Longtime Islamorada resident Karin Wolfe is getting ready to welcome some very particular friends. On the finish of this month, Wolfe will host three of seven touring Tibetan monks who can be passing via the Higher Keys on what is named a sacred arts tour.
“I’m assuming they stand up early and do their meditation and perhaps chant and have tea, which might be form of a pleasant factor to have that vibe in my home,” Wolfe stated, who’s a member of the nonprofit Keys For Peace, the primary sponsor of the tour. “I stand up early and do the identical factor, so perhaps I’ll get to do it with them; I don’t know, we’ll see.”
“They simply have such a ravishing presence that while you’re round them, you’re feeling very calm and peaceable and also you simply really feel the love coming from them,” added Wolfe.
This would be the ninth tour via the Higher Keys for the Tibetan Buddhist monks and all occasions are free and open to the general public. Their final Higher Keys go to passed off in 2020 proper earlier than the pandemic. Earlier than arriving within the Higher Keys on the finish of this month, they are going to go to Key West.
Keys to Peace founding member Denise Downing stated the aim of the monks’ pilgrimage is threefold.
The primary mission is to deliver consciousness to the significance of interfaith concord and compassionate dwelling.
The exiled Tibetan Buddhist monks are from the Drepung Gomang monastery in southern India and the second cause for the tour is to maintain their Tibetan tradition alive.
“It’s been greater than 60 years that the communist Chinese language took over Tibet,” Downing stated. “There have been many years of human rights violations and abuse, many years of oppression,”
The third purpose of the tour is to assist elevate funds for his or her monastery, which has greater than 2,000 monks.
The tour will happen at a number of venues throughout the Higher Keys starting on Tuesday, Jan. 28. Places embrace the Key Largo library for a cultural efficiency. A Tibetan market can be held at Coral Isles Church and the Islander Resort. The JOY Heart in Islamorada will host a question-and-answer session with the monks and a Tibetan market as properly.
Enterprise and residential blessings may be scheduled for a recommended donation.
The opening ceremony kicks off on Tuesday, Jan. 28 on the Florida Keys Historical past and Discovery Heart on the Islander Resort, the place the monks will start the four-day course of of making the World Peace Sand Mandala. A mandala is a geometrical design or sample that represents the universe or deities.
“That is an occasion to not be missed, as a result of even when you understand what will occur to that mandala, it form of takes your breath away,” Downing stated.

To create the mandala, the monks will use conventional instruments to painstakingly organize tens of millions of granules of coloured sand within the type of symbols of the world’s most outstanding religions, creating what appears to be like like an intricate and priceless piece of artwork.
“In our tradition we’d wish to put shellac and polish over it and reserve it endlessly and dangle it on the wall,” Downing stated.
However that isn’t what is going to occur. On the closing ceremony 4 days later, the pinnacle monk will lower the mandala like a pizza. The opposite monks will then sweep the entire sand right into a pile and pour the sand into the ocean.
The symbolic gesture is supposed to show non-attachment or impermanence. In Buddhism, it’s the idea that every one issues are in a state of fixed change, so nothing is everlasting. Reflecting and meditating on impermanence can result in perception that promotes freedom.
Emily Steele is the venture coordinator for the tour. She has been busy rounding up sponsors, posting flyers across the Higher Keys and getting the phrase out.
“One of many huge issues they are going to be doing are pet blessings,” Steele stated. Apart from having companies and houses blessed, attendees can have their pets blessed by the monks. That may happen on Feb. 1 throughout Winterfest at Coral Isles Church in Islamorada.
Steele hopes for a powerful turnout.
“I believe presently the place we’re in our nation and in our world, what they will deliver us is information that peace is all the time there, that it’s one thing that we domesticate as a human race and we are able to both select to domesticate that or we are able to select to be divided away from it,” Steele added.
Sponsors for the pageant embrace Keys to Peace, The JOY Heart, Monroe County Public Library, Islander Resort, the Ragged Edge Oceanfront Resort and Marina and Coral Isles Church.
Info on blessings for a house or enterprise is on the market from Steele at 303- 990-0619 or by way of e-mail to sacredartstour2025@gmail.com. Extra info is on the market by following Sacred Arts Tour 2025 on Fb.