Mandala: Mandala Main Page
Mandala Masterworks- Art History
- Iconography
- Religious Context
Videos: All Videos
Mandala (Tib. 
dkyil 'kor ): a circular diagram, highly technical and precise, representing an idealized Tantric Buddhist, Hindu or Bon meditational space and surrounding idealized environment, the container and contained, animate and inanimate. There are three main types of mandalas: Symbolic, Figurative and Mandala-like.
Glossary:
- Types Glossary List
- Technical Glossary
Mandalas are painted on cloth, on the ceilings of temples, as murals, fashioned from metal, wood or stone, textiles and sometimes from coloured thread and also meticulously created from coloured sand.
Study Topics:
- Offering Mandala
- World System Mandala
- Deity Mandala
Offering Mandala or Mandala Offering: an abstract symbolic offering of a small universe made by Buddhist practitioners and presented to the religious teachers, Buddhas and deities, of the past and present. The central focus of the mandala is Mount Meru with four surrounding continents.
Mandala of a World System: as explained in the Buddhist Abhidharma literature is at the center of a Buddhist world system, also known as One Small Universe. Many of these small universes make a medium universe and many medium universes make a great universe.
Deity Mandalas: originating in the Indian Tantric literature with the function of serving as a meditational system within the Tantric theory of Deity Yoga (self generation). Under the topic of Deity mandala are Figure Mandalas, Symbol Mandalas and Geometric Mandalas (representing a deity mandala).
Database Search: All Mandalas
Jeff Watt 3-2002 [updated 8-2016, 1-2020, 5-2024]
(The images below are only a selection of examples from the links above).
