As students stare down the barrel of a busy month — papers, exams, deadlines and tying up loose ends of the school year — it can feel as though there is no time for rest. This can manifest in a chronic, baseline state of stress for students, who are constantly moving from one task to the next, leaving little space for reflection or presence.
Monks from the Gaden Shartse Monastery in South India visited Pomona College to help remedy this. They highlighted that amidst a chaotic world, there is a desperate, human need to engage in grounding, meditative practices.
From Wednesday, April 15, to Friday, April 17, monks from the historic Gaden Shartse Monastery in India visited Pomona College’s Benton Museum of Art. There, they turned the Benton’s pavilion room into an impromptu shrine room, with an intricately crafted mandala and incense. In the center of the room, they crafted the sand mandala.
The monks’ visit was organized to coincide with one of the museum’s current exhibitions, “The Meditative Object.” Both the exhibition and the event are intended to help people better understand the history and religious significance of meditation.
The monks disassembled the mandala on April 17, while leading open lessons about the dissolution process. Gathered in the pavilion, a captivated audience listened closely to monk Geshe Phuntsho’s closing speeches. Phuntsho told the audience about the significance of the sand mandala, which he, along with five other monks, created over three days.
He described how the significance of the mandala lies partially in the meditative process of creation — the monks dedicated the work to peace, and placed sand grains slowly and carefully.
After Phuntsho’s speech, the monks circled the mandala, preparing to dissolve their work. First, they engaged in ritual prayer, filling the gallery space with sounds of chanting and instruments. The prayer spanned over fifteen minutes, involving ritual objects and mudras. As their prayer concluded, the monks carefully swept the mandala away, leaving behind a multi-colored pile of sand.
“You are born empty-handed and you’ll die empty-handed,” Phuntsho said. “Life is impermanent, and we forget that. We sometimes think we’ll live forever. These [meditation] practices help us realize we have only a certain window of time and to appreciate that life is precious.”
The mandala’s creation and dissolution processes were intended to stress impermanence: What takes days to create takes only minutes to dissolve. Phuntsho elaborated on this idea, explaining how he aims to promote peace, unity and harmony in an increasingly chaotic world. He specifically believes in spreading this message to students and young people.
“Younger students have expressed that the guided meditations were really nice,” Phuntsho said. “People are trying to understand more, because something is lacking inside.”
Attendee Alexander James Matheson-Lieber CM ’27 visited the exhibition throughout the week, partaking in a guided meditation and observing the dissolution process. The guided meditation moved Matheson-Lieber, who later reflected on groundedness and compassion.
“My largest takeaway is to be more conscious and focused in my efforts to be compassionate and to be thankful for the people and things around me,” he said.
Matheson-Lieber described how he appreciated the opportunity to partake in mediation during this particularly stressful moment in the academic year. The monks’ guided meditations and reminders to slow down served as a stark contrast to many students’ built-up anxiety stemming from finals season.
“The guided meditation happened right after I took a midterm, so I was filled with adrenaline and then I came right here,” Matheson-Lieber said. “The contrast between those two experiences was almost jarring, but it made me realize just how much stress and pressure I’m building into my life. I’m thinking more about myself as a compassionate being, instead of just the normal role of myself as a student,”
Justine Bae Bias, the communications and engagement manager at the Benton, further explained the significance of the monks’ visit to Pomona and how it fit into the larger exhibition, “The Meditative Object.” The purpose of this exhibition is to explore how objects can serve as focal points for reflection. Hosting the monks provides a living, participatory example of that idea. The mandala is physical and fleeting yet represents larger truths.
“All things in life are impermanent, and with the dissolution of the sand mandala, the physical and material are destroyed, but the intention, the wisdom, the meditation for peace remains,” Bae Bias said. “The mandala is a creation of the universe, and while this one in particular was a meditation for peace, there were symbols of study, wisdom and compassion.”