![Muted colored mandala from fourteenth century](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2026-08/AME.MandalaImage6.jpg.banner.jpg?itok=lA_b1qq4) 

 



 

#  Maṇḍala 

 





August 12, 2026

 

 

 [ Rae Erin Dachille ](https://religion.arizona.edu/people/raedachille) 

Buddhism provides many tools to aid the practitioner negotiating the relationship between self and world. The Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition of Tantra emphasizes the power of ritual to make such connections in the process of advancing toward enlightenment. Maṇḍalas serve as one ritual technology to bridge the perceived gap between ordinary and enlightened realities. Early in a practitioner’s progress along the Vajrayāna path, maṇḍalas play an important role in initiation, providing a space for the guru to introduce the practitioner to their own Buddha potential and to confer the permission to engage tantric practice. Maṇḍalas remain central to Tantra practices. Together with their transformative and transcendent soteriological functions, maṇḍalas play important roles in forging, reinforcing, and reconfiguring social and political relationships. As I will show, maṇḍalas assume many forms, material and imagined as well as narrative and enacted. This journey through the history and practice of maṇḍalas presents new ways of mapping and remaking the boundaries of one’s world, challenging preexisting dualities: inside and outside, one’s body and the form of a buddha, the ordinary world and nirvāṇa.

What is a maṇḍala? The Western reception of maṇḍalas is typically rooted in it being considered a “sacred circle.” Carl Jung regarded the maṇḍala as a reflection of the collective unconscious.\[[1](#notes)\] In the twenty-first century popular culture of the United States, therapeutic “maṇḍala” coloring books featuring repetitive circular patterns have further abstracted the form and function of maṇḍalas from its Buddhist context. Despite such universalizing trends in maṇḍala reception among Western audiences, the maṇḍala evolved in Asia over time and through texts and images in an interplay of experimentation and standardization.

As a celestial palace inhabited by Buddhas, the maṇḍala is a divine abode for enlightened activity. Art historian Christian Luczanits argues for approaching maṇḍalas as ritual spaces into which an assembly of Buddhas and attendant deities are invited. His approach allows flexibility to accommodate the eclecticism of the material record and to highlight ritual rather than only “artistic” dimensions.\[[2](#notes)\] Building upon Luczanits’s approach, I focus upon Tibetan and Himalayan manifestations of maṇḍalas, their Indian and Tibetan religious contexts, and their spread beyond the traditional confines of the Tibetan and Himalayan world, even their proliferation in modern times. Education, conquest, collaboration, connection, and commemoration are among the varied historical purposes served by maṇḍalas. I narrate the story of the maṇḍala through a selection of maṇḍala images displayed throughout this entry; these images exemplify maṇḍalas’ functions and attest to the diversity of paintings and sculptures that represent them. I contextualize these images within the ritual and textual worlds of Vajrayāna Buddhism and the unfolding history of the tradition.

My presentation of the maṇḍala is thematic and chronological. I begin in India, Buddhism’s birthplace, during a time when the Vajrayāna tradition blossomed, then we travel to Tibet and Nepal, important sites for the continuation and further development of the Buddhist tantric tradition. Along the way, I map the spaces of and in the maṇḍala, outlining its visual logic and connections to ritual processes. I conclude with the ritual creation of mandalas, especially the sand maṇḍala from the Kālacakra Tantra, in new spaces and for new audiences after the forced exile of the Tibetan people that began in 1959. In tracing this trajectory, I reflect upon different ways maṇḍalas represent this ritual technology’s potential to reconfigure boundaries. Maṇḍalas subvert distinctions between inner and outer, between ordinary and enlightened, and, thereby, the maṇḍala remaps boundaries of center and periphery. Ultimately, maṇḍalas are a tool by which Vajrayāna Buddhists recreate worlds.



 

 

 

##  The Indian Buddhist Roots of Maṇḍala 

Early Indian representations of the maṇḍala reinforce its identity as an environment for the gathering of Buddhas and other sacred figures, making it possible for them to be propitiated with offerings and even to be emulated. Below in Figure 1, a terracotta plaque from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art features a central buddha atop a lotus throne surrounded by eight attendant figures. Several of the attendants incline their bodies in ways that direct attention to the center in a manner consistent with the iconography of Bodhisattvas—beings who, rather than attaining ultimate liberation, remain in saṃsāra, the cycle of worldly existence, to aid in liberating sentient beings from suffering—whereas the central Buddha faces forward and is symmetrical. This image may date from as early as the seventh century though attributions vary, part of an initial phase in the development of Buddhist Tantra. While maṇḍala paintings on cloth or paper do not survive from this era, those depicted in other media such as this terracotta plaque supplement the textual record.

   ![Round molded Plaque Depicting a Mandala of the Eight Bodhisattvas](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/AME.Figure1.MoldedPlaque.jpg?itok=Lce_hfFD) 

 

\[Figure 1. Molded Plaque Depicting a Mandala of the Eight Bodhisattvas, India, 6th century, terracotta, 5 in. x 4 5/8 in. (12.7 cm. x 11.7 cm.) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Rogers Fund, 1933 (33.50.11). https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/38204.\]The texts upon which early maṇḍalas are based include the tantras—esoteric texts accepted as the word of a Buddha—as well as commentaries on those tantras and adjacent ritual manuals known as sādhanas, literally “rites of attainment.” While the early tantras often evoke maṇḍala in an abstract sense, ritual manuals provide vivid outlines for imagining the maṇḍala abode and its inhabitants. Jacob Dalton argues that these ritual manuals became popular by the sixth century and play an important role in the development of the tantric tradition, especially by providing the materials from which the tantras were formed.\[[3](#notes)\]

The Sarva-tathāgata-tattva-saṃgraha (hereafter STTS) is a tantra centered on the supreme form of the tantric Buddha Vairocana. This tantra and its associated ritual texts play an especially important role in the evolution of maṇḍala during a definitive phase in Tantra’s history that is associated with the rise of the class of texts called Yogatantras. These texts explicitly embrace themes of ritual transformation and consecration and embrace the centrality of Vairocana, which are different emphases from the “Action” (Kriya) and “Performance” (Caryā) tantras that preceded them.\[[4](#notes)\] As scholars such as David Snellgrove have shown, the STTS signals a transformation from a more basic arrangement of three deities for worship to a maṇḍala inhabited by an arrangement of five Buddhas referred to as the Jinas.\[[5](#notes)\] These five “victors” oversee the cosmos and bear witness to the ritual transformation of the individual into a Buddha.\[[6](#notes)\]

The STTS narrates a process by which the deities of the maṇḍala are consecrated with their “vajra” identities—often literally endowed with new names beginning with the prefix of “vajra”—and invited to assume their divine seats. The vajra is a ritual implement referencing the powerful thunderbolt and also the diamond, with its adamantine capacity to cut through even the most resistant surfaces. The name of the Vajrayāna, the “Vajra Vehicle,” draws on the symbolic resonance of the vajra to express the power and lightning-speed of this particular path toward enlightenment. The Vajrayāna is a path that allows liberation in this lifetime and this body rather than postponing this goal to a more meritorious future time. I use the term “vajra identities” to refer to ways in which the Indian Buddhist tantric tradition distinguishes itself from both non-tantric varieties of Buddhism and non-Buddhist varieties of Tantra by branding its texts, images, and practices with the vajra. Likewise, “vajra identities” are also relevant for the parallel ritual transformations of the deities of the mandala and the tantric initiates.\[[7](#notes)\]

Commentaries on the STTS elaborate the connection between a tantric narrative recounting the enlightenment of Śākyamuni Buddha—the Buddha of our era, born into the Śakya clan—and ritual procedures undergone by tantric initiates. In the text, the Buddhas presiding over the ten directions consecrate Śākyamuni and confer mantras for the Buddha to contemplate. By arriving at the meaning of those mantras, Śākyamuni witnesses the dawning of five superior wisdoms, the five abhisambodhi. Each of these wisdoms is the essence of one of the Jinas mentioned above. In his commentary, the author Ānandagarbha details the ritual stages correlating each of these realizations taught to the tantric initiate who mirrors Śākyamuni’s consecration process and ritually becomes the supreme cosmic ruler Vairocana, the Buddha known as Mahāvairocana, and, consequently, assumes a royal demeanor.\[[8](#notes)\] The initiate aspires to become this conqueror of worldly suffering whose power extends in all the directions. That aspiration is spatialized in the form of the maṇḍala as a celestial palace.



 

##  The Ritual Context of the Tantric Initiate 

Using the space of the maṇḍala, the guru, referred to in the Tibetan context as the lama, prepares disciples to become acquainted with enlightened forms, to discover their buddha family, and, ultimately, through disciplined practice, to assume their seat at the center of the maṇḍala.

