I was waiting until today to write this post. Today was the end of the visit of the Tibetan monks to Key West.
They arrived last Sunday and visited various locations in addition to creating a compassion mandala. They created the mandala from individual grains of sand with metal tubes bent over on the floor in the knave of one of the local churches.
The intricacy was amazing. They tapped the metal tubes and sometimes blew gently. Everything in the mandala was some type of symbol focused on love, peace and compassion.
Outside of the church was a little market where you could purchase a spiritual object from Tibet.
One if the monks was petting Bailey, so Inasked if I could take his picture. That was when he grabbed her for this photo op.
When another monk saw this, he took her and asked if Don would take his photo holding her with the monks iphone!
On Friday night, we attended a dinner prepared by the monks. They served us momos. They resembled Chinese dumplings. Some were filled with meat and some were vegetarian.
This was dessert.
Afterwards they chanted and then answered questions. It was mesmerizing.
We returned on Sunday for the dissolution ceremony. The mandala was complete. It was so intricate and had a 3 dimensional look.
The dissolution ceremony involved chanting, thank you's
and then they slowly , first with sticks and then with a brush, destroyed this beautiful mandala until it was just a pile of sand.
They filled some necklaces and small zip loc bags with this sacred sand and with the remainder they headed to the ocean to throw it into the wind, because nothing is permanent.
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