After three days it is beautiful—delicate as lace—symmetrical, triangles and squares in different colored sand overlaid with the most intricate of curlicues, patterns, loops, baubles and a 3-dimensional pattern over pattern, taking several hours a day, four monks at a time, four days of the week. I watch it grow, day by day, a thing of beauty, of infinite patience, of utter impermanence, because two days from now, it will be swept into a pile, a mound of multicolored sand, each grain a different color to be transported to a Jones Falls stream in a procession of eight monks in flowing saffron and maroon, and Anjali in deep blue leading the way—a girl born half American, beautiful like a female monk herself—and the participants of the ceremony in the rear, men, women and children bringing “peace in our hearts and in our city.” (the motto of Anjali’s Baltimore Yoga Village.) And at the river, the sand will be poured and swept away by the stream. And there will be no mandala any more. There will be nothing but the cloudiness of a swept broom, and after the mattress has been swabbed, only the even tone of permanently dyed blue will remain.
So, here at the meditation, the yoga studio is packed to the brim, eyes closed, utter silence except for a collective breath. And yet, the mandala isn’t even complete. God hasn’t even finished creating the world. We gather, each of us, a grain of sand, scattered through the world in rectangles and triangles, cities and continents, on land and islands, each of us a different color, a different faith, different voices, different talents and failings, clustered together, speaking the same of different language, an ordered mosaic with incredible intricacy and capacity for love and forgiveness. In my dream, I see it from above and marvel at this forming world—all of us sand, only as different as location, space and time. But in my dream, it begins—a whirring, a breeze, a sneeze, a blurring of lines, rolling into gigantic waves—-waves of rainbows—-not blending, but mixed, roiling up under a blue sky. The ocean is filled with rainbow waves, cresting, breaking , gathering momentum,, and scooping more sand from the bottom of oceans and seas, rivers and lakes, cresting, flowing into deltas of color, churning and churning, and finally flowing from sea to land, onto rocks and under rocks, into corners, finally reaching the shore where it all began.
