From Entering the Circle

Creating a mandala begins with drawing a circle. It can be as simple as the circle a child draws or as complex as the sacred images created by Tibetan monks. Mandalas arise from the compelling human need to know our own inner reality, to align this knowing with our body's wisdom, and to awaken in ourselves a sense of being in harmony with the universe. As Lama Nubpa Chodak Gyatso has explained, mandalas are "manifestations of the lucid radiance of being." The word mandala, from Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, translates as "sacred circle." In Tibetan the term for mandala is kyil-kor, which means "center and circumference." In the Eastern tradition mandalas also suggest a complete cycle, such as the rituals that comprise a liturgical year.

Imagine standing on a beach and turning in place. If you touch a stick to the sand, you can easily mark off a circle. Notice how the circle you draw organizes empty space into pairs of opposites: inside/outside, here/there, and near/far. The power of the circle to establish order takes on sacred meaning in an Egyptian myth of creation:

Before the beginning of time, the Uroboros, a great snakelike dragon, floats in the formless void. In this place that is no place, everything swirls together, entangled in confusion. All is gray because dark is intermingled with light. There is nothing to drink because water is buried in dry earth. There is no comfort because softness is laced with prickling sharpness.

Moving within this muddle, the Uroboros slowly, majestically arches back and bites its own tail, thus creating a circle. As the myth relates, with this act, primordial chaos is transformed. The circle formed by the Uroboros sets in motion the separation of the opposites. Light emerges from darkness, water flows away from dry earth, and the touch of softness can soothe because it is freed from hardness. All is put in order, with each having its own time and place to be.

Making a circle always brings order to things. Order begets patterns that the mind can grasp and understand. Even chaotic scribbling achieves a certain harmony when enclosed in a circle. Each time you turn a circle or color a mandala, you invite a little harmony into your life. Arranging forms and colors in a circular design is like the act of the Uroboros, separating confusion into patterns of meaning.

Here is something else to know about circles. A circle suggests a center point in much the same way a magnifying glass acts to focus the sun's rays to a single, bright spot. In a circle the center is always present, and it attracts your eye, whether it is marked or not. The capacity of the circle to catch and focus your attention means that you take less notice of what is outside the circle. As meditators know, concentrating your attention on one thing produces a general relaxation in your body: your breath deepens, your heartbeat slows. These physiological changes release your body's natural healing processes. Traditional healers intuitively make use of mandalas because their circular form organizes perception, thought, and physical responses in ways that are beneficial.

Circles are not just an invention of human beings. Circular forms abound in the natural world. When you toss a pebble into still water, you see a gentle pulsing of circles outward from the point of impact. The harmless dust devils that sweep across a summer picnic whirl around and around as they ruffle napkins and drop bits of this and that. Flowers, rocks, caves, and mountains seen from above suggest the form of the circle (see plate 2). The shining circular form of the moon illuminates the night sky, while the sun's radiant disk lights up the day.

The experiences of countless generations of people with these natural circles have been handed down to us in layer upon rich layer of meaning associated with the circle. Circles represent something with no beginning and no end, something eternal. Circles remind us of the familiar, as in a family circle or a circle of friends. Largely because of the regular movements of the sun and the moon, circles have come to signify cycles of time, the seasons, and the yearly renewal of plant and animal life. The impressive forms of the sun and moon have even served as natural symbols, helping human beings organize their thoughts about mysteries such as life and death.

We can see how this might have happened when we consider the moon. In a month's time, the moon presents a graphic display of a silver disk coming into being, shining in fullness, gradually disappearing, and then appearing once again. Witnessing the coming and going of the moon, month after month, year after year, it is easy to see how changes in the moon helped shape our ancestors' thoughts as they grappled with the mystery of human life. The human life span from childhood to adulthood is aptly illustrated by the waxing of the moon. The full moon's waning to darkness tracks the process of aging, ending in death. The return of the moon following total darkness has naturally given rise to ideas of reincarnation among some peoples. The very earliest mandalas carved in rocks from South Africa to Scandinavia seem to express thoughts about the mystery of life symbolized by the changes observed in the moon, the sun, and the seasons.

