Mandala · Skt: maṇḍala

A mandala is made to be entered rather than admired, and it belongs to the esoteric or tantric strands of Buddhism. Of the Japanese Shingon school the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes: “The mandala in Shingon Buddhism is a diagram or picture, usually a painting, picturing the doctrines expounded in the two major esoteric scriptures”. It “depicts visually the form that enlightenment takes as it becomes manifest in the universe”, “serving as a map for one’s journey to enlightenment”. Shingon works with two of them, the Taizō (Womb) and Kongōkai (Diamond realm) mandalas: “Together they are called ryōbu mandara and represent a comprehensive unity.” And the point is practice, not decoration: “Through meditation upon them one comes to view everything as a mandala, the cosmos as a mandalic unfolding of the Dharma.”

In Tibetan Buddhism a mandala is an abode with a buddha at its centre. In the traditional history of the Kālacakra tantra published by the Office of the Dalai Lama, the Buddha “was in the centre on the Vajra lion throne in the great Mandala of the Sphere of Vajra, the abode of great bliss”, and “The excellent entourage within the mandala consisted of a host of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, furies, gods, nagas, and goddesses.” Mandalas are also built as objects: in that same account King Suchandra, back in Shambhala, “also erected a Kalachakra mandala made of precious substances”.

Both uses are tantric, and the practice they belong to is defined, in Tsongkhapa’s account, by deity yoga, which is what “differentiates tantric activity from other ordinary Mahāyāna activities”: whether the practitioner is “acting as a perfect, divine subject” in largely ritual behaviour.