By Della Hasselle
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — A new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History is offering Manhattanites a little peace of mind.
"Global Weekend: Brain and the Creative Tibetan Mind," a six-day festival that started Tuesday, celebrates Tibetan culture by inviting audience members to participate in meditation, learn monastic dances and experience the making of a sand mandala.
Led by Tibetan monks, the festival kicked off Tuesday with an explanation of Buddhist methods, followed by a meditation chant that focused on the Buddhist themes of forgiveness, self-improvement and the release of greed.
"Me, me, me, me, me...that is not good," said Khen Rinpoche Geshe Kachen Lobzang Tsetan, the abbot of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery chant who led the meditation, which took place under the blue whale in the museum's Milstein Hall of Ocean Life.
"The suffering of division, the suffering of anxiety...how miserable that is!" he added. "You have the key to change, and not to close the door."
"It was beautiful," art therapist and Upper East Side resident Ashley Dorr, 34, said about the meditation, adding that New Yorkers in particular could benefit from daily introspection.
"It's such a fast city," she said. "Our minds are always speeding, and we don't always realize how much we are being affected by it."
The festival kicked off a six-month exhibit, "Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings," which further explains Tibetan rituals through a collection of hand-painted scroll paintings demonstrating early medical knowledge and procedures in Tibet.
"Both the art of reproduction and information on Tibetan medicine contained in the paintings represent conscious acts of transmission across time and space, the living work of culture," said Laurel Kendall, the curator of the museum's anthropology division.
As a demonstration of those ideas, Tibetan monks led onlookers in a prayer ceremony, a procession through the exhibit, and invited them to witness the beginning of a "Medicine Buddha" sand mandala creation.
The exhibit includes ancient surgical instruments and minerals such as lapis lazuli and turquoise, which according to Tibetan ritual, are used to cure ailments including skin disease and fever.
After Tuesday's ceremony, many New Yorkers stayed longer to ask questions and soak in the teachings that some believed would lead to peace of mind and further enlightenment.
"It's hard to find words to describe this," Long Island acupuncturist Rocco Bonavita, 49, said.
"For people that are looking for something, searching for something, it gives you time to be introspective and search within the self for answers, because that is ultimately where they are."
Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings is on view at the Museum of Natural History, 77th Street between Columbus and Central Park West, from Jan. 25 to July 17, 2011.
