It is a transient art form, thought to have originated in India and been transferred in the middle ages to Tibet. In Tibetan Buddhism, a mandala is an imaginary palace that is contemplated during meditation. Each object in the palace has significance, representing some aspect of wisdom or reminding the meditator of some guiding principle. Various scriptural texts dictate the shapes, forms, and colors of the mandala. There are many different mandalas, each with different lessons to teach and blessings to confer.
Most mandalas contain a host of deities, symbolic archetypes of the landscape of the mind.
Among the Tibetan arts, painting with colored sand ranks as one of the most unique and exquisite. Millions of grains of colored sand are painstakingly laid into place on a flat platform over a period of several days, forming an intricate diagram of the enlightened mind and the ideal world. 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 the healing energies throughout the world. The Chenrezig sand painting constructed at Webster University, then swept up Saturday, will poured into the Mississippi River, conferring blessings on the St. Louis Region and the world. The bodhisattva Chenrezig symbolizes compassion as a central focus of the spiritual experience.