Every year the Crowe Museum of Asian Art brings in a group of Monks from Tibet to create a prayer mandala. The mandala is made entirely of colored sand – it takes about a week to make. At the end of the week a special prayer ceremony is held. During this ceremony, the mandala is blessed, destroyed and divided up into small plastic bags which are given to participants of the ceremony.

Most of the sand is deposited in a local river, but the bags are distributed as well – the idea is to allow the prayer mandala to travel in its sand form and released back into the world. Its quite a moving ritual involving the cycle of life, creation, influence and healing.