Tibetan Buddhist monks begin five-day healing ceremony in Houston

Heart and intellect unite this week at the Asia Society Texas Center, as nearly a dozen Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in southern India return for the fifth consecutive year to share global healing in a time when the world needs it the most. Back by popular demand, the monks will present a multidimensional program as part of the Mystical Arts of Tibet tour, during which the public will be able to witness spiritual traditions that date thousands of years. Over five days, beginning with an opening ceremony to consecrate the site on Wednesday, the monks will construct an intricate sand mandala in the education center. A symbolic representation of the ideal universe, the geometric figure will first be outlined on a four-sided wooden platform, after which two to four monks, at any given time, will painstakingly lay millions of colored grains of sand onto the pattern using a traditional metal funnel known as a chakpur. “There’s something inherent in what they do of a sense of time and of being in the moment that is hard to find sometimes in our fast-paced society today that I think people are drawn to,” said Stephanie Todd Wong, who joined the Asia Society as director of arts and culture in 2016, after serving as executive director of Dance Source Houston. Alongside the free exhibit that is open to the public, the monks will present two, ticketed sacred music and dance ceremonies in the organization’s 270-seat theater. The first is a shorter version of the full-length, 90-minute evening program. The family-friendly performances will feature the culture’s signature multiphonic chanting known as zokkay — a tradition also called “overtone singing” — in which each of the chantmasters individually creates a complete chord by striking three notes at the same time deep within his throat. THE IMPERMANENCE OF LIFE: See the process of dismantling the mandala, on HoustonChronicle.com The low, reverberating, long-held notes are accompanied by the ceremonial sounds of traditional Tibetan instruments, including 10-foot-long dung-chen horns, drums, bells, cymbals and gyaling trumpets. To the music, monks in ornate costumes will perform masked, ancient temple dances including the “Dance of the Sacred Snow Lion” or the “Dance of the Black Hat Masters,” the latter of which is believed to eliminate negative energies, Wong explained. On Sunday, the monks will destroy the mandala by running a paintbrush through the center of their complex creation in a choreographed closing ceremony. After sweeping up the sand, they take it to a body of water to disperse it back into the world, thus purifying and healing the environment and its inhabitants. “Usually here, they scoop up little bits of the sand and put them in little bags to share with the crowd, too, so that visitors can take a little piece of that back with them either as a memory or to also release it themselves if they so choose,” Wong said. Throughout the five-day program, the public is invited to participate in decorating a Lungta prayer flag, which is believed to release prayers into the world when the wind blows through it. Additionally, for a few select hours on Saturday, visitors will also have the opportunity to contribute to a second, community mandala. In all of these rituals, there is a sense of ephemerality, serving as a great reminder of the impermanence of life, Wong explained. With both the construction of the mandala and the live performances, in particular, one must be present to see them in the moment. Yet viewing such elaborate, meditative and artistic traditions has an impact that is anything but transient. In their travels, the monks share not only their culture and beliefs but also long-lasting and far-reaching blessings of peace and healing through sacred performance art. “We are finding ourselves in a divisive time,” Wong said. “There is a lot of questioning of ‘the other’ I think that happens right now, which makes our overall mission of creating cultural understanding between Asia and the West ever more important. This is a way for us to get to know our neighbor more closely, more deeply, to understand different perspectives in the world and hopefully to put positive energies back out into our community and show that we are more alike than we are different.” Lawrence Elizabeth Knox is a Houston-based writer. PREVIEW: Find fun things to do and see around Houston in our weekly Preview newsletter. Subscribe here.

Tibetan Buddhist monks begin five-day healing ceremony in Houston

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