The Tibetan Monks, who are from the Drepung Loseling Monastery, graced the Lily Dale community members with a taste of their culture.

Reverend Joanne Copley-Nigro and Dr. Patricia Bell are the monks designated head guardians while they are here visiting Lily Dale. According to Copley-Nigro, the monks usually visit every year, but last year they were unable to make it to Lily Dale.

“Everybody is always just elated when the monks come here because it just brings a brightness and a freshness here,” Copley-Nigro, a 12-year Lily Dale resident, said.

She also remarked that it is a pleasure to see the monks walk through the Lily Dale streets and interact with the community members and their children.

OBSERVER Photo by Jordan W. Patterson A Tibetan Monk works on a sand mandala Saturday during Lily Dale's opening weekend.

“They become part of our community for a week and they really enjoy it because it’s a place they can walk freely and everybody talks to them. … There’s a lot of compassion, openness (and) kindness,” Copley-Nigro said. “So, everybody’s really thrilled to have them here.”

The Tibetan Monks blessed the opening of the Butterfly Habitat on Friday, but on Saturday they were observed in Lily Dale’s fire station as they worked on what they called a “sand mandala.” According to Copley-Nigro, mandala is a word that originally meant “world in harmony.”

The sand mandala began as a table with a design etched into the top. The monks then gathered different colored sand prepared on a separate table and used their ancient tools to scrape grains of sand into the grooves.

The mandala increasingly became brighter and brighter with each grain of sand filling the image. Sometimes one at a time or and other times four at a time, the monks would take turns working on the mandala.

As described by one of the monks, Geshe Thupten Loden — Geshe is a title within their culture — the mandala represents compassion.

“We believe that by making the mandala, it’s going to benefit the environment as well as the inhabitant,” Loden said.

Among the colors that the monks were using for their mandala are the five basic colors: white, red, yellow, green and blue, according to Loden.

“These five colors represent the elements of nature,” Loden explained.

Loden went on to say that human beings experience “ups and downs” because of our state of mind and the mandala is representative of each and everyone’s state of mind that is not yet purified.

Loden also described the mandala as a “roadmap to reach our divine core” and said that they believe everyone has great potential to be purified.

According to Loden, the closing ceremony they will have on Tuesday symbolizes that everything is finite and nothing lasts forever.

“We believe that every grain of sand carries a hidden property,” Loden said.

Loden and the other monks believe that because the water in the lake will eventually be spread to different places, the sand they disperse within the water will affect more than just Lily Dale and Cassadaga Lake.

The Tibetan Monks practice Buddhism, which is not to be confused with the prevailing belief in Lily Dale that is Spiritualism. The spiritual leader of Buddhism is the Dalai Lama. The monks had a display set up that was decorated in the Dalai Lama’s honor while they were hard at work on the sand mandala.

According to Loden, the mandala will take up to two or three days to finish. Once they are complete, the monks will have a ceremony and release the sand mandala into Cassadaga Lake.

Gail Carpenter was one of the many people watching the monks as they worked on the mandala. She took a nine-hour drive from Rhode Island when she heard that Lily Dale was going to be hosting the Tibetan Monks for a short period of time.

Carpenter used to visit Lily Dale every year when she lived in Canandaigua, but now the trip is much farther so she is limited to her visits, but for the monks, she made an exception.

“I think it’s amazing, the amount of concentration and just the intricacy of it,” Carpenter said of the monks’ work on the mandala.

By nearly mid-day, the monks had distributed enough of the sand onto the design that an image resembling a flower could be seen very distinctly.

The Tibetan Monks will release the sand mandala during a dismantling ceremony on Tuesday to coincide with the Fourth of July holiday, according to Copley-Nigro.

“We’re grateful for Lily Dale for bringing (the monks) in,” Copley-Nigro said.