Love, Michele
Toddler's dance destroys monks' intricate sand painting
By MATT CAMPBELLTalk about a test of faith.
Eight Tibetan monks spent two days cross-legged
on the floor at Union Station, leaning over to
meticulously create an intricate design of colored
sand as an expression of their Buddhist faith.
They were more than halfway done.
And then, within seconds, their work was
destroyed by a toddler. Monks are bald,
so they couldn’t rip their hair out.
But were they angry? Did they curse?
No. They simply smiled and started over.
“No problem,” said Geshe Lobsang Sumdup,
leader of the group from
the Drepung Gomang Monastery in southern India.
“We didn’t get despondent,” he said Wednesday
through a translator. “We have three days more.
So we will have to work harder.”
That the monks were able to shrug off their
setback can be attributed to their religion.
“It teaches us that nothing is permanent,”
said Staci Olsen, a volunteer at
the Rime Buddhist Center in Kansas City.
Sometime Tuesday after the monks
had finished their labors for
the day a woman with her small
child visited the post office inside
Union Station, near where the
design was being created.
The child, apparently attracted by the pretty colors,
wandered over to play with it.
“He did a little tap dance on it,
completely destroying it,”
said Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime center.
The mother did not report the incident,
but a security camera at Union Station captured the moment.
“She summarily picked the child up and boogied,” said Bob Smock, security manager for the station.
Jampa Tenzin, one of the monks
who can speak a little English,
said this was the first time on
this tour a mandala in progress
had been destroyed. But the monks
know the child was innocent.
“They have meditated so long
they have developed this equanimity,”
Stanford said. “Regardless of what happens
— if a kid dances on your sand mandala
— it’s OK. If everybody in the world
had that kind of stability of mind we’d be better off.”
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