Beginning with the phase of ritual empowerment, the Vajrayāna practitioner subsequently progresses from the periphery of enlightened reality to its core. Taking their seat as lord of the maṇḍala, embodying the perspective of Buddhahood, practitioners fulfill the meaning suggested by interpretations of linguistic roots of the Sanskrit term “maṇḍala” as “taking the pith,” for they take the central and most powerful and profound position in the maṇḍala, the position from which all reality emerges.\[[9](#notes)\]

Tantric initiates enter the maṇḍala to encounter their own vajra identity, to receive the blessing of enlightened beings, and to transform worldly obstacles of saṃsāra into wisdom. Whatever form it assumes, the maṇḍala provides a structure for achieving these goals. Whether imagined in space, depicted on an altar of painted powders, or displayed as a painting or sculpture, the maṇḍala directs the practitioner’s attention to its inner sanctum, the central celestial palace where resides the deity and retinue upon whom the particular ritual is focused. Depending upon the particular maṇḍala, the retinue may be composed of Buddhas, their consorts and attendants, or Bodhisattvas who are focused upon the central deity. Although the central deity and configuration of attendants depends upon the transmission of specific teachings and the goals of a particular ritual, there is a basic logic to the structure of maṇḍala. I endeavor to outline this logic below through a close reading of the maṇḍala’s rituals, its central figure, and its many inhabitants.\[[10](#notes)\]

Some tantric initiation rites include casting a flower upon the maṇḍala image, or even shooting an arrow into the image, to determine to which of these buddha families to which an initiand belongs. For example, if the flower lands in Akṣobhya’s quadrant of the maṇḍala, the initiate recognizes kinship with the “Vajra family” of Akṣobhya. The guru thereafter may guide initiates in practices catering to their particular challenges and needs. Maṇḍalas aid the guru in diagnosing spiritual challenges and prescribing methods for their cure.

The iconography of five Buddha families governed by five Jinas relates the structure of the cosmos to the person being initiated. The Tathāgata and the Lotus and the Vajra families of Vairocana, Amitābha, and Akṣobhya, respectively, were the three initial and primary foci for maṇḍala worship and are associated with overcoming the three primary “poisons” that ensnare sentient beings in the suffering of worldly existence: Ignorance, Desire, and Hatred. These three Buddha families—Tathāgata, Lotus, and Vajra—played a central role in the Vajrayāna approach to healing. Through the imagery of these Buddha families, the tantric path employs imagery evocative of desire, wrath, and other poisonous qualities, and it applies those qualities instrumentally to overcome soteriological obstacles. The iconography of the Jinas exemplifies this approach to healing through the application of an antidote.

A thangka, which is a Tibetan painting typically executed in mineral pigments on cloth, that was formerly in the collection of Rossi and Rossi and is featured in Figure 2 exemplifies the iconography of the five Jinas. When a form of the Buddha Vairocana resides in the central chamber of a maṇḍala, then the practitioner focuses on goals related to eliminating ignorance. As the ruler of the Tathāgata-family, Vairocana, white in color, typically displays the mudrā, or hand gesture, of “Turning the Wheel of the Dharma,” and he aids practitioners in transforming ignorance into the “Wisdom of the Dharmadhātu.” In many of his forms, Vairocana appears performing a different hand gesture, the mudrā of “Highest Enlightenment.” In this particular painting, Vairocana appears in a decidedly tantric guise, displaying four faces and eight arms; many faces and arms are typically a hallmark of Tantra-inflected deities.

   ![Vairocana Mandala](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/AME.Fig_.2%20Lotus%20Mandala%20of%20Hevajra.png?itok=TUcBO4RD) 

 

\[Figure 2. Vairocana Mandala, Tibet, 14th century, ground mineral pigment on cotton, 68.5 cm. x 60 cm. Formerly in the Collection of Anna Maria Rossi and Fabio Rossi. Himalayan Art Resources, object no. 88558, https://www.himalayanart.org/items/88558. Photo courtesy of Rossi and Rossi and Himalayan Art Resources.\]Vairocana’s strength extends to the totality of the universe and reflects Mahāyāna Buddhist representations of the pervasive power of the Buddha’s teachings. In tantric contexts, Vairocana’s omnipotence and royal imagery evokes ritualized transformations that are effected through the consecration process.\[[11](#notes)\] Correlating Vairocana and kingship accelerated the spread of Vajrayāna elements to royal courts in South Asia. Ronald Davidson argues that Vajrayāna Buddhists in India used the maṇḍala to validate their tradition by mirroring the maṇḍala structure that organized feudal rule in post-Gupta Indian society. Just as a royal prince acts on behalf of the king to secure the realm through authorizing vassal rulers, so too the Bodhisattvas of the tantras acts on behalf of the primary Buddha to invest arrayed deities with the power to serve the lord of the maṇḍala.\[[12](#notes)\] Vairocana’s regal demeanor is relevant for the spread of esoteric Buddhism beyond India. In Japan, the monk Kukai, founder of the Shingon tradition of esoteric Buddhism, travelled to China in the early ninth century to seek Buddhist teachings. He is said to have returned with two iconic paintings depicting the “Womb Realm” (Garbhadhātu) and “Vajra Realm” (Vajradhātu) of Vairocana.

Vairocana’s influence in spreading Buddhism is most apparent in Tibet. During the early dissemination of Buddhism in Tibet, a period spanning the eighth to mid-ninth century, a number of tantric texts were translated at the Tibetan royal court, including several tantras associated with the Buddha Vairocana. Matthew Kapstein emphasizes how “the cult of Vairocana was widely promulgated with imperial support” during this period through “a significant homology … between emperor and empire … and Vairocana and his mandala or realm.”\[[13](#notes)\] Monastic Buddhism declined during the subsequent Tibetan historical era, the “Age of Fragmentation” from mid-ninth to late-tenth century, yet the power of Vairocana’s image endured. Beginning in the late tenth century, when institutional monastic Buddhism was reinstated with official support during the later dissemination of Buddhism, new translations depicted Vairocana and his maṇḍala. Also during this period, artistic and architectural projects promoted Vairocana’s image with the support of a new royal court in Western Tibet, especially the assembly hall of Tabo monastery, designed in the form of Vairocana’s maṇḍala with its walls lined with life-sized statues of the deities, which serves as a prominent example from this period and region. At that time, despite critical statements by new religious and political leaders about the tantric practices that thrived during the “Age of Fragmentation,” the iconography of Vairocana remained relevant, representing a less controversial form of Vajrayāna tradition as well as reflecting royal order.\[[14](#ntoes)\]

The locations and deities throughout the maṇḍala in Figure 2 display an entire history of Vajrayāna Buddhism, its doctrines, and its rituals. In the western quadrant of the maṇḍala, in the top central square of Fig. 2, the red Buddha Amitābha presides over the Lotus-family. Posed in a gesture of meditation, he grants the “Wisdom of Discrimination,” and he aids beings to overcome desire. Amitābha’s fame transcends the Vajrayāna context. As the ruler of the Western Paradise or Pure Land of Sukhāvatī, Amitābha is the focal point of worship for many Mahāyāna Buddhists in East Asia who revere him as creator of a Pure Land where the devoted may be reborn and will eventually attain liberation. His common role in esoteric and exoteric Buddhist traditions serves as important reminder of the analogy between Pure Lands and maṇḍalas as “spatial cosmologies.”\[[15](#notes)\] Mahāyāna traditions introduce new kinds of enlightened bodies and spaces, and Vajrayāna traditions expand these forms and horizons to include a vast pantheon of “enjoyment bodies,” which are enlightened bodies made of light rather than flesh and blood. Enjoyment bodies are typically encountered in dreams and visions or through rebirth in the Pure Land and inhabit spaces of ever-shifting complexity.\[[16](#notes)\] Amitābha bridges these worlds, as does his enlightened progeny, a son of the lotus family, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. In Fig. 2, Amitābha appears as the enjoyment body form of Amitāyus, associated with long life, holding a vessel of elixir.\[[17](#notes)\]

In the eastern quadrant of the maṇḍala, in the bottom central square of Fig. 2, the blue Buddha Akṣobhya presides, and he rules over the Vajra-Family. The eastern gateway is the maṇḍala’s formal entrance, as in a physical temple where, in the Indic context, one would enter in the East and circumambulate in a clockwise manner, keeping the deity to the right. However, in the painting, the East corresponds to the lower quadrant of the maṇḍala, below the Central Buddha, what on a compass would be read as South. The Vajra-Family assumed increasing prominence over time and provided a ritual means for transforming anger or hatred into “mirrorlike wisdom.” Like the iconic Śākyamuni Buddha, Akṣobhya performs the earth-touching gesture. As tantric traditions developed, Akṣobhya and other deities of the Vajra-Family, many in wrathful forms, assumed a more central role in ritual.\[[18](#notes)\] Textual and visual depictions of such Vajra deities reinforce an increasing willingness to employ the iconography of violence as a means of overcoming anger and hatred in working towards enlightenment.

