Mandala

Mandala (Sanskrit for “circle”), in Hinduism and Buddhism, a diagram used as a focus and guide for meditation. Each mandala represents the universe pictorially. The worshiper imaginatively enters the mandala, focusing successively on each of its stages and absorbing the logic of its form as the worshiper approaches the center. The Buddhist religious texts known as tantras provide descriptions of a great number of mandalas, supposedly intended for different types of people. Practically every major tantra has one or more associated mandalas, each with specific sets of deities or abstract symbols. Although every mandala has its own individual characteristics, the basic concept and structure of all mandalas is fundamentally the same. Japanese esoteric Buddhism uses two basic kinds of mandalas, the Womb World and the Diamond World. The Womb World broadens the worshiper's attention, and the Diamond World concentrates it. Mandalas of the Buddha Vairocana are particularly common in one category of Buddhist tantras, and show the large number of celestial Buddhas and the Buddha-nature of all reality. Artistic representations of mandalas range from painted scrolls to the sand paintings of Tibetan Buddhism. The enormous monument at Borobudur in Java is essentially a giant stone mandala.