In this blessed Buddha-land of irrevocable enlightenment, In the lofty abode of openness, the intrinsic nature of things, having neutralized surface, depth, width, the limits of any dimension, on the highest plane where there is neither inner nor outer: the windows of vision are flooded with light.

Pema Kathang (Terton Orgyan Lingpa, 1326)

It is four in the morning. In a large white tent atop a mountain in California, five all-but-comatose men and women are completing a six-foot sand mandala for a ceremony that is to begin with our closing of the circle of wisdom fire that is the outermost circumference of the celestial palace. Sleep-deprived, we can barely see, but still we work. Suddenly, a quiet laugh breaks our concentration. Hands, dripping delicate trails of sand from metal funnels, pause. Our teacher, Lama Tharchin Rinpoche, stands by the mandala table as if he had appeared by magic. He tells us how much he loves us, how much he appreciates our work, how we are inseparable in this mandala forever. We smile, oddly refreshing tears in our eyes. Soon we finish and hobble off to find a bite of breakfast and relief for weary legs long past bending. Others come and fill the comers bordering the mandala with deep blue sand. The Buddha-field now rests in its space, waiting. It is July 1992; the place is Pema Osel Ling, the Land of Lotus Light, retreat center and home of the Vajrayana Foundation. Those of us gathered here are celebrating the miraculous birth of Padmasambhava, known in Tibet as Guru Rinpoche. The great adept who brought Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet, he is the center of all of the mandalas that come together for this extensive traditional celebration. These mandalas exist on many levels: our physical gathering together from many places, the construction of the supports of our practice--from the statue of Guru Rinpoche to the sand mandala, from masks and costumes to shrine room tent and kitchens--and the luminous sphere of the inner mandala raised by the practitioners in meditation. By the end of the third week of this summer retreat, the sand mandala is completed, to be consecrated and brought to life on the first morning of the final week. This is to be a drupchen or intensive seven days of continuous round-the-clock meditation practice and mantra recitation. On the last day of the retreat, we will perform the sacred dance cycle of the Eight Manifestations of Guru Rinpoche, bringing the manifestation of the mandala deities visibly into our midst.

The practice of a traditional art, whether it is ritual, the crafting of beautiful and useful things, or the art of creating community, is essentially about education. The work itself educes or draws out of the one who works a wholeness, transforming the environment and everything accomplished in it. The making of this mandala was the end of the world I knew, and, though I didn't recognize it at the time, the beginning of a radically new one. By creating not just a sand mandala but the entire physical and ritual context of its traditional setting, we created a world, and as that world grew up around us, we grew into it.

To understand what it means to "grow into" the mandala--to build the mandala world into oneself, whether by the mental arts of meditation and visualization or by creating with paint or colored sand--one must know what a Buddha-field is actually made of. It can be thought of as a door into an inner universe, a memory system in the form of a palace and its surrounding country. In the West, ancient rhetoricians memorized vast amounts of information by visualizing a mansion with all the objects in its many rooms imprinted with details of their discourse. For us as meditators, however, the aim is higher: the crafting of a fully enlightened being. The "myth" of a mandala--any mandala--is a story of how one becomes many, and how the many return to one. It teaches integration which begins and ends at the center. As the bodhisattva purifies and perfects qualities, these begin to radiate into the field of his or her activity: a pure world in the making. As this force builds, it creates an environment in which other aspiring beings can develop the same qualities, realizing the Buddha-nature inherent in everyone. As the perfection of patience grows, for example, a multiplicity of opportunity for positive thought and virtuous application follows. Each perfected quality creates a harmony and order where imagination can act clearly. The Buddha-field is a liberative art in that its very structure invites movement, a rhythm essential to life and growth, like the breath. The practitioner becomes a field of accumulating merit for others--the Lama's realization is the field in which students develop and mature. The universe could be imagined as a gigantic set of these lucent, interpenetrating spheres, each with an Awakened One at its center.

Our creation of the pure Buddha-world depends on our movement through our experience in a mindful way. This in turn depends on our intention. The Tibetans have a saying: "If the mind is pure, everyone is a Buddha. If the mind is impure, everyone is ordinary." The process of purifying the mind requires becoming vulnerable to greater possibility, so that vulnerability becomes a conduit of the blessing we need in order to melt barriers that obstruct our path. The Buddha-field is made, therefore, of such elements as the six perfections--generosity, discipline, patience, devotion, meditation, and wisdom--and the four immeasurable qualities of love, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. In building a sand mandala, there is no place for ego, pride, or self-assertion. There is no way to separate oneself from the world when one brings a world into being beneath one's own hands. Making the mandala changed and continues to change our relationship with the world. Throughout the process, we worked on ourselves and on each other in myriad and often unexpected ways. A friend and I were sitting by the mandala late in the evening. The base drawing had been completed, silvery webs on a pale grey foundation of faultlessly smooth paint. Everything was prepared; orderly pots of colored sand and funnels lay ready. Rinpoche came and joined us for a while, and we knew from what he did not say that it was past time to start sanding. In that silent mountain night, the hollow, rhythmic sound of vibrating metal funnels that would be background to our lives for weeks to come began. Unable to reach the center of the mandala from the ground, we two women sat on it as the monks do, forehead to forehead. We worked without speaking, at one with each other and with the work, until at last in the still hours of the morning the first four lotus petals had emerged, outlines of deep garnet red, their flourishes ornamented with gold. Guru Rinpoche's seat awaited him.

The ways of sand became my teacher. Years ago, learning the process of lost-wax casting, I discovered the languages of wax and fire, plaster and molten metals. As a painter, I know the language of pigment and canvas, ink and brushes and paper. Here I learned yet another new language: sand, vibration, time, and patience. Sometimes a single detail is one solitary grain, falling with the weight of the mountain behind it: the eye in a tiny face, a jewel writ small. Stonemasons say that every stone is a law unto itself, and I discovered that sand grains have this quality in miniature. Particles lie against each other in precise ways, edges cohere, layers converge according to the vibrations of the metal funnel. To play the rasp of the funnel becomes a kind of musical skill, as much intuition as instrument. Perhaps all artists learn to know in this way. As with any craft, the material molded our mental set, and even our bodies. One day, after working many hours without a break, I sat at lunch and watched my plate of beans and rice dissolve into tiny grains. The table went as well, and as I lifted my eyes to the dining hall, countless moving specks were all I saw, as if the spaces between our molecules had all been expanded.

The process of bringing the perfect world of the mandala into our world is analagous to the translation of humanity from one condition or state of being to another. As the millennium approaches, what seems to be trying to manifest is a new order of being, a new kind of existence altogether. We are seeing the beginnings of a reintegration of our culture, and perhaps of the world itself. The challenge of making our present chaotic changes into a better reality for everyone is reflected in the creation of the mandala, and in its accompanying rituals and sacred dances.

While these Buddha-worlds are ultimately the play of luminosity and emptiness of intrinsic awareness, from our present state they must arise from our development of the qualities of enlightened mind. Our mandalas--the one of sand and the one of our living selves-were built by our individual and collective devotion, our determination, and our hands.

Consecrated and brought to life by the Lamas, they consecrated and brought us to new life as well.