The traditional list of Three Poisons—Ignorance, Desire, and Hatred—were expanded to include Greed and Envy, and these poisons are correlated with additional Buddha-families associated with these qualities; these families are located in the northern and southern parts of the thangka. In the South, which is the left quadrant of the central palace depicted in the left-central square of Fig. 2, the yellow Buddha Ratnasambhava oversees the Jewel Family and confers the “Wisdom of Sameness” upon those seeking to overcome greed. He displays a gesture of generosity, the Varada-mudrā. Finally, Amoghasiddhi presides over the northern quadrant of the maṇḍala, the right quadrant of the central palace depicted in the right-central square of Fig. 2, poised and displaying the raised open-hand gesture of “No Fear,” and he transforms envy into the “Wisdom of Accomplishing All.” In addition to their associations with directions, colors, mudrās, wisdoms to be attained, and poisons to be overcome, each of these five Jinas has a seed syllable (a sound that is inscribed and recited to evoke their presence and praise), an animal mount, and a symbol (such as a lotus, jewel, or wheel) displayed throughout iconographic descriptions.

By transforming these Five Poisons into wisdom, the tantric practitioner removes the boundary between their ordinary and enlightened identity. The tantric approach uniquely builds upon early Buddhist lists of components of body and mind and provides instructive divine correlates for each component.\[[19](#notes)\] For example, the Jinas are each tied to one of the five Skandhas or “Heaps,” psychophysical aggregates understood to compose a person: Form, Feeling, Perception, Formations, and Consciousness. By associating aspects of ordinary existence with enlightened counterparts, the Vajrayāna practitioner works toward realizing Buddhahood.

As with earlier and more mainstream Buddhist teaching tools, maṇḍalas participate in the project of breaking down attachment to the notion of an unchanging and real soul or self (ātman). The sand maṇḍala, discussed in more detail below, is an especially vivid means of experiencing impermanence, for when the ornate and elaborate maṇḍala made of colored sand is ritually dissolved, physically swept together and then swept away at the conclusion of the ritual, the practitioners witness each part of the maṇḍala pattern disappearing, representing the disappearing of associated aspects of their own personhood and divine identity.



 

##  Shifting Iconographies of a Mature Tantric Tradition 

The structure of the mandala is governed by a dynamic tension between the center, where the main deity or deities reside, and the periphery, where many other entities reside. The deities found outside and beyond the inner circle of the maṇḍala typically fulfill the ritual requisites for offering and protection, key to ensuring successful interaction with the deity at its center. Peripheral deities evoke the maṇḍala as a space into which deities are invited, confined, delighted, and subdued. Offering-goddesses appear in the corners of the maṇḍala palace. They preside over the ordinal directions and embody the sensory delights a practitioner would present as offerings to a deity. Depicted in motion—as they may be in visualization or as they can be seen in the performance of ritual dance forms such as the cārya nṛtya of Nepal—these goddesses sing, dance, and play instruments to please the inhabitants of the central palace.

Gatekeeper deities protect the main entrances to the maṇḍala, guarding against incursions by malevolent influences. Their roles reflect the numerous steps of protection required of ritual specialists to prepare the ground and location for the creation of the physical maṇḍala and maintain an effective ritual space: locating the appropriate spot by drawing a ritual diagram, nailing the perimeters with ritual daggers that subdue obstacles, and performing choreographed movements of the body and hand gestures to secure the space.\[[20](#notes)\] A protective circle demarcates and defends the ritual space, and the boundaries of the maṇḍala are fortified by circles of lotus petals, flames, and vajras. The multi-colored rings surrounding the mandala in Fig. 2 are examples of rendering a protective circle of lotus petals surrounded by flames to guard the boundary.

The unfolding lotus sculpture found in Fig. 3. from the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art, represents a mature form of the Indian tantric ritual tradition. The sculpture likely dates from the Pāla dynasty in India, approximately from the eighth to twelfth century CE, the final period of Buddhism’s flourishing in South Asia, an especially fruitful period for the Vajrayāna tradition. The central cushion of the flower in the sculpture provides a home for the tantric Buddha Hevajra and his consort Nairātmyā; the eight goddesses of their retinue encircle them, spread across the inner sides of the petals. The sculpture reinforces the order of center and periphery that characterizes maṇḍalas. Its petals can be unfolded and collapsed inward, and the sculpture’s capacity for movement amplifies its connection to a ritual process for approaching enlightened forms. The iconography of a central buddha with attending Buddhas or Bodhisattvas is replaced in this sculpture by a Buddha with a female counterpart surrounded by their retinue of goddesses. The presence of a consort, who is the female embodiment of enlightenment, in sexual union with a primary Buddha in male form displays one manner that esoteric tantric iconography uses gender to represent the realization of nonduality, symbolized by the union of Buddha and consort.

   ![Colorful Vairocana mandala](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/AME.Fig_.3%20Vairocana%20mandala.png?itok=4y8Jyatl) 

 

\[Figure 3. Lotus Mandala of Hevajra, Northeastern India, 12th century, copper alloy, 12 3/8 in. x 7 5/8 in. x 6 5/8 in. Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, object no. C2003.10.2, https://rubinmuseum.org/collection/c2003-10-2/.\]The Vajrayāna tradition employed countercultural aspects of traditional Buddhist asceticism, but it also transfigured the avoidance of sex and violence into something else. The iconography of Buddhas in sexual union with divine consorts and depictions of wrathful protectors reinforced the notion of poison, such as sexual desire, as a cure, a principle that underlies much of tantric practice. Featuring an iconography of desire enables an increased prominence of female enlightened embodiment. Rather than simply bodies to be avoided or repressed, female figures assumed a central position in maṇḍalas of the mature esoteric tradition of Tantra. Ritual manuals often describe the manner in which these deities represent the union of subject and object and the union of wisdom and compassion. In their passion, they bring together opposing aspects of reality. The gap between visual and textual representations of Tantra and their ritual and social realities remains a topic of debate among scholars, and the divide between literal and symbolic readings of these practices is not always clear-cut, but these changing dynamics, regardless of their interpretation, signify important shifts in Buddhist Tantra.\[[21](#notes)\]

The outer ring of maṇḍalas may depict eight cremation grounds, especially in maṇḍalas associated with more esoteric varieties of tantric practice, like those connected with sources like the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra or Hevajra Tantra. In the Lotus Mandala of Hevajra sculpture displayed in Fig. 3, the cremation grounds are featured in relief, and the great tantric practitioners known as the Mahāsiddhas along with accompanying beings and objects on the sides of the petals are visible even when the maṇḍala is closed. The cremation grounds are typically each inhabited by a great tantric practitioner, a serpent deity, and a stupa—which is a reliquary containing the remains of the Buddha or another enlightened saint—along with other identifying features marking the marginal status of this maṇḍala space. The image I discuss in the next section of this article, a Cakrasaṃvara-maṇḍala painting from Nepal found in Fig. 4, features cremation grounds as the outer ring of the maṇḍala, beyond the protective circles surrounding the palace. In this painting, the antinomian status of the cremation grounds is more apparent, and body parts are scattered to and fro throughout. In both examples, Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, the cremation grounds mark marginal and peripheral spaces that came to inspire a great deal of mature Vajrayāna iconography, which I will explain more about below.

As Vajrayāna ritual and iconography emerge and develop in India, the traditions appear to embrace the intensification of more controversial elements together with an intentional inversion of Indic and Brahmanical codes of ritual purity. Vajrayāna Buddhism places the traditional margins into a new symbolic center in Tantra. The implementation of impure activities— sex acts and manipulating and consuming impure substances such as meat and liquor—is read as a strategic upending of Buddhist monastic codes of conduct and as a reversal of Brahmanical Hindu understandings about the maintenance of social and cosmic order. According to this logic, skilled Vajrayāna practitioners employ intentional acts of transgression to achieve mastery of body and mind and to overcome dualistic modes of thinking that are deeply tied to worldly existence in Saṃsāra. The most renowned and accomplished of these tantric practitioners became known as Mahāsiddhas, “The Great Accomplished Ones” or the “Great Perfected.”\[[22](#notes)\] Stories and images of these masters of tantric attainments (siddhi) emphasize them flouting rules of nature and culture by flying through the air and manipulating the sun’s course. They also wander through marginal spaces like cremation grounds in states of disarray, bedecked in bone ornaments and flowers. Heroes of the Vajrayāna, the Mahāsiddhas display eccentricities that are interpreted as marks of their internal attainments resulting from practicing sādhana, the predominant tantric rites and practices of attainment through which these figures access their own enlightened identities.

