Together we walked toward the lake, where swans floated like plastic ornaments. We sat on a bench and I pointed to a dark wood chapel a few hundred yards away. “I’ve always noticed how beautiful that church is, but I’ve never been.”

“Let’s go in,” Sadie said. “I’ve always wondered what it looks like inside.”

A gravel walkway led toward the all-stone structure, where I hoped there would be air-conditioning. Sweat gathered on every surface of my body; the oppressive August heat made me dizzy. We approached the chapel and realized there was a ceremony of some sort. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on,” Sadie said.

We entered and found there were no electric lights or candles; the nave was lit with only the afternoon sun flowing into the room. There was a crowd around a rope, staring into the center where I couldn’t see. A bald, smiling monk wore a yellow robe and walked through the crowd; he wore a name tag.

“Monks?” I asked Sadie.

“A monk with a name tag,” she said. “I wouldn’t think a monk would wear such a thing.” She placed her hand over her mouth to stifle her laugh. “Let me figure out what’s going on. I’ll be right back.”

A hole opened in the crowd and I moved forward: My breath caught in between an inhale and an exhale. There on a table surrounded by black rope was a round design, artwork of the most elaborate and intricate pattern I’d ever seen—a mosaic or tiny tiles set into the glass table. I leaned over, looked closer, and saw the design was made of sand. The circle was completed with symbols and patterns I knew must have sacred meaning. I turned to the woman on my right; her hand was over her heart. “What is this?” I asked.

She lifted her eyebrows. “It’s a Tibetan sand mandala.”

“Huh?” I scooted closer. The beauty of the art, a pattern I could never paint with any brush or pencil, struck my heart like an ancient bell. The pattern wove in and out of itself, the beginning and the end unclear; the design began anywhere the gaze landed and yet never really ended.

The woman continued, “They—the monks—spend days making it. Hours every day in some kind of meditative way.”

I glanced between the sand and this woman. “Anyone here could just blow on it and it would be gone. Why isn’t anyone watching it or something? It would take only one big wind. One breath.”

“Exactly.”

Sadie came up next to me. “They’re about to have some kind of ceremony. You want to get out of here?”