Tibet has been called the roof of the worldindeed, this ancient kingdom is at such high altitude that the clouds float not in the sky but on the ground. So physically close to the heavens, it seems appropriate that Tibet should develop one of the world's most esoteric systems of spirituality.
Buddhism,
an import from India, arrived in Tibet in 700 A.D. Based on the spiritual
teachings of an Indian philosopher and teacher, it took hold in the remote
mountain kingdom and melded with a local religion called Bon to become
Tantric Buddhism. The religion penetrated all aspects of Tibetan daily
life and culture, influencing everything from art to politics.
Until
the 20th century, Tibet's ancient customs were preserved by its physical
remoteness; its mystique filtered to the West through accounts written
by poets or mountain climbers defying death on such prospects as Mount
Everest. In 1950, the People's Liberation Army of China established Communist
rule in the ancient theocracy. Tibet lost thousands of its magnificent
temples and monasteries to the random destruction of China's so-called
Cultural Revolution. Monks and nuns were slaughtered; approximately 1.6
million Tibetans were killed or imprisoned in forced labor camps. The
Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet, fled to northern
India in 1959. Monastic groups took up worship and study in the provinces
of northern India. An ancient system of thought and ritual was driven
into permanent exile.
For this museum,
the opportunity to witness an ancient and sacred aspect of Tibetan life
came in the winter of 1991-92 when a group of monks from the Gyuto Tantric
University in northern India arrived in the United States. Their mission
was entirely in the Buddhist tradition—to educate people about their
culture. The timing was not coincidental. Two hundred Tibetan heads of
families would be resettling in Minnesota later in the year. The monks
would help educate Minnesotans about Tibet's rich heritage and to its
plight.
Robert Jacobsen, the curator of Asian art at the Institute, learned of
their visit to Minnesota, he immediately recognized a tremendous opportunity
for the museum. The monks had just been in San Francisco, where they had
made a sand mandala at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Jacobsen
knew that such an activity would generate a great deal of interest in
Minnesota, and that it would function as an educational extension to an
exhibition of Ch'ing dynasty imperial silks, which included Buddhist silks
of Tibetan origin.
Made from
sand, paint or even sculpted yak butter, mandalas are visual prayers,
celestial renderings of Buddhist symbology. The painstaking process of
making a mandala—literally grain by grain—is met at completion
with a lesson on the impermanence of life. After it has been properly
blessed, the mandala is traditionally swept up and deposited in the nearest
body of flowing water.
When Tibet's
precarious position in the world is considered, the mandala becomes a
kind of rare species, high on the list for extinction. Jacobsen, along
with his friend Wynn Binger, a local engineer who is involved with the
Tibetan community, began to speculate about how to preserve the mandala.
They had heard that an attempt to preserve a sand mandala had been made
in Japan. After contacting the gallery involved with that failed attempt,
Jacobsen determined that the answer might be closer to home. In his words:
"If 3M can't do it, then it isn't possible."
Binger, himself
an engineer, enthusiastically agreed to act as a liaison between the monks
and his contact at 3M, Warren Langstraat, the laboratory operations manager
for the Construction Materials division. Langstraat, acting as a facilitator,
put Binger in touch with Donald Williams, an engineer in product development,
and George Tiers, a senior scientist. Tiers and Williams began an intensive
search for the correct kind of sand, permanent pigments and an adhesive
to bind it all together.
The sand traditionally used in mandalas is made from crushed limestone, which
provides a particle that is fine enough for exquisite detail. The problem
with using the crushed limestone in the Minnesota mandala was that it
would not hold a permanent pigment, necessary to withstand both light
and the eventual onslaught of an adhesive. In the end, scientist George
Tiers discovered a silicate particle perfect to the task in an unlikely
place: asphalt shingles. The same technologies used to create the colored
roofs for American suburban development were put to a more esoteric test:
could they hold pigment, and would the color meet with the monk's aesthetic
approval?
In a kind
of scientific relay race, Tiers handed the silicate particle to Donald
Williams, who began to experiment with bonding synthetic pigments by firing
them at high temperatures. Williams's role was critical: he essentially
created the palette, a range of ten basic colors which could be thinned
with white sand to create the full spectrum.
By the time
the monks took up residence in the museum, the materials and the method
were in place. After a ceremony blessing the space, the monks began to
draw a blueprint for this rendering of the schematic diagram of the Buddhist
cosmos. The monks determined to make a mandala dedicated to Yamantaka,
the lord of death. A mandala is essentially a diagram for the Buddhist
hierarchy. Yamantaka, rendered as an abstract symbol, occupies the central
position. He is surrounded by four celestial gates, which mark the cardinal
directions. Various aspects of spiritual and human existence ring the
celestial palace, ranked from the sacred to the profane.
There is no artistic ego at work in the creation of a mandala. Each monk might
have a specialty, but this unique artistic event is ultimately a collaboration.
The Gyuto monks worked for four weeks on the Yamantaka mandala. The monks
marked its completion with a consecration, and then the mandala, though
a sacred object, became once again the province of science.
Curator Jacobsen
and Binger had been experimenting with spraying small sand paintings with
adhesive. The sand surface is so delicate it shows the tracks of an insect,
and Jacobsen discovered that the adhesive, when it is applied in too thick
of a stream, pitted the sand. A fine mist of adhesive was in order, and
Institute facilities staff Al Silberstein and Ed Peterson began to construct
a tent over the mandala to contain the spray. The initial spraying was
a success—the adhesive hardened the sand, bonded it to the base
and dried without leaving a shiny surface. But all of the three-dimensional
surfaces needed more glue. At this point, Ed and Al (both artists themselves)
took to the surfaces with an eyedropper, meticulously reinforcing the
initial layer of adhesive.
Beginning
June 6, 1992, the sand mandala defied both gravity and time. Featured
in an exhibition, "In the Shadow of Everest: Buddhist Art of the Himalayas,"
a sand mandala was hung like a painting on the wall for the first time.
This extraordinary event became an artistic representation of a culture
in peril. |