Remember sand art from when you were a kid? It's that craft where you took a clear, empty bottle and poured in layer upon layer of colored sand until the whole thing was filled to the brim.

When Samten created a sand mandala at the American Museum of History in New York in 1988 at the request of the Dalai Lama, it was the first time the 2,600-years-old ancient ritual art was seen ...