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Carnegie Center Hosts Tibetan Monks from Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery

Tuesday, March 5 through Thursday, March 7, 2019

 

Schedule for Tibetan Monks’ visit to the Carnegie Center for Art and History

Tuesday, March 5, 12:00 PM, Mandala Opening Ceremony

Tuesday, March 5, Ongoing Mandala Construction until 5:00 PM

Tuesday, March 5, 6:00 – 7:00 PM, “Life in a Monastery”

Wednesday, March 6, 10:00 AM – 5:30 PM, Ongoing Mandala Construction

Wednesday, March 6, 12:00 – 1:00 PM, Hands-on sand painting

Thursday, March 7, 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM, Finish Mandala, 5:00 – 6:00 PM, Closing Ceremony

The Carnegie Center for Art and History is pleased to announce that seven Tibetan monks from the Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery located in Dehradun, India will visit the museum March 5-7, 2019, for a series of public programs.  The monks are traveling throughout the United States promoting cultural awareness and raising funds for their monastery.

The public is invited to witness the monks as they work on the 2019 World Peace Mandala, a sand painting to help encourage peace and understanding, created on the floor of the Carnegie Center’s front foyer. The monks will present several programs during their visit, including an opportunity for the public to try sand painting.  Programs are free and open to the public, though a suggested donation of $5.00 is appreciated. The monks will also have traditional Tibetan merchandise for sale. Donations and sales proceeds will benefit the Labrang Tashi Kyil Monastery.

This will be the third visit the monks have made to New Albany following trips to New Albany in 2013 and 2016. The monks are based in Indiana because their tour is in conjunction with the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center located in Bloomington, Indiana. The late elder brother of the current 14th Dalai Lama, Thubten Norbu, who once lived in Bloomington, was a professor of Tibetan studies at Indiana University and helped establish the Tibetan Cultural Center in 1979. Norbu was among the first high profile Tibetans to go into exile in the United States after China overran their country. Bloomington has since become a hub of activity for the Tibetan Buddhist community in our country.

A focus of the Tashi Kyil monks will be the creation of the 2019 World Peace Mandala. The mandala is a circular design comprising auspicious Buddhist symbols and is created using a chak pur, which is a metal funnel that is used to slowly build the design up using extremely fine grains of colored sand. After hours of painstaking work to create the finished design, the artwork is then swept up and ritually destroyed as a reminder of the Buddhist principle of impermanence. The mandala is finished in a Closing Ceremony involving ritual, music, and a colorful procession of monks and visitors carrying what is left of the swept- up mandala to the New Albany’s riverfront.

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