Losang samten biography of donald

Toggle navigation. Search by Name, State, Culture or Tradition. Name S. Artist Losang Samten. Losang Samten. Asian , Tibetan. Artisan , Sand Mandala Painter. Listen Losang Samten answers the question 'Could you talk a bit about when you were born, where you grew up, and how you learned to do sand painting? About Documentary Arts Creating and preserving new perspectives on the arts, culture, and history since So I make a dance with them.

On the first day, someone asks me to tell them more. The illusion that we are not interdependent is really the cause of most of our problems today. But I also tell myself that I have to participate. And it matters what happens in the United States. This country is very important for many people in the world. Even though they had to leave their home in , my parents felt that all was not lost.

Because America was still there. Even now people look to America for hope. And so, if America falls apart, who do they look to?

Losang samten biography of donald

You can. That is very, very important to understand. Thank you for subscribing to Tricycle! As a nonprofit, we depend on readers like you to keep Buddhist teachings and practices widely available. Subscribe Tricycle is a nonprofit that depends on reader support. After fleeing central Tibet as a child refugee in , Samten studied, debated, and practiced for more than two decades in exile [ 7 ] at Namgyal Monastery : since its establishment in either or by the 3rd Dalai Lama , the personal monastery of all the Dalai Lamas.

In , Samten was charged by the 14th Dalai Lama to come to the United States to demonstrate the sand mandala art form; marking the first time that a Tibetan mandala was constructed in the West, at New York City's American Museum of Natural History. Samten left monastic life in In , Samten worked on the Martin Scorsese film Kundun — about the young 14th Dalai Lama — as religious technical advisor, sand mandala supervisor, and actor.

His history of Namgyal Monastery is written in Tibetan. Samten has demonstrated the traditional practice of creating powdered mandalas at the following museums:. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. I truly care for this tradition and so the recognition is wonderful. You have to learn the painting, the design, the meaning of the colors and the purpose.

I came to the United States in and since then there has been a huge interest across the country - and all over the world, in fact - from museums and galleries wanting to know about this culture, especially sand painting or sand mandala. It was the first time I had never done that kind of project in a museum or for the general public. At the beginning we really didn't know how it would go, but from the museum and the public' s point of view it was very successful.

Since then a number of artists - not just me - have been traveling and doing the sand mandala publicly. NEA: What is usually the hardest part of learning how to do the sand painting? SAMTEN: The hardest part is memorizing all the designs and the colors and which color goes where and which design does what. In our tradition, when you make the mandala you cannot look at a picture of it while you are doing it.

You have to memorize the mandala first. Memorization is the hardest part, especially knowing the meaning of each color. Each color has many different levels of meaning. SAMTEN: From the general point of view the white is the water, south is yellow, west is red, north is green and the center is blue. White represents water, yellow represents the earth, red represents fire, green represents the air and blue represents space.

Additionally the colors represent what we call five aggregates: bone, feeling, perception, formation, consciousness and the senses. The colors are also an antidote for the emotions anger, hatred, jealousy, attachment, ignorance. So there' s many different elements to the colors. NEA: And how many would you say that most monks master when they' re going through the training?

If the artist has learned that design the rest of the training is much easier. In the Namgyal monastery five or six mandalas are emphasized. Once you' ve had that training then the rest of the mandalas are very easy to learn. For example, there' s a Mandala of Compassion to emphasize and cultivate loving kindness compassion. Each has a different theme.

Which mandala we create in the monastery depends on what is being emphasized that month. In institutions like a university gallery, I will do a Mandala of Wisdom. Of course, I do show them many different designs that I could do.