My mother is Tibetan. I grew up in New York on her stories about the sand: the colored mandalas monks build grain by grain, then sweep away in a single afternoon.
I went back to study them. For a few winters I sat in temple halls in Tibet, drawing the geometry of the mandalas, learning how the composition holds and why each color sits where it does. The monks let me watch closely. One of them showed me something I had never read about: the old silver-makers who saved a small measure of the blessed sand and set it into objects pilgrims carried home. A blessing you could keep in your pocket.
That stayed with me. When a mandala is finished, almost all of it goes back to the water. I wanted to bring the part that remains into something you would actually wear, and to carry it back to New York.
Bijala is what came of that idea. The ceremonies are real, the sand is real, and the jewelry is simply the way it reaches you.
How Bijala works
Bijala works exclusively with four temples in Tibet.
One mandala ceremony at each, and no more.
Each ceremony allows a small number of pieces, so every drop is limited.
A tenth of proceeds goes back to the temples to support cultural preservation.
The pieces are designed with jewelers whose previous work includes fashion-jewelry lines for Dior and Chanel.
The First Drop
White Buddha Temple, Qinghai, December 2025
On the eastern shore of Qinghai Lake, twenty Gelug monks worked for fourteen days on a sand mandala for Mahāvairocana, the Buddha of all-illuminating light. They began on December 4 and finished on December 18, 2025.
A mandala made in Vairocana's name carries a blessing of light, clarity, and plain good fortune. The pieces in this drop carry it.
