By Shannon Bigelow and Sylvie Simmons
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.