Ancient peoples observed the presence of circles in their own bodies, and they especially associated circles with the mystery of birth. In a room thought to be the birthing chamber in a Cretan palace, circles with a single dot in the center decorate the walls. Archeologists suggest these circles represent the cervix, the circular muscle through which a baby passes when it is born.

We now know that circles are important at every stage of human development. You begin life as a tiny spherical egg enfolded in the snug circular space of your mother's womb. Typically, you leave the womb through your mother's birth canal. Just before birth, your head presses against her cervix to widen the opening. In this moment, called "crowning," you produce your first mandala: the soft top of your head framed by the circular opening of your mother's body. And then you move on through the circle and you are born into the world.

The eyes through which you view your world are round. They are equipped with a circular iris and pupil, so that you literally take in all visual information through structures that are round. Your visual field, the sum total of what you can see, is roughly circular as well, and the point of clearest focus is at the center of your visual field. As you will notice, vision becomes less and less clear away from this focal center, and fades to darkness at the edge of the visual field. Your field of vision is a sort of mandala: a circular area with a center focus.

It seems that your original sense of self can be formed with the information available to you in your circular field of vision. Using nothing more than what it can see as it looks down at its own body, an infant can construct a rudimentary sense of self as "that which is always present." It is thought that more sophisticated notions of self-identity are rooted in this fundamental impression of self. This original sense of self may well be recalled or reinforced when focusing on a circle later in life. This could help explain the sense of peace reported by people when they are painting or drawing within the circular form of the mandala.

Nature has seen to it that babies are programmed to seek out circles. Researchers have found that infants show a preference for rounded shapes and the curved edges of faces almost from birth. This has survival value because it helps a baby find its mother's round breast and get the nourishment it needs. The natural urge for caregiver and infant to gaze into each other's face builds an emotional bond that helps babies to thrive. Your early experiences with nurturing influence your feelings about circles—and mandalas—even as an adult.

Children's Drawing

Children's drawing evolves as the child's physical, emotional, and cognitive abilities develop. Children begin random scribbling around age two. By the age of three, you can observe circles appearing in the scribbles. Shortly after this, children are able to draw circles when they choose, without scribbling. Then they begin to give meaning to their circles.

I remember a family art therapy session where a three-year-old girl sat on her brother's lap, looking at magazines. Page after page, she pointed to the infants she saw and exclaimed, "Baby!" After a while she took a piece of paper and drew a circle. "Baby," she declared with delight, pointing to the circle she had drawn. Clearly, for her the circle represented a little person, like the infants she had seen in the magazines. It probably represented her dawning awareness of herself as such a little person.

After mastering the drawing of circles, children discover how to add lines to their circles. Without any instruction from adults, they spontaneously begin to create mandalas: suns, radial designs, faces, and people. Their designs are very like those left by ancient peoples in cave paintings and rock carvings. Interestingly, children's mandala drawings coincide with their discovery of themselves as individuals. As they draw mandalas, children become aware of themselves as unique, separate beings, capable of willed action. For children all over the world, drawing mandalas is an integral part of the natural development of self-consciousness.

Mandalas as SacredArt

Visionaries of the East represent their spiritual insights in complex mandalas based on the form of the circle (plates 1 and 3). These mandalas are considered sacred and are used to help devotees increase their understanding of nonrational realities. Some mandalas are thought to hold healing powers. Creating mandalas as a meditation is prescribed for illness, for clearing blocks to spiritual enlightenment, or even for gaining favor from a local deity. So it is that women in rural villages of India sweep their front yards clean each morning and mark off a mandala with colored rice powder to invite the blessings of the Goddess on themselves and their families.

Permanent mandalas in the form of sacred architecture are also created to mark special places and serve as a focal point for rituals of devotion. For example, the Buddhist temple at Borobudur in Indonesia consists of eight ascending platforms, surmounted by a large circular dome. There are approaches to the central dome from each of the four directions. The whole structure is a symbolic model of the universe. Ritual movements in and around the site act out the journey toward enlightenment.

