Culture

Dancing in the Sand: A Child Punks Some Monks

by Jordan Yerman | May 24, 2007 at 08:54 am

627 views | 0 Recommendations | 1 comment

Several days' worth of sand-painting was undone in moments by a curious child, who could not resist having a bit of a dance amongst the millions of carefully-placed grains of sand laid down by a group of Buddhist monks. An excellent shorthand for the monks' understanding of earthly impermanence, and a PR coup in not publicly paying out on a young child.
The linked article has the security camera footage of the child in action. Actually, I like his moves.

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.”