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At the beginning of October, the Flaten Art Museum transformed into a place of quiet concentration and color, as four Buddhist monks from the Gyuto Wheel of Dharma Monastery in Minneapolis constructed a sand mandala in Groot Gallery. The installation was part of the museum’s fall exhibition Gateway to Himalayan Art, which explores the artistic traditions of Tibet and the surrounding region. 

The monks carefully assembled a mandala depicting Avalokiteśvara, the Buddha of Compassion. Using millions of grains of colored sand, they shaped the design over the course of five days, with hours of patient focus. Visitors were invited to observe the process daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a pause for lunch in Stav Hall between 1 and 2 p.m.

During the opening consecration ceremony, the monks offered prayers to bless the space, the sand, and the people present. 

“The mandala is very special,” one of the monks explained in Tibetan, through the interpretation of Soyang Nangsotsang ’26. “We place it grain by grain with patience, and it reminds us that life is made of small moments, and each one is important.” 

Asked if they felt sadness when the mandala was completed and then deconstructed, one monk responded:

“We do not feel sadness, but joy. Sweeping it up teaches us that something does not have to last forever to have meaning — by letting it go, we appreciate it more.”

For museum staff, bringing this tradition to campus was the result of both creative planning and collaboration. Director of the Flaten Art Museum Jane Becker Nelson said the idea grew out of conversations about how to extend the themes of the exhibitions into something more interactive. 

“We considered highlighting other traditional Tibetan practices, like hosting a butter sculpture workshop or a prayer flag workshop,” she explains. “But through our partnership with the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota, we were introduced to the Gyuto monks — and that’s what made this whole week possible.”

The mandala tied closely to the themes of the exhibitions. Gateway to Himalayan Art included a section on mandalas as cosmic palaces for deities, while Tashi Dalek, Minnesota! highlighted the living traditions of Tibetan Americans. Becker Nelson emphasized that the practice was both ancient and ongoing:

“It’s a longstanding ritual thousands of years old, but it’s also a contemporary expression in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.”

She said she hoped visitors left with a deeper understanding of impermanence  — one of Buddhism’s central teachings. 

“Museums typically go to great lengths to preserve art. To create something only to destroy it challenges our ideas about what art is for,” Becker Nelson says. “I think the sand mandala symbolizes impermanence in a really tangible way.” 

For some students, witnessing the mandala was a calming counterpoint to busy campus life. Jugani Jugani ’28, an interfaith fellow from St. Olaf’s Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community who was on-hand to answer any questions the public had about the mandala, described the experience of watching its creation as restorative. 

“Whenever I come to see this, it’s incredibly soothing,” Jugani says. “At the end of the day, though, I know that it’s not going to be there forever, that it has a timeline, and it will be gone soon. I will certainly miss it, and I think it can be hard to wrap your head around all of this work being done with the intention of it having no physical representation — but I think it is keeping me in the moment, to appreciate it while it is here.” 

Jugani also noted that visitors approached the monks’ work with respect. 

“Every time people came in, it was an incredibly peaceful space for them,” Jugani says. “Serving as a liaison was also personally rewarding, because I got to learn more about the practices involved and could share that knowledge with other students and even older people who weren’t familiar with the traditions.”

Throughout the week, interfaith fellows held office hours near the gallery to educate the public about Buddhist traditions and help contextualize the work. Becker Nelson said this inclusion of the Lutheran Center was instrumental in the success of the exhibit. 

“Tibetan art is underrepresented in most college curriculums,” she says. “It’s an incredibly rich tradition, and so to engage students who are especially interested in interfaith conversation, to explore why we would have a Buddhist mandala at a Lutheran college, seemed like a perfect opportunity to reemphasize our values. The dialogues that have been had, and the sensitivity and curiosity it has prompted from across all backgrounds of faith or skepticism, are really telling. We live in an increasingly diverse state and campus, and these kinds of exhibitions and programs give us a chance to know our neighbors better.”

The mandala remained in progress until Sunday, October 5, when the monks led a dissolution ceremony. The sand, arranged in a beautiful completed pattern, was swept up and carried to Northfield’s Bridge Square, where it was released into the Cannon River. In Buddhist belief, serpent-like deities known as nagas carried away the sand — and with it, negative karma. 

When asked how people could carry the teachings of the sand mandala into their own lives, the monk’s answer was simple:

“By practicing compassion every day — by being patient and kind.”

For Becker Nelson, sharing the practice of the mandala with the community underscored the campus’s role in expanding communal understanding. 

“Any time we have an opportunity to come up against traditions that expand our knowledge of our community members, our compassion increases,” she says.