Editing Mandala (section)

====Practice====
[[File:Painted 19th century Tibetan mandala of the Naropa tradition, Vajrayogini stands in the center of two crossed red triangles, Rubin Museum of Art.jpg|thumb|Tantric mandala of [[Vajrayogini]]]]
Mandalas are commonly used by tantric Buddhists as an aid to meditation.

The mandala is "a support for the meditating person",<ref name="autogenerated2" /> 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 visualized image. With every mandala comes what Tucci calls "its associated liturgy ... contained in texts known as [[tantra]]s",<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.asianart.com/mandalas/tibet.html|title=The Mandala in Tibet|access-date=10 October 2016|archive-date=13 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160813055056/http://www.asianart.com/mandalas/tibet.html|url-status=live}}</ref> instructing practitioners on how the mandala should be drawn, built and visualised, and indicating the [[mantra]]s to be recited during its ritual use.

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".<ref name="autogenerated2">{{cite web|url=http://www.jyh.dk/indengl.htm|title=Mandala|access-date=10 October 2016|archive-date=23 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161223225316/http://www.jyh.dk/indengl.htm|url-status=live}}</ref> The ring of ''vajras'' forms a connected fence-like arrangement running around the perimeter of the outer mandala circle.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.jyh.dk/indengl.htm#Circles|title=Mandala|access-date=10 October 2016|archive-date=23 December 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161223225316/http://www.jyh.dk/indengl.htm#Circles|url-status=live}}</ref>

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 into a pile and spilled into a body of running water to spread the blessings of the mandala.

[[Per Kvaerne|Kværne]]<ref>Per Kvaerne 1975: p.&nbsp;164</ref> in his extended discussion of [[sahaja]], discusses the relationship of [[sadhana]] interiority and exteriority in relation to mandala thus:
{{blockquote|...external ritual and internal sadhana form an indistinguishable whole, and this unity finds its most pregnant expression in the form of the mandala, the [[sacred enclosure]] consisting of concentric squares and circles drawn on the ground and representing that adamant plane of being on which the aspirant to Buddha hood wishes to establish himself. The unfolding of the tantric ritual depends on the mandala; and where a material mandala is not employed, the adept proceeds to construct one mentally in the course of his meditation."<ref>{{cite book|last=Kvaerne|first=Per|year=1975|title=On the Concept of Sahaja in Indian Buddhist Tantric Literature. (NB: article first published in ''Temenos'' XI (1975): pp.88-135). Cited in: Williams, Jane (2005).'' Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies, Volume 6.'' Routledge. ISBN 0-415-33226-5, ISBN 978-0-415-33226-2|publisher=Routledge |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ypsz9qEzZjwC&q=g.yu+sgra+snying+po&pg=PA137|access-date=<!-- Friday --> April 16, 2010|isbn=9780415332323|archive-date=September 25, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210925000835/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ypsz9qEzZjwC&q=g.yu+sgra+snying+po&pg=PA137|url-status=live}}</ref>}}
[[File:Rangoli, Ganesh.jpg|thumb|292x292px|Mandala Hindu [[Rangoli]] art form]]