Mandala

A mandala is a diagram designed to hold and focus the attention during meditation and support an individual's effort to maintain concentration while practising a particular technique. Mandalas are a circular form of yantra which may be a geometric design, often interlaced triangles super-imposed on flower-type structures with varying numbers of petals, usually framed by a square with doors or gates at the four sides. The main structural features of a mandala are: a centre, symbolizing eternal potential, the ultimate source of energy, the eternal now, and the centre of being; symmetry, symbolizing balance and integration of polarities and modes of being; and cardinal points, symbolizing the major psychic and cosmic forces. The whole represents supreme enlightenment, a symbolic representation of satori.

A mandala consists of a series of concentric forms which symbolize and suggest passage between different levels or dimensions of awareness, both in the macrocosm and the microcosm, which it thus interlinks. Through the concept and structure of the mandala, the individual may therefore be projected into the universe and the universe into the individual. The meditator experiences his essential relatedness to cosmic rhythms and intuits himself as both an organic set of on-going interrelationships of structures and systems, and as within a greater frame of reference. The mandala becomes a chart for a gradually unfolding series of visualization exercises, functioning as a map of a series of stages by which an experience of wholeness and unity is reached through knowledge and understanding of the processes of creation and dissolution of the forms and images in the meditator's consciousness.

The mandala may be used as a therapeutic device or as a ritual, meditative technique, but in both the aim is a higher level of integration. It is suggested that a mandala is an archetype of psychic integration. By projecting his own complexes upon the balanced complexity of the mandala, the person helps to liberate himself from his obsessions. Construction of a mandala is therefore a self-integrating ritual (which should be undertaken with care and attention). A true mandala should be a spontaneous creation which originates at a deep layer of personality, when, like all true symbols, it has an innate revealing power, and so can be used as an object of contemplation (in the same way as a crucifix or icon). Although normally a two-dimensional figure, a mandala can also be constructed in three dimensions or even danced. In fact, anything which is basically circular can probably be thought of as a mandala in some sense, the symbolism of its form and meaning reaching a level of consciousness beyond form and meaning.

Complementary to its use as a tool of transformation and integration, developed to transmute sensory experience from a binding to a liberating role, is the use of the mandala as a universal art form. As such it symbolizes integration, harmony, and transformation, giving form to a primordial intuition of the nature of reality. In addition, it functions as a key to systems of symbols which may be structured and represented in the form of a mandala defining the processes of nature as a set of interrelationships unified into a coherent whole. Since it is the mind of man that realizes and integrates the various parts of any such system, the mandala also constitutes a map of consciousness.