Reception sponsored by our Center
The Center for Buddhist Studies is pleased to sponsor the Reception of the Sand Mandala event hosted by Arizona Friends of Tibet on Saturday, October 18, at 2 p.m. at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. This reception is dedicated to the loving memory of Peggy Mellon Hitchcock.
Renowned Tibetan Buddhist scholar, teacher, translator, and artist Venerable Lama Losang Samten will create his Kalachakra sand mandala—the same design he first built in 1988 at the Museum of Natural History in New York, the first sand mandala ever created in the West.
Event Details
• Open Ceremony:
October 12, 2025, 11 a. m.
• Public Mandala Viewings:
October 13–17, 2025
– Mornings: 9 a.m.–12 p.m.
– Afternoons: 3 p.m.–6 p.m. (Thursday until 5 p.m.)
• Reception & Dissolution Ritual:
October 18, 2025, 2 p.m.
• Location: Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine
Lobby, 1502 E Mabel St., Tucson, AZ 85719
• FREE and open to public.
Schedule Highlights
• Losang-la begins work on the mandala on Sunday, October 12, continuing for several days with daily public viewing periods.
• In keeping with Tibetan Buddhist tradition and the teachings on the impermanence of all things, the mandala will be dissolved in a public ritual on Saturday, October 18, followed by a reception.
Event Description
Witness the creation of a sand mandala on the University of Arizona campus. The mandala is a Tibetan Buddhist ritual artform that helps viewers to envision enlightenment. Venerable Lama Losang Samten will create the intricate and colorful patterns of the mandala over the course of several days. When he is done, he will conduct a dissolution ritual at which the mandala will be destroyed as a meditation upon impermanence.
The particular mandala to be created at U of A is the Kalachakra, or “Wheel of Time,” regarded as an especially powerful tool for healing and transformation and transmitted to Buddhist practitioners across the world.
Come witness this extraordinary expression of art, devotion, and impermanence.
This event is in partnership with the College of Humanities 2025 Tucson Humanities Festival and hosted by the University of Arizona:
Center for Buddhist Studies, Health Humanities Hub, Department of Religious Studies & Classics, Department of East Asian Studies, and the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine.
For more information on the Sand Mandala event, please visit the event page at arizonafriendsoftibet.org/calendar.
Find more information about Tucson Humanities Festival events and subscribe to the mailing list at humanitiesfestival.arizona.edu.
