Mandalas are drawings composed of sand.
Millions of grains of sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of days. When finished, to symbolize the impermanence of all that exists, the colored sands are swept up and poured into a nearby river or stream where the waters carry healing energies throughout the world. When requested, the monks arrange to preserve a mandala, though this is not traditional. The subject for a Tibetan sand painting is known in Sanskrit as a mandala or cosmogram. In general, all mandalas have outer, inner and secret meanings.