Dance and music performance: 2 p.m. Saturday, March 5;
Sand mandala creation: Tuesday, March 1—Saturday, March 5
TACOMA, Wash. – Buddhist monks from a famous Tibetan monastery will create a colored sand painting of an exquisite mandala and perform multiphonic singing and masked dancing at two events at the University of Puget Sound.
The monks from Tibet’s Drepung Loseling Monastery perform worldwide to generate awareness of the endangered Tibetan civilization and raise support for the Tibetan refugee community in India. The Dalai Lama endorses the Mystical Arts of Tibet tour.
The musical performance, Sacred Music Sacred Dance for World Healing, which attracted sellout audiences in Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center in New York, will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, March 5, in Schneebeck Concert Hall, on campus. Tickets are $6 for the general public. There is no charge for current campus members. Ticket information and a map of campus are below.
The performance will feature multiphonic singing, in which the monks simultaneously intone three notes of a chord. The Drepung Loseling monks are renowned for this unusual singing. Their members also use traditional instruments, such as ten-foot-long dung-chen horns, drums, bells, cymbals, and gyaling trumpets. Rich brocade costumes and masked dances add to the exotic drama.
The sand mandala, composed of detailed designs within a large circle, will be constructed on Collins Memorial Library's main floor from Tuesday, March 1, until Saturday, March 5. The display is free and open to the public. Library hours are 7:30 a.m.–9 p.m., Tuesday to Friday, and 8 a.m.–9 pm, Saturday. Because the monks also will be visiting classes, they are generally expected to be working in the library from the late morning to late afternoon.
The mandala will be made according to the artistic traditions of Tantric Buddhism. Millions of sand grains are painstakingly poured into place on a platform, over a period of days or weeks, to create an image that Buddhists say has an inner, outer, and secret meaning. On the outer level, the design represents the world in its divine form; on the inner level, it represents a map by which the human mind is transformed into an enlightened mind; and on the secret level, it depicts the primordially perfect balance of the energies of the body and the mind.
Once the mandala is finished, the sand will be swept up, placed in an urn, and poured into the Puget Sound, indicating the impermanence of life. More details about the time and place of this ceremony will be available closer to the date. The monks also will assist students in creating their own sand painting.
The monks of Drepung Loseling monastery have performed on tour with artists including Kitaro, Paul Simon, Philip Glass, Patti Smith, the Beastie Boys, and the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart. Two of their recordings achieved Top 10 listings on the new age music charts: Tibetan Sacred Temple Music and Sacred Tibetan Chant. Their newest recording, Compassion, pairs them with Gethsemani school's Abbey, creating music that combines Gregorian chant with Tibetan multiphonic singing.
Their music was featured in the film Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, and in 2003 they represented Tibet in a pre-Olympic Games celebration of world sacred music in Greece.
The Drepung Loseling Tibetan monks events are presented by Associated Students of the University of Puget Sound, with support from the Catharine Gould Chism Fund for the Humanities and the Arts.
FOR TICKETS: Tickets are available online at tickets.pugetsound.edu or Wheelock Information Center, 253.879.3100. Admission is $6 for the general public. Puget Sound faculty, staff, and students with ID are admitted free.
For directions and a map of the University of Puget Sound campus: pugetsound.edu/directions
For accessibility information, please contact accessibility@pugetsound.edu or 253.879.3236, or visit pugetsound.edu/accessibility.
Tweet this: See Tibetan monks create a sand mandala @univpugetsound Mar 1-5. Also a song, dance, music Mar 5, 2 pm #Tacoma http://bit.ly/1PZtp8u
Follow us on Twitter! twitter.com/univpugetsound