As a space for taming new and rival practices and deities, maṇḍalas play an important role when negotiating the historical relationships between religious traditions. This mode of the Mahāsiddha exemplifies the ways that the Indian foundations of the Vajrayāna drew upon the iconography of the Hindu god Śiva, Lord of Destruction. Śiva wanders the cremation grounds with his body smeared in ashes, clad in animal skins, ornamented by bones. Hindu tantric traditions embraced this iconography prevalent in the cults of Śiva and the Goddesses of the Śaiva and Śakta tantric traditions. Vajrayāna Buddhists appropriated and embellished this imagery.\[[23](#notes)\] When Śiva carries his dead bride across the Indian landscape, the places where her body parts fell from her corpse became sacred sites. Within Buddhist tantric traditions, this Śaiva sacred geography is absorbed and remade in a “Vajra” form. The cremation grounds of the maṇḍala, many overlapping with Śaiva sites, are a reminder of competition and appropriation between the Vajrayāna Buddhist and Hindu tantric movements. Indian Buddhist tantric narratives about subduing Hindu gods such as Śiva incorporate subjugated deities into the maṇḍala; once dominated by Buddhism, they become protectors of the Vajrayāna.\[[24](#notes)\]

Buddhism is believed to have died out in India by the twelfth/thirteenth century CE. While some scholars blame Vajrayāna’s antinomian approach for this general decline, others see the disappearance of Buddhism from the land of its birth to be embedded in historical factors including competition with other traditions and the onslaught of Mughal troops.\[[25](#notes)\] By the twelfth century, Buddhism had spread to Southeast, Central, East Asia, and throughout the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet, where Vajrayāna continues to thrive to this day. In the next section, I turn to the Himalayas and their broad sphere of influence throughout Asia, exploring the social dimensions of maṇḍalas in greater depth.



 

##  Cementing Relationships through Mandala 

Artistic, ritual, and political relationships converge in maṇḍala. Below, I explore three maṇḍala representations that speak to these social dimensions, two paintings and one large textile image woven in silk, referred to as a kesi. All three maṇḍalas are connected to the Vajrayāna traditions of Nepal and Tibet, though one was created farther to the North and East during the Mongol Yuan dynasty.

Newar artists of Nepal produced a wide array of maṇḍala images, particularly maṇḍalas depicting the palace of Cakrasaṃvara.\[[26](#notes)\] In Fig.4, Cakrasaṃvara appears in the center of the mandala in sexual union with his divine consort. The Cakrasaṃvara Maṇḍala plays a prominent role in Newar Buddhist traditions, becoming central to understandings of ritual life, identity, and even to the landscape itself. The Kathmandu Valley is understood to be a maṇḍala, and initiation into the Cakrasaṃvara Maṇḍala is an important step for eligible members of the Newar Vajrācārya and Shakya communities, two social groups at the top of the ritual hierarchy of Buddhist practices among the Newars. One late fifteenth-century painting, referred to in Nepal as a paubha, of the Cakrasaṃvara Maṇḍala illustrates these levels of significance. This painting is currently in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The stages of the Cakrasaṃvara-initiation rituals solidify the relationships of the initiand to the guru, to the Buddhas, and to the Vajrayāna community. Anthropological accounts, such as the work of David Gellner, detail the performative and gendered dimensions of this initiation. The Vajrācārya, a Vajra preceptor or teacher, and his wife assume the roles of Cakrasaṃvara and his consort Vajravārāhī using codified gestures, recitation, and regalia in rituals.\[[27](#notes)\] Among the Newars, Vajravārāhī and her other forms, like Vajrayoginī, are worshipped independently and in tandem with a male Buddha. Several key pilgrimage sites within the Valley are devoted to thesefigures.\[[28](#notes)\] Some later Indian tantras are classed as Yoginī tantras, and the central position in the maṇḍala and the ritual structure are the dedicated and exclusive domain of female deities.\[[29](#notes)\]

To the lower left in Fig. 4, the crowned Vajrācārya priest officiates, surrounded by ritual implements. To the lower right, the family of a deceased Vajrācārya assembles, hands posed in veneration. The deceased ancestor appears before them in the image, dressed in white and framed by a golden arch. All these figures turn towards the priest and the deities, reinforcing the potential of tantric ritual to bridge the living and the dead, the human and divine, and to stress the importance of the connection to Cakrasaṃvara for Newar Buddhist identity.\[[30](#notes)\] The lower register of paubhas often depict the individuals who consecrated and commissioned the paintings, providing important reminders of the ritual and social relationships in which the maṇḍala partakes. Newar depictions of maṇḍalas like this one were often created to commemorate significant events in the lifecycle, such as old age rituals or death anniversaries.\[[31](#notes)\]

   ![Mandala of the Buddhist Deity Cakrasaṃvara](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/Four%20Hevajra%20Mandalas%20of%20the%20Vajravali%20Cycle.jpg?itok=9JYUnKSB) 

 

\[Figure 4. Mandala of the Buddhist Deity Cakrasaṃvara, Nepal, 1490 CE, mineral pigments on cotton cloth, 46 in. x 34 5/8 in. (116.84 cm. x 87.94 cm.). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum Acquisition Fund (M.73.2.1), https://collections.lacma.org/node/239857.\]Residing in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum, a large fourteenth-century maṇḍala (Fig. 5) in a medium of silk embroidery, known as kesi, from the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), illustrates the convergence of ritual and political relationships. The maṇḍala of Vajrabhairava, a deity associated with death, occupies the majority of the space in the image. Deities surrounding the main figure resemble him, and a lively ring of cremation grounds are secured between protective circles of lotus petals, vajras, and flames. The Vajrabhairava Maṇḍala from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection demonstrates the manner in which Vajrayāna iconography branded an empire, and this empire was supported by a skillful combination of artistic, ritual, and political relationships. The rows of figures framing the palace on the top and bottom of the tapestry emphasize the importance of social relationships in ritual and political hierarchies.

The top row of figures depicts a lineage of masters and disciples responsible for transmitting this maṇḍala tradition, figures spanning the realms of divine and human. It begins at the top left with the figure of the tantric Buddha Vajradhara, typically associated with initiation. The third figure from the left commemorates the transmission of Buddhist teachings from India to Tibet by depicting a barely clad Mahāsiddha adorned with jewels and hair in a topknot bestowing the Dharma upon a succession of teachers and disciples. In the bottom row, members of the Khan family, members of the Mongol Yuan dynasty, appear with hands joined in supplication. These imperial supplicants are accompanied by wrathful tantric deities guarding the bottom center of the painting. This image likely marks the initiation of these depicted members of the Khan family into the practice of Vajrabhairava.\[[32](#notes)\] The tapestry illustrates how maṇḍalas depict political power that extends beyond India and Tibet and into Mongolia—and even farther, the historical contexts of which I will explain below. The material value of the kesi was amplified by size and the skill required to weave a maṇḍala from silk, and they reinforced the imperial wealth and prestige of the Yuan. As a structure gravitating around a central deity asserting authority upon a vast domain, the maṇḍala functioned as a potent symbol for a powerful warrior empire, and it was a potent message to rivals about the dangers of challenging them.

The Mongol Khans forged an alliance with lamas from the Sakyapa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, as formalized in the “Patron-Priest Relationship” that radically shifted the power dynamics within Tibet during the Mongols’ brief but impactful reign and created a model for future collaborations between Buddhist institutions and political and military forces. ‘Phags pa (1235–1280), one of the foundational Sakya lineage holders, served as the imperial guru to Khubilai Khan (1215–1294), modeling an alliance set in motion by his uncle, the great Sakya master by the name of Sakya Paṇḍita (1182–1251). On ‘Phags pa’s invitation, a Newar artist named Arniko or Anige (1245–1306) travelled to the Mongol Yuan court, and there he created signature artwork and trained imperial artists in the Nepalese style. Even before Arniko’s travels to the Yuan court, Newar artists were influencing maṇḍala representations on a cosmopolitan scale across Asia. Just a century before his visit, Tibetan patronage of Newar painters signaled the emergence of a Newar style in Tibet. This style, referred to as the Beri style (Tib. bal ris/bal bris), distinguished by ornamental details such as foliate patterns and scrollwork, flourished in the fourteenth century and reached new heights in the fifteenth century.\[[33](#notes)\]

   ![Muted colored mandala from fourteenth century](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/AME.MandalaImage5.jpg.resize.jpg?itok=RJcIXFdX) 

 

\[Figure 5. Vajrabhairava Mandala, ca. 1330–32, silk tapestry, 96 5/8 in. x 82 5/16 in. (245.5 cm. x 209 cm.). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1992 (1992.54), https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/37614.\]Maṇḍalas provide an important means for securing lineage connections and maintaining relationships between the living and the dead. A series of maṇḍala paintings commissioned from a group of Newar artists by the fifteenth-century Sakyapa master Ngorchen Künga Zangpo (1382–1456) illuminates these facets of maṇḍala representation. Some of the paintings from Ngorchen’s set combine multiple maṇḍala into a single frame, not unlike a temple wall covered in several murals depicting maṇḍalas. As depicted in Fig. 6, the original of which is found in the Collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this format, favored by Newar artists, is displayed in a painting focused on the cycle of Hevajra-tantras. The four mandalas are embedded in shared cremation grounds. According to inscriptions on the images, this set of paintings illustrate maṇḍalas from the Vajrāvalī cycle.\[[34](#notes)\]

Over time, the sheer density and great number of maṇḍala representations fueled the compilation of liturgical manuals to order and consolidate the variety of maṇḍalas. Such manuals could be used by ritual specialists, individual practitioners, and even by artists as references for creating maṇḍala. Abhayākāragupta’s Vajrāvalī texts, Kuladatta’s Kriyāsaṃgrahapañjikā, and Jagaddarpana’s Kriyāsamuccaya—all three composed in India between approximately the eleventh and thirteenth centuries—are the most significant of such compendia. Ngorchen’s maṇḍala set draws upon two of these compendia (the Vajrāvalī cycle and the Kriyāsamuccaya) and attests to these manuals’ and these maṇḍalas’ enduring significance for artists and ritual specialists in Tibet and Nepal.

   ![Colorful mandala with four circles symmetrically placed in the four quadrants of the rectangle](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/Four%20Hevajra%20Mandalas%20of%20the%20Vajravali%20Cycle_0.jpg?itok=fXp9fkJl) 

 

\[Figure 6. Painting of four mandala from a series commissioned by Ngor chen, Four Hevajra Mandalas of the Vajravali Cycle, fifteenth century, colors on cloth, 35 ¼ in. x 29 in. (89.5 cm. x 73.7 cm.). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Stella Kramrisch Collection, 1994 (1994-148-635), https://philamuseum.org/collection/object/88547.\]As in the Newar Cakrasaṃvara painting featured in Figure 4, Ngorchen’s set of paintings connects the living and the dead. Inscriptions on the maṇḍala convey that Ngorchen created them to “perfect the intention” (Tib. thugs kyi dgongs pa yongs su rdzogs pa) of one of his own deceased Buddhist teachers.\[[35](#notes)\] In the Tibetan tradition, commissioning a painting or a sculpture as a material support for the Buddha’s presence was a way to commemorate a death anniversary of a deceased master, to pay tribute to their legacy, and to affirm the ongoing connection between gurus and disciples. The presence of two lineage masters at the center of the painting, at the intersection of the four maṇḍala, emphasizes this connection and provides a visual analogy for the ways that tantric practices facilitate identity with lineage alongside identity with the central deity of the maṇḍala. Maṇḍalas contributed to institutional identities and relationships and supported the Sarma schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the so-called “New Schools,” by legitimizing their connections to Indian Vajrayāna. Ngorchen’s maṇḍala commission affirms the integrity of his tradition, his ritual expertise, and his connection to his guru that connects to a chain of authority and authenticity stretching back to India. Some of the paintings from Ngorchen’s set of maṇḍalas even feature Ngorchen himself as patron and ritual master.

As a whole, Ngorchen’s paintings celebrate the lineage of Ngor monastery and embody a high point of the Beri style. The paintings also connect to Ngorchen’s larger project of extending the reach of the Sakya tradition, one of the Sarma schools, through artistic commissions. Ngorchen sponsored, for example, an entire temple arrayed with maṇḍala murals in the remote region of Nepal known as Lö Monthang. The most esoteric maṇḍalas at Lö Monthang are depicted on the top floor of that temple, where they might be accessible only to initiates, but they perpetually radiate the tradition from and throughout this remote area. This visual archive of the Sakyapa tradition’s maṇḍala transmissions communicates the depth of ritual knowledge available to those who support its institutions and engage in its practices.

Having explored the history of maṇḍala over a historical period spanning the seventh to the fifteenth centuries through six examples above, I return to the ritual context for maṇḍala in order to explore the manner in which maṇḍalas allow practitioners to negotiate the relationship between self and world. I focus on three practices: maṇḍala offering, body maṇḍala, and pilgrimage, and I examine one final image.



 

##  Inner and Outer Mandala 

Practitioners ritually use maṇḍala-offering plates, such as the silver-gilded example from the collection of the Walters Art Museum featured in Fig. 7, to offer all of themselves and the cosmos to their guru as an act of devotion. This three-dimensional maṇḍala ornamented with auspicious emblems is a ritual implement that resembles a Buddhist cosmic map with Mount

Meru at its center, surrounded by the continents and subcontinents.\[[36](#notes)\] Practitioners ritually assemble the world repeatedly by filling the rungs of the platter with grain, and then they present it as an offering. This ritual practice reinforces the analogy of person and environment and fosters generosity, devotion, and non-attachment. Making offerings using the maṇḍala plate, practitioners also cultivate the ability to expand and contract their view of things from the infinite down to a single grain.\[[37](#notes)\] Moreover, focusing upon the guru as the object of devotion provides an entry point into the cultivation of self as deity.

   ![Grain mandala set consisting of five silver repoussé components with a decorative finial representing Mount Meru a de](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2026-08/PS1_TL.2016.5.3_VwA_DD_T16-tms.jpg?itok=zFzjihxd) 

 

\[Figure 7. Grain Mandala Set, Tibet, 19th or 20th century, silver with gilding, 7 ¾ in. (19.69 cm.) high when fully assembled. Walters Art Museum, Gift of Walter Hauser, 2016 (57.2334), https://art.thewalters.org/object/57.2334/.\]Nowhere is the relation of microcosm and macrocosm more apparent than in the tradition of what is called the body-maṇḍala, an intricate form of sādhana practice intended for advanced tantric practitioners accustomed to testing the limits of their imagination. Adepts transform their bodies into a divine palace, and they populate it with Buddhas and attendant deities. As with other forms of sādhana, the goal is to dissolve the boundary between self and world and between ordinary and enlightened identities. The use of the body as a tool in this process accords with Vajrayāna’s pronounced emphasis on the body’s role in liberation and the possibility of achieving enlightenment in this body and lifetime rather than deferring accomplishment to a future rebirth. Vajrayāna traditions destabilize the notion of “the body” as a stable object of knowledge, and, instead, they present many bodies and many kinds of body-maṇḍalas, a topic that I explore in my 2022 monograph Searching for the Body: A Contemporary Perspective on Tibetan Buddhist Tantra.\[[38](#notes)\]

Indian tantric texts present varied forms of body-maṇḍala that are mapped onto the body in its ordinary and extraordinary capacities. The practitioner may, for example, correlate the ribs with the vajra-fence and the fingernails with the blazing mountain of the protective circle. They may also connect the five Jinas of the Buddha-families with the five Skandhas and various Buddha-consorts with the elements, including Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Space. Furthermore, Bodhisattvas are connected to sense spheres, and wrathful protector deities are connected to limbs of the body. Beyond the coarse bodily elements are found invisible subtle potentialities known as channels, winds, and drops. All this constitutes a “vajra body” used in body-maṇḍala practices and in the Completion Stage of sadhana, more broadly. The Completion Stage, sometimes referred to as the Perfection Stage is the second of two stages of tantric practice. Through choreographed ritual acts, the practitioner builds upon the imaginative ritual correlations of the Generation Stage aimed at facilitating the initial correspondence of practitioner and deity, and then moves toward the more complicated Completion Stage. The vajra body is both the instrument and landscape through which the identity is actualized through psycho-physical processes. In this ritual schema, Goddesses may assume the form or functions of the subtle channels or may embody the petals making up a cakra, one of the energetic hubs along the central channels where knots are formed, knots that disrupt the flow of winds. Tapping into these bodily sites through focused ritual acts of imagination, the practitioner progresses toward untying obstructions to the movement of subtle winds and opening to the possibility of transformative experiences of bliss. These experiences advance the Completion Stage realization of non-dual wisdom and are thought to lead to Buddhahood.

Many body-maṇḍala traditions are transmitted from India to Tibet, where they evolved with particular vibrancy in the traditions of the Guhyasamāja, Cakrasaṃvara, and Hevajra ritual cycles. In cases where the texts are silent, locating authoritative precedents for body-maṇḍala practices and determining precise ritual mechanics for them provided challenges and opportunities for Tibetan commentators. Beyond body-maṇḍala as a soteriological tool, body-maṇḍala practices become the grounds for controversy between traditions competing for prestige, patronage, and authority. In Searching for the Body, I detail a fifteenth-century debate between the Sakya tantric exegete Ngorchen, whose maṇḍala painting commissions are discussed above, and Khédrupjé (1385–1438), a student of the famed teacher Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), a proponent of the newly born Gelukpa tradition. The debate exemplifies the maṇḍala, including the body-maṇḍala, as a ground for contestation and a space for disambiguating traditions and articulating identities. Beyond socio-political concerns, debates about these maṇḍalas concerned choices about which authoritative sources to utilize to interpret body-mandala practice and the means of applying these sources; for example, interpreters debated how to implement and restrict the range of possibilities offered by the Saṃpuṭa Tantra, a text considered relevant for interpreting multiple systems of body-mandala. Among the major concerns of this tantric polemical encounter is the distinction between “inner maṇḍala,” as the body-maṇḍala is often described, and the “outer maṇḍala,” embodied in paintings, sculptures, or altars of colored sand. As attested by Ngorchen and Khédrupjé’s body-maṇḍala debate, questions of where one maṇḍala begins and another ends and which is most effective for advancing toward liberation emerge at the intersections of inner and outer mandala.

Pilgrimage practices provide another way for practitioners to invigorate the connections between self and world, between inner and outer. For instance, Buddhist pilgrims approach the sacred site of Mount Kailash, proceeding toward the maṇḍala’s center, where Cakrasaṃvara and his consort Vajravārāhī abide in union. Hindu pilgrims approach this same site, but they consider it to be the abode of Śiva and Pārvatī, also in perpetual union. The maṇḍalas in pilgrimage practices access blessings and purify obscurations by embodied ritual practice in physical locations.\[[39](#notes)\] Individuals endowed with elevated awareness can perceive hidden maṇḍalas in the physical environment and can reveal them so that other practitioners may benefit from their proximity.\[[40](#notes)\] Such practices help overcome the false assumption that we are merely ordinary beings inhabiting an ordinary world.\[[41](#notes)\] To regard a mountain or one’s body as a celestial palace and to equate one’s own being with Buddhahood is to radically upend the dualities that inform our flawed and limited vision of how things truly are.



 

##  Contemplating Impermanence and Reimagining the Boundaries of the Buddhist World 

The Kālacakra Maṇḍala, presented in the Kālacakra Tantra, is perhaps the most internationally renowned of maṇḍala traditions, and it contains a rich repository of approaches for negotiating self and world in astrological calculations, embryological knowledge, and medicine.\[[42](#notes)\] The term Kālacakra is often translated as “Wheel of Time.” The Kālacakra Tantra foretells a time of cosmic chaos in which the armies of Shambhala, a Buddhist utopian kingdom, intervene to restore order and to usher in a period of auspicious conditions for Buddhist practice.\[[43](#notes)\] The Kālacakra Maṇḍala is one of the most complicated maṇḍalas in tantric Buddhism. The diversity of individuals who have taken part in this maṇḍala’s transmission, especially in current times, is truly astounding. Based upon the Kālacakra Tantra, one of the later and more esoteric tantras produced in India, this maṇḍala focuses upon the tantric Buddha Kālacakra who is in union with his consort Viśvamātā. Buddhist sources describe how these teachings and this maṇḍala was taught by the Buddha early in his teaching career from within the Dhanyakataka stupa, preserved in the legendary utopian Buddhist land of Shambhala, and how it was later integrated into Indian Buddhism. Academics date the Kālacakra Tantra text to the eleventh century, approximately, and track its transmission to Tibet via various lineages of texts and teachers from the eleventh through fourteenth centuries.\[[44](#notes)\]

The Kālacakra Maṇḍala depicts detailed and explicit connections between the individual and the cosmos. It contains three layers of increasing profundity: the Outer, the Inner, and the Other. The Outer teachings connect parts of the maṇḍala with the physical elements and other aspects of the cosmos, and the Inner teachings articulate connections to the psychophysical components of a person. The Other teachings explore deeper connections to subtle elements in tantric physiology.\[[45](#notes)\] But how did such a complex and esoteric maṇḍala from such a complex and esoteric text achieve international renown beyond the traditional Buddhist networks in Asia?

The history of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s performance of the Kālacakra initiation makes sense of this maṇḍala’s ubiquity and illustrates connections between maṇḍala rituals and the contemporary plight of the Tibetan people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Kālacakra Maṇḍala rituals have been described as “public initiations,” meaning the maṇḍala and rituals and initiations can be conferred all at once to large groups of people. The creation of a sand maṇḍala is a crucial part of the initiation processes associated with the deity Kālacakra, the Kālacakra Tantra, and the Kālacakra Maṇḍala. In a sand maṇḍala, creating an altar in the form of a maṇḍala using painted powders or sand facilitates the realization of non-attachment. After monks spend days of meticulous work funneling colored sand into complex patterns to produce a maṇḍala palace filled with divine residents, the monks destroy their creation. Sweeping away the elaborate form and collecting the now-mixed materials through which they created the image, they dissolve the collected sand in a body of running water; thereby, they cleanse the overall physical and spiritual environment. In a similar manner, the practitioner of sādhana unpacks and transforms the elements like Sun Disk, Moon Disk, Lotus, Vajra, and seed syllables, in increasing levels of complexity to build a maṇḍala, and then they retract it all back into the center and dissolve everything into emptiness. The sand maṇḍala and its practices therefore mirror processes of creation and dissolution at the heart of tantric practice.

In the late twentieth century, groups of Tibetan monks began traveling around the United States performing this Buddhist ritual tradition of sand maṇḍala production in public spaces such as museums and universities. My own initial exposure to Tibetan culture occurred as an undergraduate on a field trip to the Asia Society in New York where I witnessed monks constructing a sand mandala. My desire to understand its symbolism and significance for its creators inspired me to pursue the study of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist cultures. By inviting non-Tibetans and non-Buddhists into this maṇḍala tradition, monks used sand maṇḍalas to teach and to generate curiosity about the Tibetan tradition, spreading awareness about the community’s existence and their difficulties living in exile. His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama himself endorsed and performed Kālacakra initiations associated with sand maṇḍalas.

The first two times that His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama performed the Kālacakra initiation were after the invasion of Tibet by Chinese troops in 1950. These first two empowerments were held in 1954 and 1956 at the Norbulingka palace, the traditional summer residence of the Dalai Lamas in Tibet. In 1959, His Holiness fled Tibet, entering exile in India. A large community of Tibetan refugees followed in his wake, and they established a community outside the town and area of Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh. There at Dharamsala in 1970, the Dalai Lama performed his first Kālacakra outside Tibet. Four years later, he performed the initiation for a crowd of one hundred thousand at the site of the Buddha’s enlightenment in Bodh Gaya.\[[46](#notes)\] While these performances were on the periphery of Tibet, these rituals embedded the community in exile in the center of the Buddhist world.

The first Kālacakra performance outside Asia was undertaken in 1981 to a small crowd of just fifteen hundred in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1976, one of the Dalai Lama’s own former teachers, Geshe Lhundub Sopa, had founded and formed the Buddhist community of Deer Park, known as the Deer Park Center, in Madison.\[[47](#notes)\] Madison came to be an important center for the sustenance of the Tibetan tradition in the United States. Geshe Sopa was also an educator in the Buddhist Thought program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This program was one of the first of its kind in the United States. Exemplifying the establishment of the Tibetan Buddhism on American soil and in university curricula, it was characterized by a range of acts of cross-cultural translation and collaboration. The 1981 Kālacakra performance in Madison consecrated a new home for Tibetan Buddhists beyond the refugee settlements and monastic compounds established in North and South India. The Dalai Lama’s Gift, the 2024 documentary by Ed Bastian, rejuvenates archival footage to bring this monumental event in 1981 to life.\[[48](#notes)\] The Dalai Lama continued to confer the empowerment over the ensuing decades at locations in Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 2003, Werner Herzog created a widely viewed documentary titled Wheel of Time that focused on Kālacakra initiations scheduled to be performed in 2002 in Bodh Gaya and Graz, and this documentary further amplified the Kālacakra maṇḍala’s reach.\[[49](#notes)\]

In Tibet, Buddhists are referred to as “insiders” (nang pa). Welcoming these new outsider audiences into the maṇḍala in the Tibetan diaspora expanded the Kālacakra Maṇḍala’s boundaries, transforming the parameters of inside and outside in a manner consonant with varied ritual, social, and political functions of maṇḍalas. The sand maṇḍala is a material enactment of the processes of creation and dissolution that fuel sādhana practice. The repeated act of emanating a whole world from a single syllable and collapsing it back inward fosters non-attachment in sādhana practices that allow a tantric practitioner to experiment with a flexible view of reality. From this perspective, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa are not separate, outsiders can become insiders, the margins can become the center.



 

##  Conclusion 

To summarize, in my exploration of maṇḍalas, I used seven key images to highlight maṇḍalas’ roles in transforming poisons into medicine, bringing desire onto the path of tantric Buddhism, and subduing enemies. As a teaching tool, maṇḍalas provide a space for the guru to introduce tantric disciples to their enlightened identity, and maṇḍalas serve as a framework for the initiate to obtain the blessings of the Buddhas. Unpacking the maṇḍala’s subversive elements, such as the depiction of deities in sexual union and the cremation ground imagery, reveals Vajrayāna Buddhism’s relationships to other Buddhist and non-Buddhist traditions. Maṇḍala images and their physical forms document conjunctions between artistic, ritual, and social relationships. In particular, Figures 4, 5, and 6 reveal that the creation of maṇḍalas may commemorate a deceased ancestor or teacher, celebrate progression through the lifecycle, solidify a bond between the living and the dead, and reinforce social identities. The tensions between inner and outer mandala in dialogue with the twentieth and twenty-first century history of the Kālacakra maṇḍala performance and ritual empowerments demonstrate dynamics at play in Tibetan Buddhism today.

Maṇḍalas are but one tool among many offered by the Vajrayāna tradition of Buddhist tantra to support practitioners’ quest to attain enlightenment here and now, in this lifetime and with this body. This brief introduction to maṇḍala is but a glimpse of the rich array of artistic, ritual, historical and social dimensions of an especially complex and generative ritual technology for progressing toward Buddhahood. My hope is that, like the maṇḍala itself, this entry will inspire the reader to continue to deepen their understanding of this tradition.



 

##  Notes 

\[1\] Jung states that maṇḍala reveal “nothing less than a psychic centre of personality not to be identified with the ego.” Carl G. Jung, *Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy*, edited by Gerhard Adler and R. F.C. Hull, Bollingen Series (Princeton University Press, \[1968\] 2014), 99.

\[2\] Christian Luczanits, “On the Earliest Maṇḍalas in a Buddhist Context,” in *Mahāyāna Buddhism: History and Culture*, ed. Darrol Bryant and Susan Bryant (Tibet House, 2008), 111–136; Luczanits “Ritual, Instruction and Experiment: Esoteric Drawings from Dunhuang,” in *The Art of Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent in Cross Culture Perspective*, ed. Anupa Pande and Mandira Sharma (National Museum Institute–Aryan Books International, 2009), 140–49.

\[3\] Jacob P. Dalton, “How *Dhāraṇī*s WERE Proto-Tantric: Liturgies, Ritual Manuals, and the Origins of the Tantras,” in *Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation*, ed. David B. Gray and Ryan Richard, online edition (Oxford Academic, 2016).

\[4\] For a sophisticated treatment of the classification of the tantras across the Indian and Tibetan contexts, see Jacob P. Dalton, “A Crisis of Doxography: How Tibetans Organized Tantra During the Eighth–Twelfth Centuries,” *Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies* 28, no. 1 (2005): 115–181.

\[5\] David Snellgrove, *Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors* (Shambhala, 1992), 189–213.

\[6\] Another yoga tantra focused upon Vairocana, the *Sarva-durgati-pariśodhana-tantra* also features five families, albeit a slightly different set. Recent studies have brought to light the evolving relevance of this tantra for the performance of funerary rituals among Newar and Tibetan Buddhist communities. See, respectively, Kris L. Anderson, “Raising the Dead and Saving Them: Transformations in Funerary Manuals of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra.” (PhD diss., University of California Berkeley, 2022) and Rory Lindsay, *Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra* (Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 2024).

\[7\] On the meanings of “vajra,” see Snellgrove, *Indo-Tibetan Buddhism*, 128–134.

\[8\] Ferdinand D. Lessing and Alex Wayman, trans., *mKhas grub rJe’s Fundamentals of the Buddhist Tantras*, Indo-Iranian Monographs 8 (Mouton, 1968), 27–35.

\[9\] On the etymology of the term maṇḍala, see Yong-Hyun Lee, “Synthesizing a Liturgical Heritage: Abhayākaragupta’s ‘Vajrāvali’ and the Kālacakramaṇḍala” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2003), 130n4.

\[10\] For a helpful description accompanied by diagrams of this structure, see John C. Huntington, et al., *The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art* (Serindia Publications, 2003), 90–92.

\[11\] Christian Luczanits’ essay, “The Many Faces of Buddha Vairocana,” and Elena Pakhoutova’s essay, “Buddhist Practices and Rituals Centered on Buddha Vairocana in Tibet,” outline this history and iconography of Vairocana in the following exhibition catalogue: J. van Alphen, et al., *The All-knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide* (Rubin Museum of Art and Bai Books, 2013).

\[12\] See, Ronald M. Davidson, “The Victory of Esotericism and the Imperial Metaphor,” in *Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement* (Columbia University Press, 2002).

\[13\] Matthew Kapstein, *The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism: Conversion, Contestation, and Memory* (Oxford University Press, 2000), 63–64. Pages 60–65 expand on the role of Buddha Vairocana at the Tibetan imperial court and his prominent position in the iconography of Samye monastery, an important site for the convergence of Buddhism and imperial power.

\[14\] Luczanits, “The Many Faces of Buddha Vairocana,” 12–23; Pakhoutova, “Buddhist Practices and Rituals Centered on Buddha Vairocana in Tibet,” 38–45. On the distinction of Tabo’s initial iconographic program and the later renovation, see page 18 in Luczanits’s essay. Pakhoutova describes Variocana’s role in tantric rituals performed for the deceased, especially relevant for the album—composed of fifty-four miniature paintings—that was the focus of the exhibition.

\[15\] Yael Bentor, *The Cosmos, the Person, and the Sadhana: A Treatise on Tibetan Tantric Meditation* (University of Virginia Press, 2024), 26–38.

\[16\] For a brief introduction to the bodies that enlightenment takes—bodies with a form such as the emanation and enjoyment body as well as those that are formless, namely the dharma body—see Rupert Gethin, *The Foundations of Buddhism* (Oxford University Press, 1998), 231–234.

\[17\] On the iconography of Amitābha and Amitāyus and examples of such representations from Tibet, see “Buddhist Deity: Amitayus Buddha,” Himalaya Art Resources, no date, <https://www.himalayanart.org/search/set.cfm?setID=130>.

\[18\] The rise in importance of the wrathful manifestations of Vajrapāṇi, especially in the context of the STTS are especially significant to this transformation. See Snellgrove, *Indo-Tibetan Buddhism*, 134–141.

\[19\] For a wealth of examples of such correlations, see Bentor, *The Cosmos, the Person, and the Sādhana.*

\[20\] Martin Brauen, *The Maṇḍala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism*, 1st ed. (Shambhala; distributed in the US by Random House, 1997), 75–78.

\[21\] In his semiology-informed rereading of tantric materials, Christian Wedemeyer provocatively challenges conventional narratives of the history and interpretation of Tantra. He introduces “connotative semiotics” as a way of approaching antinomian elements of tantric practice, elements that violate the Brahmanical codes of ritual purity of the day. He argues that “late-first-millenium Tantric Buddhist scripture and ritual use these signifiers to think with—as a medium for thinking about (and acting with reference to) ritual purity, freedom and gnosis” (Christian K. Wedemeyer, *Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions* \[Columbia University Press, 2013\], 130).

\[22\] For an overview of artistic rendering of the Mahāsiddhas, see Robert N. Linrothe, ed., *Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas* (Rubin Museum of Art; Chicago Serindia Publications, 2006). On the depiction of Siddhas in Indian literature, see Davidson, “Siddhas and the Religious Landscape” in *Indian Esoteric Buddhism.*

\[23\] Alexis Sanderson, “Vajrayāna: Origin and Function,” in *Buddhism Into the Year 2000: International Conference Proceedings* (Dhammakaya Foundation, 1994), 94–96.

\[24\] Ronald M. Davidson, “Reflections on the Maheśvara Subjugation Myth: Indic Materials, Sa-skya-Pa Apologetics, and the Birth of Heruka,” *Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies* 14, no. 2 (1991): 197–235.

\[25\] Lars Fogelin suggests that economic factors tied to the evolving separation of monastic and lay populations over hundreds of years were a primary cause for Buddhism’s disappearance from the subcontinent. Lars Fogelin, *An Archaeological History of Indian Buddhism* (Oxford University Press, 2015), 219–224.

\[26\] For many examples of Newar representations of the Cakrasaṃvara maṇḍala across media, see John C. Huntington, et al., *The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art* (Serindia Publications, 2003).

\[27\] David N. Gellner, *Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and Its Hierarchy of Ritual*, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 266–281.

\[28\] To learn about the story of the Kathmandu Valley as mandala and the place of goddesses within the landscape, see Alexander von Rospatt, “The Sacred Origins of the Svayambhūcaitya and the Nepal Valley: Foreign Speculation and Local Myth,” *Journal of the Nepal Research Centre* 13 (2009): 33–91.

