Being a monk with a mandala might seem challenging to a non-monk.

After days of painstaking work, placing colored grains in an intricate geometric pattern on a large mat, the sand painting is destroyed. Whoosh, just like that, the monks sweep the mandala into a dusty pile, carry it to a body of water, dump it in and watch as it returns to nature.

You’d think they might get frustrated with this practice of non-attachment, spending hours hunched over, the resulting achy bodies, and then nothing to show for it. But they’re just fine. Happy, even.

“Some people say they got a good feeing from the mandala,” said Geshe Tsewang Dorje. “They feel very peaceful, some get patience, some energies. So many people seem very good to see the mandala. Through these we also offer to transport our love and compassion to to others — this is the main purpose. That is the importance and how to spend our lives with meaning, with peace and happiness.”

In a Buddhist monastery, the title of geshe is the equivalent of a PhD. It’s a monk who has completed at least 20 years of monastic training and passed their exams.

Dorje is the director and founder of Ngari Institute, a nongovernmental organization in Ladakh, India, in the Himalayas. The foundation provides free education, food and shelter for about 50 children. Dorje and three other Ngari monks are currently on Ngari Institute’s Great Compassion Mandala Tour. They visit cities around the U.S., where they create and destroy gorgeous mandalas, offer blessings, hold lectures and visit with those interested in Tibetan Buddhism.

The Ngari Institute monks came to town six years ago to make a mandala at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College and deposit it in Monument Creek. This year they’ll create their work of art at Manitou Art Center in Manitou Springs and return it to Fountain Creek, across the road from the MAC. The monks will build their mandala Nov. 5-9. The dissolution ceremony is Nov. 9. Other activities are planned, including a free traditional Tibetan tea and community potluck on Nov. 10 at Tashi’s Tibetan Meditation Center.

During this visit, the monks will create a medicine buddha.

“The medicine buddha is an appropriate theme as is the compassion theme, what with the elections and wars going on,” said Rick Meinig, a member of Bodhi Mind Center, an organization helping bring the monks to town. “It’s for both personal, physical and spiritual healing and dealing with obstacles and problems.”

The reason for their visit is threefold, Dorje says: to bring a mandala and maintain relationships with those in the Pikes Peak region, to share their Tibetan Buddhist teachings, as well as love and compassion, and to fundraise for the children they shelter at their monastery.

People are welcome to watch the monks create the mandala, as well as join them for the dissolution ceremony.

“People should come for the art and the beauty of it,” Meinig said. “The underlying message in the mandala, especially once it’s destroyed and returned to nature, is everything in life is changing and not permanent. Being attached to things or concepts can be a source of discomfort or suffering. Yes, you take life seriously, but you don’t obsessively cling to things.”

And come for the joviality. The message of a mandala might sound serious, but monks can be silly, too.

“They’re so accessible,” Meinig said. “They’re always laughing and joking. It’s a really cheerful environment.”

And if you happen to accidentally exhale the wrong way and blow up the mandala while they’re working on it?

“If you bump into the table and mess it up, they would just laugh and say see? It’s impermanent,” Meinig said.