Imagine spending hours and hours creating a beautiful work of art — and then, as a prayer, destroying it. That’s actually a ritual performed in many Tibetan monasteries to introduce students to the principles of Buddhism. Over a nine-day period, with prayers and chanting, the monks create an elaborate and beautiful sand “painting” called a mandala.
The painting, seven feet in diameter, is made of colored sand, chalk, saffron spice and wheat. The finished mandala ...
Imagine spending hours and hours creating a beautiful work of art — and then, as a prayer, destroying it. That’s actually a ritual performed in many Tibetan monasteries to introduce students to the principles of Buddhism. Over a nine-day period, with prayers and chanting, the monks create an elaborate and beautiful sand “painting” called a mandala.
The painting, seven feet in diameter, is made of colored sand, chalk, saffron spice and wheat. The finished mandala includes representations from all the sacred principles of Buddhism.
The monks pray that the gods and saints descend from their sacred dwelling places and temporarily “live” in the mandala. When the mandala is completed, the students are then invited to come and study, with the monks, the meanings of the various symbols and signs and, through the mandala, be reborn in faith.
In the final part of the ritual, the monks thank the deities for their presence and request that they “leave” the mandala. Then the sands of the mandala are ritually defaced, swept up, and placed in urns. The monks solemnly take the urns to a nearby lake or river and prayerfully pour the sands into the waters. Like the passing of all things, the mandala is washed away, but existing forever in the memories of those who created it and in those who discovered God in it.
It is a part of human nature that we move about our lives believing that we are building a life and a world that will last forever. But everything that we have or create, or use are like the sands of the monks’ paintings: someday, sooner rather than later, it will all be washed away
Today’s Gospel reading calls us to let go of the things that fill our lives and, instead, to seek to possess the lasting treasures of God: love of family and friends, the sense of meaning that comes from living the principles of justice and mercy, the joy of helping others realize their dreams and hopes for themselves and their families.
The loving relationships that we develop in this life are relationships that gain for us treasure in heaven. No act of terrorism, injustice, violence, or indifference can take away the love that we share with one another. These things may change the way that we are able to express that love — we will not see our loved ones when they die, we will not relate to them in the ways to which we have grown accustomed — but nothing can take that love away and nothing can keep that love from being fulfilled in the kingdom of God. All love comes from God and it is, indeed, the greatest treasure we have in this life and the only treasure that we will bring from this life into the next.
As we pray about our Gospel reading this week, may we recognize those areas of our lives that keep us from the love of God and the love one another; may we have the courage and the wisdom, to change our lives in ways that will bring us closer to the love of God and thus, closer to our salvation. +
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