I had a class in which 5 of the 8 participants were breast cancer survivors. But Yoriko’s cancer had metastasized, although she looked healthy and happy. She enjoyed coming to the next mandala class announcing that after she’d started painting mandalas she went off all her heavy medications. She said she was doing mandalas for her healing therapy and felt great. She went to Japan with her daughter to see her dad who was in the hospital and they all did mandalas together and hung them on his hospital wall. A few months later several Tibetan monks came to her home town to make a sand mandala and I invited her to go. She came in a wheelchair with oxygen, but looked much like she had always looked, in good spirits with just a little less hair. She bought some Tibetan prayer flags to hang around her bed and thanked me profusely for inviting her to her first sand mandala which she continued to watch at her home via live stream on her computer.
While we were there I asked the interpreter if one of the monks would show me how to draw the 8-petaled lotus at the center of their mandala, something I could not figure out. I had my small mandala sketch book with me, thinking I might draw a mandala myself, and handed it and the compass, ruler and pencil to one of the monks. He graciously showed me how to draw the flower and in that act, I felt he was giving me a blessing. I gave him one of my books—the only thing I had with me to thank him.
About a month later,Yoriko’s daughter came to our Coffee Shop Mandala time where mandala students met to have tea or coffee and do mandalas together. Her mother stayed at home. The young girl wanted to know how to draw the lotus flower the monk had shown me, and which I’d in turn had shown her mother. As she sat next to me, I showed her, and made the drawing into a mandala “Light and Healing for Yoriko.” She passed away shortly after that. I was contacted by a mutual friend of ours and asked if I wanted to create a quilt square to include in a quilt which was being made for Yoriko’s daughter. I took a photo of the mandala I had done, printed it onto fabric and stitched it on a quilt square for the quilt. All the squares were then put together into a quilt to keep the young daughter warm with the love from her mother’s friends.
[pb_vidembed title=”Monks Paint Compassion Mandala” caption=”” url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71XWB_xbhX8″ type=”yt” w=”576″ h=”385″]
Watch this amazing short video showing Buddhist monks creating a sanding painting mandala, from start to finish.
