Creating a Sand Mandala

I was just about to go to bed & saw this link on Reality Carnival.

CNN has an amazing time-lapse video of the 6-day creation of a sand mandala by Buddhist monks.

"A Masterpiece in Minutes:
Creation of a Sand Mandala"

The fact that the meticulously finished sacred artwork is then dispersed back to the elements is full of symbolic meaning. It is an act of pure creation that is meant to be impermanent, like the human experience itself. This is one of many ritualized processes used to bring a sense of awareness to our temporary situation.

Faith in Reason and Creative Thinking

"If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false,
then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims,"

"No one who wants to understand the world
can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as
evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics."

- Dalai Lama



Dalai Lama participating in the creation of a sand mandala;
an intricate pattern memorized by the monks,
created with fine colored sand,
and finally swept up and dispersed
as a symbol of transience and awareness.
Longwood Gardens' website has a great visual description
of the process of making and ritually destroying a sand mandala.
Page 1: Creating the Mandala
Page 2: Dismantling the Mandala

The Dalai Lama & Kalachakra

This past week, the Dalia Lama has been in Washington DC to coincide with his 76th birthday.

He has also presided over Kalachakra ceremonies, consisting of extensive spiritual teachings.

These are once-secret teachings give insights into the microcosm of the human mind & body and the relationship to the macrocosm of the Universe.

Introduction to Kalachakra

The culmination of the Kalachakra is the creation & destruction of an intricate sand mandala, representing the Wheel of Time.

The Kalachakra Mandala

There are many aspects of Buddhist thought that have greatly influenced my view of the world. In particular, I have always found the creative process of the mandala to be a profound expression of transient existence.

Kalachakra Mandala from peacefeather imagery on Vimeo.

Deliberately dismantling such a dedicated, detailed work is a contemplative symbol for the impermanent nature of all reality.

Movie Review: Samsara

 
Recently my girlfriend & I watched a movie that I had been wanting to see for awhile. I have eclectic taste in movies & this one caught me eye.

Samsara is a visual journey, with no dialog or narration.  There is a wealth of spectacular imagery of people & places around the world.


It is really a meditative work of visual art that features other examples of human spirit & creativity, such as the activity of making a Tibetan Sand Mandala. This is an expression of impermanence that is destroyed after many hours of meticulously forming grains of sand into a complex composition.

 

The word "Samsara" means the endless cycle of birth, death, & rebirth- along with the karma (or consequences) that come from our thoughts & actions.

Samsara is also used to describe the transient qualities ever-changing world around us, with all its imagery, sounds, and experiences. In this context, it usually refers to the tendency of the world & it's myriad qualities to trap us in the karmic cycle of life & death.

There are interesting thematic threads woven throughout the footage of the movie. One striking part of the film that I didn't expect was the juxtaposition of factory workers & industrialized farming. There are many more interconnections between the many sights & visual elements presented in the movie.

It's something that needs to been seen, & not described. I'd definitely recommend Samsara to anyone who would appreciate watching a rich tapestry of visual imagery, in a thought-provoking look at humanity and the world around us.

"The Monkey Buddha"-10 Years!

I created this blog, The Monkey Buddha, 10 years ago today, on June 28, 2005!

The very first post I wrote was about a creation that I feel is one of my most notable achievements so far. It is an award-winning strategy game that I designed, based on the timeless principles of 'sacred geometry', called "Da Vinci's Challenge".

First Things First

In my second post, "Intro to The Monkey Buddha", I stated the reason for starting the page:

"Hopefully, this will be a place where I can finally share the ridiculous amount of info I have stored in my brain and its silicon symbiote I call my Apple Computer. I am looking forward to posting all kinds of important news, nuggets of crazy wisdom, interesting technologies, political rants, and useless fun crap.

Please bookmark this site and check back every once in awhile... I will try to be vigilant & continue posting new items. Basically, this blog will reflect the world and its infinite complexity - from my own infinitely limited perspective.
Enjoy!"

To celebrate the 10 year anniversary of this creative endeavor, I wanted to share some interesting things about it.

Since I started posting to The Monkey Buddha, I've been able to fit every one of the 1,591 posts to date into one of these categories- click the links to explore!

• Art
• Culture
• History
• Humor
• Nature
• Philosophy
• Politics
• Religion
• Science
• Tech

Here are the Top 5 most viewed posts, since I created the page. My review of the iPhone was by far the most popular article.

1) iPhone 4S: Full Review

2) The World Was Always Awful

3) Monkey Business T-shirt 

4) Logos with Hidden Messages

5) Interview with Alex Grey


Although I love to write about all different topics, I am a professional graphic artist. The Monkey Buddha has also been a place to show my art, such as 3D renderings and graphic design work.

Art by Paul Micarelli

After years of uploading images, I've also built up a huge database of visual imagery in my Picasa Web Album.

Picasa:

The Monkey Buddha

Visual Archive

For me, blogging has always been a purely creative pastime, an opportunity to express my thoughts and interests publicly for anyone who happens to see it. I truly appreciate anyone who follows this page or The Monkey Buddha Facebook page.

I have never tried to directly make money from this page. There have never been ads or even a donation button on the page.

On occasion, I have shared some products featuring my designs that are available in my Cafepress shop.

Cafepress:

The Monkey Buddha Bazaar

Like so many others, I am a endlessly creative person, and this blog is a tremendous outlet for my ideas. It is a credit to Google that they offer this free blogging platform to people.

Sometimes I wonder, though... What would happen to all my work if Google or the Blogger service stopped existing? Would all my thoughts & work be lost? It's almost like the idea of a Tibetan sand mandala, where the intricate creation of the Buddhist monks is swept away after completion, leaving no trace. It is a meditation on impermanence, the fact that neither we humans nor our accomplishments will last forever.

However, there is the possibility that, because I've had the opportunity to add my presence to the Internet's electronic hive mind, my writings and artwork will outlive me for a time.

Hopefully, humanity will expand into the Universe beyond Earth, and my thoughts & artistic work will continue to exist in the repository of our species' shared knowledge as we travel to the stars.

I'd like to think that the content of this blog will last for many more years, and perhaps even decades- so that The Monkey Buddha can continue to inform, entertain, and perhaps enlighten others into the future.

Webs of Maya

This is an amazing video that shows geometric patterns being formed by vibrating a metal plate covered with sand at different frequencies. If you turn the sound off and watch it (so the high-pitched tones don't make you crazy), it becomes like a Magical Morphing Mandala.

Click Here

On another level, this could be seen as a experiential metaphor for the structure of reality - a flux of ? forming patterns we perceive as matter, mind, & energy.

Through Google, I found this on the website of a jewelry designer from Israel who has amazing designs and thought-provoking articles on the site:

"When we start to examine what matter is made of we get to molecules and then to atoms. Atoms are composed of particles moving around each other at great speed. When scientists searched for what these particles are made of they found various wave lengths (frequencies).

The simplest way to understand a vibration is to imagine constantly repeating "movement" and "rest". The human ear can hear 30 to 16000 vibrations ("movement" and "rest") per second.

In fact, everything is made of frequencies, even the "matter" we previously mentioned."

He also has a page for the Flower of Life, the ancient pattern of circles that I studied as a design student & used to form the DaVinci's Challenge gameboard:

"The "Flower of Life" contains the patterns of creation as they emerged from the "Great Void". Everything is made from the Creator's thought."