Creative Writing - Narrative Nonfiction

Last week, the Buddha of Great Compassion, Chenrezig, came to Loyola.  Chenrezig is a Tibetan Monk and he came to Loyola to give us a lesson.

Over the course of seven days, he toiled over the creation of a sand mandala.  A beautiful, immense sand mandala.  Students around campus visited him as he worked, watching in silence as from grains of colored sand, intricate detail emerged.

The mandala is seen as an expression of the Buddha’s enlightened mind, and is said to nourish enlightenment in the minds of those who contemplate and watch the mandala’s creation.  As he created it, the Buddha meditated; observing him create the mandala was meditative for the audience, as well.  I found myself transfixed, watching him create this absolute beauty with such patience and concentration.

The mandala is supposed to be a lesson in impermanence and non-attachment, in that after it is completed, it is ritualistically destroyed.  This way of thinking is so radically different from our own – the entire campus grew so attached to this mandala that the thought of its destruction was painful.  I went to see it almost everyday, to see how far the Buddha had progressed, and I was not alone in wishing we could prolong its destruction.  Yet I also understood the lesson behind it, and this was a lesson I did not have to be a Buddhist to learn. 

However, apart from this lesson, apart from the significance of the mandala, it was amazing on an aesthetic level as well.  On the beach near Loyola’s campus, called, simply, North Beach, there is a row of stone benches, perhaps half a mile long.  These benches are covered with artwork by artists from the surrounding community – everyone from accomplished talents to amateurs to children.  They are fascinating, in that everyone who painted a bench did so to help foster and unite the community, and the subjects of the paintings differ widely but all exude a sense of wonder at the world.  This is, in my opinion, similar to what Chenrezig did with his mandala.  He poured his mind, soul and spirit into it.  He gave himself to the artwork.  For an idea, for an ideal.

On these benches there are paintings of people playing at the beach, paintings of the lake and the sky and the earth, paintings that represent diversity and paintings that represent oneness.  Amid a neighborhood better known for its crime than its beauty, these benches make me truly happy.  They show me that I will never stop being amazed by what people can do, by the way both extreme emotion and complete peace can be palpable in a work of art, from the intricacies of a sand mandala to the simplicity of a painted bench.