Next time you’re in Baruch’s Vertical Campus, I encourage you to drop by the Mathematics Department Office on the 6th floor. Newly installed on the wall, in a utilitarian position behind the photocopier, is the base of a Sand Mandala which was made at Baruch last September by visiting Tibetan monks.
The base is not the mandala itself — that was swept away at the end of the day. The base is an embodiment of the mathematics underlying the mandala’s construction. It’s what’s left of the mandala after you’ve swept away the sand, the color, the decoration, the ritual — and the mandala itself. It’s nothing, and yet it’s something — it’s symmetry.