An Afternoon at the Smithsonian

Today I went to the Sackler Gallery to see an exhibit there of Tibetan Buddhist art. They had a whole room set up as a shrine. It's not exactly what someone would have had in their home. Regular people just have a corner of the living room set up as a shrine. This was more like what a wealthy person would have, but even more so. It was just chock full of gold and copper Buddhas, and other buddhas (to be honest, I'm not sure I understand it all, but there were a bunch of different buddhas, and deities that they worship. I have read some about Buddhism, but it seems pretty complicated. Anyway, this was one of the coolest things I've seen. This lady at the left is a Tara - she's a female deity. I like her because there are many different versions (green,white, red, black, etc) which represent different characteristics. She's often shown with one foot uncrossed, showing that she's ready to step out of enlightenment and help us poor suffering humans.

One cool thing in the shrine were these sort of mini-shrine boxes that were elaborately carved, with windows for each statue.

It was truly a sight to see - I wish they'd had a post card of that room. I'll have to see if I can find one. I'm always sort of disappointed in museum gift shops. They never seem to have what I think they should have. I wanted a small copy of one of the buddhas in the shrine, but they had nothing like that. And also a picture of that room.

So, I spent a long time in the museum. Part of the exhibit was some paintings done by Situ Panchen on various lines of buddhist teachers and masters from the 18th century. Very interesting.

After the museum I walked around a very pretty garden - the Haupt Garden - which is right outside the Sackler and next to the Smithsonian Castle. It was beautiful - lots of little fountains where birds were busy taking baths - it was so hot. The garden was probably at it's peak since although it was hot, it's not that dry August hot yet, so a lot of things were in bloom.

I'm a little aggravated at myself because they had a monk come to the museum back in March and make a sand mandala over a week. I wish I'd known that was going on - I really need to pay more attention to what's going on. There's a cool time-lapse video of it at http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/current/RealmoftheBuddha.htm.

The last place I went was the Folger Rose Garden. It was actually a pretty small piece of land right across from the Mall. But again, I think it was a it's peak. The roses were so gorgeous, and when the breeze blew it smelled SO good. The funny thing is that while the flowers themselves smelled good, like roses should, there was another scent - maybe the roses combined with their leaves. It's hard to explain, but it brought back a very old memory of Grandpa and his roses. Their backyard was sort of terraced, with these little stepping stones that went down to where the roses were. In my memory, it is hot, hot, very hot that day, but I distinctly remember going down there with him. They had one of those white concrete bird baths. I don't know what we did - he probably just worked in his garden and I just messed around. And I'm sure I went down there many times. But it's so funny how a smell can take you back to another time in an instance. I love that feeling! It was a good memory, and made me think of Grandpa, and the roses, the Hershey's miniatures back when they tasted better and were wrapped like real miniature candy bars, and the collection of glass animals that he'd let us look at. He wasn't a particularly loving Grandpa, but there's some good stuff there.

I did all this by myself, which was actually the way I'd wanted it. J T. is traveling, and Andy was going to go with me, but then he realized there was a soccer game on he wanted to see. You'd think he'd be sick of soccer since that's all he's done the last week is watch soccer, but I guess not. But, it was ok - I had a very good time.