Tibetan monks wrap up SU visit with powerful closing ceremony

With as much dignity and beauty as their opening ceremony, the visiting Tibetan monks wrapped up their week-long visit Friday with stirring music and chanting.

Although this time instead of drawing chalk lines, they presented the finished mandala. An intricate piece of art constructed from tiny grains of precious gems.

It took the monks all week to complete and although it's a painstaking process, the result was breathtaking.

But what happened next was emotional, as we watched Gheshe Lowden La slowly yet gracefully dismantle the art.
 
"We dismantle it to symbolize that nothing lasts forever everything is in permanence it teaches that lesson," explains Gheshe.

An important lesson that left a mark on some S-U students.

One student told 47 ABC, "It was rather surreal. It was kind of beautiful but in the moment cause you know it's not going to last."

Another said, "I think it was very metaphorical for the rest of life. It's something that is definitely not permanent but none less it's very beautiful. I think it's very true with anyone's life you know we only have a very short period of time on earth, but yet we can do so many beautiful things with our life."

These monks, although only spending a short time in Salisbury, left a mark as beautiful as the mandala.

Traditions and culture that folks here say they will remember forever.
 
"It really it makes you reevaluate the type of life we live here because they have what they brought with them and were such a materialistic society that it makes you see the small problems in your life that our normally think of as really big as kind of small as they really are," says one SU student.

"It was just a total out of world experience like I would never see myself experience anything like this ever if it wasn't for coming to school here," explains another.

Like the many grains of colorful gemstones now in the Wicomico River at the end of the ceremony, the monks, their blessings, and the experience are now always here even though their visit is now over.