Mandala Mandala

Did you know that the Dalai Lama has an email and an interest in neuroscience? Rick Ray’s documentary “10 Questions for the Dalai Lama” gives insight into the life of the Dalai Lama, as well as Tibetan culture. Furthermore, Ray details the silencing of this culture and what it must overcome in order to be heard.

Ray presents the mandala, a gigantic representation of Buddhist philosophy made out of colored sand. The sacred mandala structures in Buddhist monasteries take generally 3-5 days to build, and are preceded by and closed with elaborate prayer ritual. The meticulous design enhances a 3D visualization of an imaginary palace, that is built going from the outside to the center, as one goes through life. In the West, Ray adds, such designs would be put up on a wall or preserved in a museum, but in Buddhist cultures shortly after a mandala is finished it is deliberately destroyed. The sand is swept and poured into a nearby river as a reminder for the Tibetans and observers of Buddhism everywhere that all things are temporal on this earth and attachment to them causes great loss and sorrow.

In this way Ray introduces the mandala as an analogy for Tibetan culture. In 1950 Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-Tung sent an enforcement of Red Army troops to “liberate Tibet from elitest Dalai Lama rule”. At the time the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was 15 and foresaw peaceful negotiations with Tse-Tung. He would come to find Tse-Tung’s true feelings about religion as a “poison” that “undermines and retards the progress of any country”. Consequently Tibet was forced to sign a 17-point agreement and the Tibetan army was disarmed as the Chinese army moved in and Tibet came under Chinese control. Although the Dalai Lama and many Tibetan immigrants live in safety in Dharamsala, India, such was not the case for those in Tibet during the takeover of the new government. Approximately 1,200,00 Tibetans were killed, even more imprisoned, 600 monasteries were destroyed, art, books, everything ancient or of religious significance ruined. Chinese immigrants were then sent to Tibet to colonize it, establishing what Ray calls a “cultural genocide”. It is unfortunate that Ray’s analogy for Tibet must come in the fate of Buddhist mandala structures.