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Sand to sand Photo by Bob Pennell Tibetan monks perform Tuesday during the closing ceremony of four days full of activities at Stevenson Union at Southern Oregon University. Destruction of symbolic painting marks end of monks' visit By BILL VARBLE ASHLAND -- When you've painstakingly created a beautiful artwork that symbolizes the nature of life itself, what do you next? Why, destroy it. Cheerfully. Which is why hundreds of people have gathered Tuesday in the Stevenson Union at Southern Oregon University in Ashland. The past few days, visiting Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery, in India, used millions of grains of colored sand to create a beautiful mandala. It stands in hypnotic, 23-color glory on a black wooden table at the front of the room, projected by a video camera onto a large screen like a video at a rock concert. The chanting of eight monks in burgundy and yellow brocade robes signals the beginning of the end not only for the sand painting, but for the string of events that began Saturday when the lamas consecrated the site and called forth forces of goodness. They presented two performances of a show called "The Mystical Arts of Tibet," welcomed exiled Tibetan singing star Dadon and made the mandala. To do so they used a metal funnel called a chak-pur, which they rubbed with metal rods to make sand flow into the diagram they'd drawn, paint-by-numbers-style. The monks say the mandala has both outer and inner meanings. They've created a map of the world, a map of the human mind reaching enlightenment, and a map of the balance of subtle energies of mind and body, all at once. Today's ceremony signifies the impermanence of all things: the world, life, sand mandalas. The frequently smiling monks, all but one still in their 20s, are spiritual heirs of the Drepung Loseling monastery, which was established in 1416 near Lhasa. When the Chinese ravaged Tibet's monasteries in the 1950s, monks fled to Karnataka, India, and built a new monastery. The Loseling Institute was established in 1991 in Atlanta, Ga., to preserve Tibetan culture. This is the second year the monks have visited under the aegis of Richard Gere Productions, a nonprofit venture for the activist actor. Spiritual disciples of the Dalai Lama, the monks may envision returning to Tibet some day, but meanwhile they roam like bhikshus, or Buddhist mendicants. Now one walks to the table and brushes sand to the center of the mandala in long, sure strokes. On the big screen his brush cuts like Vishnu the destroyer through a cosmic map of mind and body, life and eternity. The monks beam at little kids who gather around them as the mandala disappears into a little heap of sand. Then the monks give away pinches to everybody. Alisha Moore, 13, of Phoenix, presents a watercolor mandala to a smiling monk. People describe the ceremony as powerful and moving. "It reminds me that nothing in life is permanent," Ashland artist Ezshwan says. Judy Wolgamot of Talent, a hospice caregiver who saw the monks here last year, says she gives pinches of the sand to dying patients. The monks plan to throw the rest of the sand, a handful, into Ashland Creek. From there it's believed to symbolically spread to the ocean and around the world in a prayer for healing. Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA