Visitors watch and take pictures as monks work on the mandala. (USC Photo/Gus Ruelas)
Arts
For sand mandala at USC Pacific Asia Museum, symbolic beauty is fleeting
Monks visiting the Pasadena museum create a striking piece — and in a flash, it’s gone. See the photos.
The USC Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena hosted Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in southern India last week. The monks spent four days creating a sand mandala, a Tibetan Buddhist tradition that involves the creation and destruction of art made of colored sand. Once completed, the mandala is dismantled as a symbol of the Buddhist belief in the transitory nature of material life.
