A group of Tibetan monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery are creating a sand mandala inside the USC Pacific Asia Museum.

On a sacred art tour through the United States that kicked off in Louisville, Kentucky they’re now in Pasadena on a mission of compassion. The mandala is made with colored sand from crushed marble. But once completed at the end of the week, they will wipe it away as if it never existed.

“The ‘Dissolution Ceremony is the sweeping of the mandala. That represents impermanence,” says Geshe Monlam Gyatso.

Starting from the center, they work outwards by tapping sand grain by grain through copper funnels. The color of the sand represents the different virtues of all the Buddhas, but the mandala these monks are making today symbolize the Compassion Buddha, living in the center circle. 

Painstaking work, they wear masks to keep from inhaling the sand or accidentally exhaling it away. 

Geshe Monlam Gyatso has been a monk since he was eight years old. He escaped Tibet in 1992 by traveling to India on foot where he joined 2,300 other monks at Drepung Gomang, the largest monastery in the world.

Through chanting, he invokes the presence of the Buddha and invites the power of compassion through the center of the mandala.  

The mandala sometimes explains the universe as well as nature’s perfection and harmony in nature,” explains Geshe Monlam Gyatso. 

If nature is perfect, than so is this mandala.

“So I’ve only seen this practice happen in film so I really wanted to see it up close and personal,” says Eddie Martin. “And not only see the actual mandala but  to see it blown away, to see how all the hard work just kind of will blown into the wind. I'll be a powerful experience.”

Meant to represent the universe, Gershe slowly sweeps away the mandala, a week’s work of art, only to recreate it somewhere else once again.