At Sanchi, in India, throngs of pilgrims visit a similar structure marking the place of Buddha's enlightenment. Pilgrims enter a square enclosure through a gate in the east. They mount steps to a platform and circle the dome in a clockwise direction, extending their right hands toward the center. In rituals like those performed at Borobudur and Sanchi, you enter and become one with the mandala of the shrine, and by doing so you integrate into your own being the ideal harmony embodied in the site. Tibetan Buddhist monks create mandalas that are considered a dwelling place for a deity, and they often depict a bird's-eye view of a structure like the ones at Sanchi and Borobudur. It can generally be said that Tibetan mandalas are created with the intention of inviting, containing, honoring, and integrating certain kinds of energy exemplified in gods and deities. Every element in the mandala has symbolic meaning. These mandalas provide a visual form of instruction about spiritual truths.

Traditional meditation practices prescribe the order in which attention is directed to each part of the mandala. The line followed by the gaze of meditators is very like the path taken by pilgrims walking through sacred mandala sites like those at Sanchi and Borobudur. Creating and meditating on such mandalas helps the Buddhist discover a way into and out of deep states of mental concentration. The mandalas guide meditators to a realization of themselves as spiritual and physical beings existing within a harmonious cosmos.

Mandalas are used in similar ways in the traditions of Native Americans. Mandala patterns on pottery pieces tell stories and teach values. For example, the Zuni story of the pattern called "Cloud All Alone" emphasizes the importance of participating in communal rituals. The Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest carve dishes and bowls decorated with the forms of totem animals such as bear, raven, and killer whale. These handsome decorative patterns with symbolic meanings may also be considered mandalas.

The medicine wheel is another type of Native American mandala. It is a circle representing the horizon line, divided at four points for each of the four cardinal directions (figure 5). Some versions include additional directions—up, down, and center—for a total of seven directions in all. Each of the four cardinal directions has symbolic animals, colors, and other qualities associated with it. Native Americans use the medicine wheel as a way to teach wisdom about the earth, cycles of life, spirituality, and self-knowledge.

Each direction represents a different way of viewing reality. It is thought that you are born into one direction and know it easily. You spend your life learning about the other three. It is necessary to experience, understand, and balance the wisdom of all four directions in order to become a whole person. The mandala of the medicine wheel exemplifies the balance of all four directions.

Mandalas are also important in Native American healing practices. Among the Navahos, when someone is sick, the family calls on a medicine man for help. As part of his healing ceremony he creates a beautiful sand painting in a traditional mandala pattern. The design of the sand painting is selected to correct the disharmony that is thought to be the cause of illness. The sick person is placed upon the sand painting to correct imbalances. Health returns once harmony is restored.

Mandalas are found also in the traditions of Europe, where mystics have used circular designs as a way to express and share their visions and insights. Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth-century Benedictine nun, recorded her inspired visions in lovely mandala paintings. The mystic Jakob Boehme used mandalas to express his conviction that God is a unity of both darkness and light. Giordano Bruno, an Italian Renaissance philosopher, created mandala patterns designed to stimulate improvement in the character of those who studied them.

Mandalas are also seen in Christian churches—in such forms as stained-glass window designs and labyrinths—where they may be used for teaching, contemplation, and symbolic pilgrimages. Circular stained-glass windows, called rose windows, appear in many Gothic cathedrals.

Like all mandalas, they engage attention and bring it to the center, which is reserved for holy images. For example, the rose window of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris depicts the Virgin and Child in the center, surrounded by figures of biblical prophets, kings, and patriarchs.

The labyrinth, a meandering path to a center point, is also a mandala. Labyrinths are found in medieval Christian churches, worked into the floor so that they can be walked on. The center in a Christian labyrinth is often occupied by a mystic rose, thought to symbolize the Holy Spirit and the process of spirit coming into matter. The beautiful labyrinth in Chartres Cathedral served medieval Christians as a metaphorical pilgrimage. It has recently been rediscovered by modern pilgrims who use it as a walking meditation that supports a personal experience of the Christ within.