Mandala

Mandala draws attention with its magnetising mystery. Although everyone might have a slightly different definition, for some, a mandala will be a trivial pastime, for some, it will be religious guidance, and for others a tool in therapy. A mandala is like the straightforward code embedded in nature. You can spot its patterns on every step watching blossoming flowers or admiring beautiful spirals of shells.

The simplicity of form is adorable. As for the definition, this magical diagram is a circle contained in a square and arranged around a single, central point. Traditionally we associate mandala with Buddhism and Hinduism. However, its representation can be found all over the world, through time and in any religion.

In Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan language of the ancient Indian subcontinent) the word mandala means circle. Its features have symbolic meanings on several physical and spiritual levels. The crucial element - a circle represents God, eternity and perfection. Understood as a line, it has neither the beginning nor the end and symbolises time. The square describes earthly planes and the centre point - refers to Self, devotion, contemplation of the divine. Others like triangles and crosses refer to specific deities. Objects depicted in mandalas like a lotus flower, wheel of fire, labyrinth are attributes of purity, positive energy or wisdom.

The choice of colour is of equal importance. As for materials used in the process, the imagination is the limit. Therefore we can see mandalas on paper, wood, stone, cloth, carved in precious metals, painted on walls or created from such transient materials like butter, pigment dust or sand.

As for Tibetan or Tantric Buddhism, the mandala is a teaching medium of meditation. Apart from being a teaching tool that focuses attention and leads on the spiritual path, it's used in rituals (by Shingon Buddhism) or offerings (especially sand mandalas that reflect the ever-changing, impermanent nature of our world). A mandala offering in Tibetan Buddhism becomes a symbolic offering of the entire universe; it is designed to assist in the process of enlightenment, the seeking of liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. By immersing yourself in the process, one develops qualities such as patience, harmony, compassion and wisdom.

A mandala helps in finding one's true Self. Carl Gustav Jung a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who introduced mandala to psychotherapy, understood it as a combination of consciousness and unconsciousness. He used mandala as a representation of wholeness to give "the psychological expression of the totality of Self". From the perspective of the union of opposites, mandala comprises the Cosmos from the astronomical to the atom level.

The perfect form of a mandala is a neverending source of inspiration. We can track its traces not only in the Far East, ancient Egipt, Babilon, in Mayan and Aztec cultures. We can come across its shape in many religions, in the form of a rose window in Christian churches or a cabalistic symbol of the spark of God in the material object.

The mandala is omnipresent in art. Leonardo da Vinci's The Vitruvian Man can be perceived as the mandala containing in itself micro and macro cosmos. So the work of other artists like Toshikatsu Endo "Fountain", Urszula Broll "Mandalas", Andrzej Strumiłło, Wojciech Fangor, Brian Eno.

As a universal creation that reflects the connection between our individuality and the greater whole, mandala provides spiritual guidance and infinite inspiration.