Maṇḍala is
a Sanskrit word that means "circle".
In the Buddhist and Hindu
religious traditions their sacred art often takes a mandala form. The basic
form of most Hindu and Buddhist mandalas is a square with four gates containing
a circle with a center point. Each gate is in the shape of a T.
These
mandalas, concentric diagrams, have spiritual and ritual significance in both
Buddhism and Hinduism. The term is of Hindu origin and appears in the Rig Veda
as the name of the sections of the work, but is also used in other Indian
religions, particularly Buddhism.
In the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism,
mandalas have been developed into sandpainting. They are also a key part of
anuttarayoga tantra meditation practices.
In various
spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of
aspirants and adepts, as a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred
space, and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. According to the
psychologist David Fontana, its symbolic nature can help one "to access
progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the
meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity
from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises." The psychoanalyst
Carl Jung saw the mandala as "a representation of the unconscious
self," and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him
to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality.
In common
use, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern
that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the
Universe from the human perspective.
A kyil khor,
Tibetan for mandala, in Vajrayana Buddhism usually depicts a landscape of the
"Buddha-land", or the enlightened vision of a Buddha, which
inevitably represents the nature of experience and the intricacies of both the
enlightened and confused mind, or "a microcosm representing various divine
powers at work in the universe." Such mandalas consist of an outer circular
mandala and an inner square (or sometimes circular) mandala with an ornately
decorated mandala "palace" placed at the center. Any part of the
inner mandala can be occupied by Buddhist glyphs and symbols, as well as by
images of its associated deities, which "symbolise different stages in the
process of the realisation of the truth."
Thubten Choeling Monastery in Pharping, Nepal
Source: wikipedia
