DDM Melbourne Mosaic Peace Wall

Last December Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM) worked with the Warrandyte Uniting Church to create a mosaic peace wall to offer a place for spiritual and peaceful reflection for the people living in the region. Over 1000 people from local organisations, churches and interfaith groups took part in this amazing project.

Mosaic Peace Wall Design

The artists worked collaboratively to produce an overall design for the Peace Wall and representatives from DDM contributed their idea and vision based primarily on the DDM ideals. We worked with the artists to ensure that the process catered for different ages and capabilities so that more people could take part in this worthy project. Through a number of workshops, community members and children created images and messages of peace on tiles, which were fired and incorporated into the overall design. In the process of creating this artistic work, all participants came together to reflect on issues of Peace around the theme “Peace with each other and Peace with the Earth”.

Hence, it was imperative to have the highest involvement possible from Warrandyte Community, which encompassed of members from all walk of life and religious practice. This project also served as an opportunity for the children and adults involved to discuss various aspects of Peace. Great care was taken to liaise with each community group to determine their on-going process for creating their tiles and provided help and advice as needed. Community members were invited to assist in attaching the tiles to the wall. DDM members took great pride in offering their creative idea and participated first hand in the making of the mosaic tiles from start to finish. We created delicate shape with brilliant colours to reflect on the Buddhist theme.

The Peace Wall offers images, messages and the opportunity to reflect at a close range, and at the same time is an artwork that could be appreciated from a distance. It is envisaged that there is a need for communities to seek, create and build an area, which would encourage peace and cooperation in the local community as well as the world stage. Thus the Wall is designed to be an area for reflection and peace, which would be open and welcoming to any community members, irrespective of the faiths and culture. The Wall is intended to remind people who were fortunate to be a part of its creation and the people who admired its noble theme of the universal need for an environment conducive to peace that all citizens of the world must come together to lead a life of harmonious co-existence.

DDM members were delighted with the final outcome and we walked away from the ceremony with a sense of achievement for doing our part to promote peace amongst the various religious groups. We thank our Shifu, Sheng Yen for reminding us to strike for peace through open dialogue and compassion for the general wellbeing of the sentient beings. This project provided an optimum opportunity to work harmoniously with people of other faiths.

(Reported by Chiew Shin-Yee DDM Melbourne)