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Healing sands: Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India lay the center lines for their mandala sand painting on Thursday at the Alaska State Museum. A mandala is a geometric sand sculpture used as a tool for healing the Earth and its inhabitants.

michael penn / juneau empire

michael penn / juneau empire

Dance of purity: With dung-chen, which are long horns, playing in the background, Tibetan Buddhist monk Lobsang Paljor performs the Black Hat Lama Dance to purify and cleanse the area during opening ceremonies Thursday at the Alaska State Museum.

With the ceremonial blowing of two long dung-chen horns at 12:17 p.m. Thursday, seven monks from India's Drepung Loseling Monastery began the four-day process of creating a colored sand mandala in the Alaska State Museum to invoke the power of Akshobya, the ancient Buddha of all-knowing.

Macey Fredenberg, a sophomore at Juneau-Douglas High School, is part of a group of students creating an accompanying mandala 15 feet away from the monks. She was flabbergasted.

"I thought it was awesome," she said of the ceremony. "It's totally different than anything I'm used to."

"And just watching them do it, I'm kind of scared," she said of the mandala creation. "They're just so intricate."

About 200 people, most of them students, attended the mandala opening ceremonies, just left of the museum front doors. The monks are here as part of "The Mystical Arts of Tibet" world tour, sponsored by the Juneau Arts and Humanities Council.

The monks will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium, and will continue to work on the mandala from 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. today, 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Saturday and 1-3 p.m. Sunday. Closing ceremonies begin at 3 on Sunday. The monks will destroy their mandala to symbolize the impermanence of the world, then disperse the sands into Gold Creek.

All events are open to the public.

In Tibet, the art of dul-tson-kyil-khor, or "mandala of colored powder," is an ancient meditative way of cleansing the Earth. A mandala is a round sand sculpture made up of millions of colored grains of sand (three to four pounds) assembled in geometric shapes and iconic symbols. Construction begins by drawing an outline on the mandala platform. The process took the monks about two hours Thursday. The colored sands are poured into place by sending vibrations through thin metal funnels, or chak-pur.

"We create the mandala to present one of our ancient sacred arts, and also for the purpose of generating healing energies, eliminating negative energies and understanding global peace and harmony," said Tsepak Rigzin, the monks' spokesperson.

Ten to 15 students were at the museum Thursday to help start the JDHS mandala. Many more were expected to participate throughout the four days.

The project began as a community service project in teacher Gretchen Kriegmont's social studies course. Kriegmont has taught her classes about Tibetan culture and introduced them to the concepts behind mandalas.

The students' creation is meant to be a form of healing from the incidents of racial discrimination that have plagued the school for the past year.

"It started out as a way of combining the cultures around Juneau, and it's supposed to be symbolic of Juneau and Southeast Alaska," JDHS student Fredenberg said. "In the middle, we thought about putting hands, and then we thought that would be too hard. We decided to make it for peace and unifying cultures, and someone came up with the idea of yin and yang. Then we thought we should have it point southeast to represent topographically where we are."

The monks' mandala will take the form of Akshobya, a Buddha, often appearing in a blue hue, who is thought to have the power to change ignorance and hate into all-knowing. Akshobya is said to embody the total consciousness of all Buddhas.

"He is the Buddha of constant revelation," Rigzin said. "We believe this Buddha to have the energy or the spirit to resolve a lot of conflict on the personal level, and globally speaking as well."

• Korry Keeker can be reached at korry.keeker@juneauempire.com.