Tibetan Vajrayana
Tibetan monks making a temporary "Sand-Mandala" in the City-Hall of
Kitzbühel in Austria in 2002
Details of Sand-Mandala
Chenrezig Sand Mandala created at the
House of Commons of the United Kingdom on the occasion of the
Dalai Lama's visit in May 2008
A
kyil khor (དཀྱིལ་འཁོར།; 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,
[10] as well as by images of its associated deities, which
"symbolise different stages in the process of the realisation of the truth."
Mandalas are commonly used by tantric Buddhists as an aid to meditation. More specifically, a Buddhist mandala is envisaged as a
"sacred space," a "Pure Buddha Realm," and also as an abode of fully realised beings or deities. While on the one hand, the mandala is regarded as a place separated and protected from the ever-changing and impure outer world of
samsara, and is thus seen as a "Buddhafield" or a place of Nirvana and peace, the view of Vajrayana Buddhism sees the greatest protection from
samsara being the power to see samsaric confusion as the "shadow" of purity (which then points towards it). By visualizing "pure lands," one learns to understand experience
itself as pure, and as the abode of enlightenment. The protection that we need, in this view, is from our own minds, as much as from external sources of confusion. In many tantric mandalas, this aspect of separation and protection from the outer samsaric world is depicted by
"the four outer circles: the purifying fire of wisdom, the vajra circle, the circle with the eight tombs, the lotus circle." The ring of
vajras forms a connected fence-like arrangement running around the perimeter of the outer mandala circle.
The mandala is also
"a support for the meditating person," something to be repeatedly contemplated to the point of saturation, such that the image of the mandala becomes fully internalised in even the minutest detail and can then be summoned and contemplated at will as a clear and vivid visualised image. With every mandala comes what Tucci calls
"its associated liturgy...contained in texts known as tantras," instructing practitioners on how the mandala should be drawn, built and visualised, and indicating the
mantras to be recited during its ritual use.
As a meditation on impermanence (a central teaching of Buddhism), after days or weeks of creating the intricate pattern of a sand mandala, the sand is brushed together and placed in a body of running water to spread the blessings of the mandala.
The visualization and concretization of the mandala concept is one of the most significant contributions of Buddhism to
Transpersonal Psychology. Mandalas are seen as sacred places which, by their very presence in the world, remind a viewer of the immanence of sanctity in the universe and its potential in his or her self. In the context of the Buddhist path, the purpose of a mandala is to put an end to human suffering, to attain enlightenment, and to attain a correct view of reality. It is a means to discover divinity by the realization that divinity resides within one's own self.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala Click to expand...