big for sure. Taken with D70 and kit lens.



You can see more of the monks creating the mandala here.

Cheers, John

Wow, that's really impressive. I'd be tempted to PP the background colour to something a bit more complementary than grey.

John,

great capture.
What is the purpose of the monks creating the mandala ?
Is it to demonstrate the inpermanence of things ?

Cheers,
CD

Beauty in two directions - one the photgraph and secondly the subject.

Don't they have anything better to do?

amazing! great subject well captured. the amount of detail they create with coloured sand is fantastic.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

I'll give it another go of PPing with a background of different colour. I'll try both black and white. Another thing I noticed is a slight sharpening halo around the mandala. I'll redo the sharpening to eliminate that.

As for the reasons for doing the sand mandala in the first place. I'm not an expert in these things, but I think it's something to do with creating something beautiful from the natural elements (all the pigments for the sand are natural) and returning it to nature afterwards. I think the monks also use the creative works as a meditative process.

Matt K, maybe the monks believe this is a better thing to do. I try to not deal with better or worse but to focus on different. Like is a Mac better or worse than a PC, answer: neither it's just different.

Cheers
John

I'm no expert on this, but did experience a sand mandala being constructed (not sure if that is the right word) a few years ago in Twizel in New Zealand.

The theme of that one was compassion and it looked very different to the one shown here. As the monks worked, they kept up a steady chant - praying for compassion - or at least the spread of it around the world.

Once the creation is finished, it is 'gifted' back to the environment - usually the sand is ceremonously tipped into a river or the sea. This is at odds with our western view of art and effort and the 'destruction' of the mandala is actually part of the whole provcess....

There are probably other forum members with a much better understanding of the process here...

Gecko

I did a bit more research on the mandala and found out the following:

This mandala is the Mandala of Ghuyasamaja, King of Tantra. The mandala symbolises a perfect world in which all beings exhibit and practice loving kindness and compassion to one another and is used by the monks as a visualisation tool during meditation. The 500 year-old design has been faithfully passed down through the generations from teacher to student at the Gyuto Tantric University, along with its sacred meanings and is created by the monks from memory. The sand used to create the mandala is made from finely ground coloured rock from the Himalayas. At the end of the monks' visit, the mandala is scattered symbolically according to the Buddhist teachings of impermanence. The aim in creating the mandala is to remind us that nothing is permanent and to teach us to appreciate beauty without attachment.

Thought this was interesting. Done from memory.

Cheers
John

I have just redone the PPing of this beautiful sand mandala to give it a white background. It looks better than with the grey background IMHO.
Cheers
John