
DATE: Monday, September 15, 1997            TAG: 9709150059

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B7   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   85 lines

THROUGH MUSIC AND ART, MONKS TRY TO HEAL WORLD

The close-shaven men wrapped in burgundy robes walked gently into the gallery, toting red luggage filled with the makings of art and music.

Most of the nine Tibetan Buddhist monks who showed up Sunday at The Arts Center of the Portsmouth Museums spoke little English, but their radiant smiles warmed a rapt audience of about 150 people.

At 2 p.m., seven monks lined up before a flat black platform, where they will spend much of the week creating a sand mandala, a sacred art form whose purpose is to heal. The opening ceremony was about to begin.

``We will invite all enlightened beings to bless that spot where we are making the mandala,'' the Venerable Ngawang Tashi, a monk, explained. ``Also, the chanting and rituals borrow that spot from the local land spirits.''

The monks, also called lamas, donned high, yellow headdresses, like golden cockscombs. One lama started in, his voice deep and resonant. In a kind of call-and-response, he intoned the chant and the others followed.

Their voices changed the air in the cavernous main gallery, where drawings and photos of Tibet and Tibetans by Ohio artists Philip Sugden and Carole Elchert are displayed. The monks' singing style, called multiphonic, is unique to their culture, involving the simultaneous utterance of three notes.

The primeval sound, between a hum and a growl, mesmerized the crowd, which encircled the monks four rings deep.

Then, they played their instruments. Imagine a cacophonous overlay of rattling cymbals, a wobbly trumpet line, a rhythmic drum beat and the mooselike bleating of long horns.

The room fell silent. The monks made the swift transition to artist-engineers, bringing out ruler, compass and chalk line to aid them in the sketching of an intricate, 2,500-year-old abstract design for a compassion mandala.

Norfolk artist Tom Crockett stared at Sugden's drawings while listening to the music.

Crockett, also an educator, was among a dozen or more visitors who brought cameras to document the proceedings. He said he would share his photos with students for discussions of how other cultures approach art.

``Nobody's going to buy this sand painting, and it's going to be destroyed within hours after it's completed. But nobody can say it's not art,'' he said.

Angela Winters of Norfolk found the picture-taking ironic. ``For something that is intended to be so temporary, they're trying to capture it forever.''

The monks are associated with the Drepung Loseling monastery, which originated in Tibet but is now based in South India. After China's 1959 invasion of Tibet, 250 monks fled to India, where the monk population now exceeds 2,500, Tashi said.

Since 1988, Drepung Loseling monks also have set up monasteries in Mineral Bluff and Atlanta, Ga.; Knoxville and Nashville, Tenn.; Asheville, N.C.; and Birmingham, Ala.

The monks in Portsmouth are from India but have been in Atlanta since August 1996 for an American sacred arts tour, Tashi said. They return to India in late November.

The tour raises funds for the monastery and builds American support for Tibet. Since the Chinese invasion, he said, ``our culture and civilization is under danger.''

Also, ``by doing this sacred dance, music and arts, we hope we can bring spiritual energy to this world.'' ILLUSTRATION: SACRED ART FROM SAND

Color Photo

TING-LI WANG/The Virginian-Pilot

Tibetan monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery of Dharamsala,

India, begin a mandala sand painting by drawing geometric patterns

at the Arts Center of the Portsmouth Museum. From left are Pema

Wangden, Sherab Dragpha, and Pema Rinchen. The monks also performed

songs and chanted. Over the course of one week, millions of grains

of colored sand will be laid into place to form the image of a

mandala, art whose purpose is to heal. Most sand mandalas are

destroyed shortly after completion to signify the fleeting nature of

life. Appears on p.B1