\[29\] On the Yoginītantras and the representation of Vajrayoginī in Indian sources, see Elizabeth English, *Vajrayoginī: Her Visualizations, Rituals &amp; Forms: A Study of the Cult of Vajrayoginī in India*, 1st ed. (Wisdom Publications, 2002).

\[30\] Jinah Kim, et al., *Dharma and Puṇya: Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal* (Hotei Publishing, 2019), 88–99.

\[31\] Alexander von Rospatt, “Remarks on the Consecration Ceremony in Kuladatta’s Kriyāsaṃgrahapañjikā and its Development in Newar Buddhism,” in *Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in Nepal and India*, ed. Astrid Zotter and Christof Zotter (Harrassowitz, 2010). Also, Alexander von Rospatt, “Negotiating the Passage Beyond a Full Span of Life: Old Age Rituals among the Newars,” *South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies* 37, no. 1 (2014): 104–129.

\[32\] For an overview of sources on this kesi, see Yong Cho, “Vajrabhairava Mandala: Woven Mandalas in the Mongol Imperial Court,” *Project Himalayan Art*, Rubin Museum of Art, 2023, <a>http://rubinmuseum.org/projecthimalayanart/essays/vajrabhairava-mandala</a>. See also Patricia Ann Berger, “Preserving the Nation: The Political Uses of Tantric Art in China,” in *Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism*, 850–1850, ed. Marsha Smith Weidner and Patricia Ann Berger (Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1994), 89–123, esp. 104–105.

\[33\] David P. Jackson, *The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting* (Rubin Museum of Art; distributed by University of Washington Press, 2010).

\[34\] To learn more about the *Vajrāvalī* texts, see Lee, “Synthesizing a Liturgical Heritage.”

\[35\] On the practice of creating memorial thangkas at Ngor monastery, see Jörg Heimbel, “Portraits of the Great Abbots of Ngor: The Memorial or Death Anniversary Thangka (dus thang),” in Volker Caumanns, et al., eds., *Gateways to Tibetan Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honour of David P. Jackson on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday*, 2 vols., Indian and Tibetan Studies 12.1–2 (Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2021), 301–379.

\[36\] For an interactive diagram of a similar offering platter, see Eric Huntington, “Mandala Offering Plate,” Eric Huntington personal website, [https://erichuntington.org/?da\_image=mandala-offering-platter](https://erichuntington.org/?da_image=mandala-offering-platter).

\[37\] Eric Huntington, *Creating the Universe: Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism* (University of Washington Press, 2018).

\[38\] Rae Erin Dachille, *Searching for the Body: A Contemporary Perspective on Tibetan Buddhist Tantra* (Columbia University Press, 2022).

\[39\] Toni Huber, “Putting the Gnas Back in Gnas-skor: Rethinking Tibetan Pilgrimage Practice,” in *Sacred Spaces and Powerful Places in Tibetan Culture: A Collection of Essays*, ed. Toni Huber (Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1999), 77–104.

\[40\] For an example of an account of one figure possessed of these special capacities, see Ngawang Zangpo and Koṅ-sprul Blo-gros-mthaʼ-yas, *Sacred Ground: Jamgon Kongtrul on “Pilgrimage and Sacred Geography.”* (Snow Lion Publications, 2001).

\[41\] Thubten Yeshe and Jonathan Landaw, *Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire*. Rev. ed. (Wisdom Publications, 2001). See especially Chapter 4, “Overcoming the Tyranny of Ordinary Appearances.”

\[42\] Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, “Medicine, Astrology, and Divination,” in *Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine*, ed. Theresia Hofer (The Rubin Museum of Art; distributed by University of Washington Press, 2014).

\[43\] Geshe Lhundub Sopa, et al., *The Wheel of Time: The Kalachakra in Context* (Snow Lion Publications, 1985).

\[44\] Sopa, et al., *The Wheel of Time*.

\[45\] Sopa, et al., *The Wheel of Time*. See also Vesna Acimovic Wallace, *The Inner Kālacakratantra: A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual*. 1st ed., Oxford University Press, 2001.

\[46\] Dalai Lama, “Introduction to the Kalachakra,” trans. by John Newman, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet website, no date, <https://www.dalailama.com/teachings/kalachakra-initiations>.

\[47\] “Deer Park Buddhist Center,” Deer Park Buddhist Center website, no date, <https://www.deerparkcenter.org/>.

\[48\] Ed Bastian, dir., *The Dalai Lama’s Gift* (Ed Bastian, 2024).

\[49\] Werner Herzog, dir. *Wheel of Time* (Wellspring Media, 2003).



 

##  Bibliography 

Alphen, J. van, Karl Debreczeny, Elena Pakhoutova, and Christian Luczanits. *The All-Knowing Buddha: A Secret Guide*. New York and Antwerp: Rubin Museum of Art and BAI Books, 2013.

Anderson, Kris L. “Raising the Dead and Saving Them: Transformations in Funerary Manuals of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra.” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2022.

Bastian, Ed, dir. *The Dalai Lama’s Gift*. United States, 2024.

Berger, Patricia Ann. “Preserving the Nation: The Political Uses of Tantric Art in China.” In *Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850–1850*, edited by Marsha Smith Weidner and Patricia Ann Berger, 89–124. Lawrence: Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, 1994.

Bentor, Yael. *The Cosmos, the Person, and the Sadhana: A Treatise on Tibetan Tantric Meditation*. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024.

Brauen, Martin. *The Maṇḍala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism*. 1st ed. Boston: Shambhala; New York: Distributed in the US by Random House, 1997.

Cho, Yong. “Vajrabhairava Mandala: Woven Mandalas in the Mongol Imperial Court.” *Project Himalayan Art*, Rubin Museum of Art, 2023. <http://rubinmuseum.org/projecthimalayanart/essays/vajrabhairava-mandala>.

Dachille, Rae Erin. *Searching for the Body: A Contemporary Perspective on Tibetan Buddhist Tantra*. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022.

Dalton, Jacob P. “A Crisis of Doxography: How Tibetans Organized Tantra During the Eighth–Twelfth Centuries.” *Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies* 28, no. 1 (2005): 115–81.

———. *The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism*. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.

———. “How Dhāraṇīs Were Proto-Tantric: Liturgies, Ritual Manuals, and the Origins of the Tantras.” In *Tantric Traditions in Transmission and Translation*, edited by David B. Gray and Ryan Richard Overbey. Online ed. Oxford: Oxford Academic, 2016.

Davidson, Ronald M. “Reflections on the Maheśvara Subjugation Myth: Indic Materials, Sa-skya-Pa Apologetics, and the Birth of Heruka.” *Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies* 14, no. 2 (1991): 197–235.

———. *Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement*. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.

English, Elizabeth. *Vajrayoginī: Her Visualizations, Rituals, and Forms: A Study of the Cult of Vajrayoginī in India*. 1st ed. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2002.

Gellner, David N. *Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and Its Hierarchy of Ritual*. Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Gethin, Rupert. *The Foundations of Buddhism*. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Heimbel, Jörg. “Portraits of the Great Abbots of Ngor: The Memorial or Death Anniversary Thangka (dus thang).” In *Gateways to Tibetan Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honour of David P. Jackson on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday*, edited by Volker Caumanns, Jörg Heimbel, Kazuo Kano, and Alexander Schiller, 2 vols. Indian and Tibetan Studies 12.1–2, 301–380. Hamburg: Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2021.

Herzog, Werner, dir. *Wheel of Time*. New York: Wellspring Media, 2003. Widescreen DVD.

Howard, Angela Falco. *The Imagery of the Cosmological Buddha*. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986.

Huber, Toni. “Putting the Gnas Back in Gnas-skor: Rethinking Tibetan Pilgrimage Practice.” In *Sacred Spaces and Powerful Places in Tibetan Culture: A Collection of Essays*, edited by Toni Huber, 77–104. Dharamsala: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1999.

Huntington, Eric. *Creating the Universe: Depictions of the Cosmos in Himalayan Buddhism*. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.

Huntington, John C., Dina Bangdel, Robert A. F. Thurman, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Columbus Museum of Art. *The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art*. Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003.

Jackson, David P. *The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting*. New York: Rubin Museum of Art; Seattle: Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2010.

Jung, Carl G. *Collected Works of C. G. Jung. Volume 12: Psychology and Alchemy*. Edited by Gerhard Adler and R. F. C. Hull. Bollingen Series. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, \[1968\] 2014.

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Kim, Jinah, Todd Lewis, and Cantor Art Gallery. *Dharma and Puṇya: Buddhist Ritual Art of Nepal*. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2019.

Lee, Yong-Hyun. “Synthesizing a Liturgical Heritage: Abhayākaragupta’s ‘Vajrāvalī’ and the Kālacakramaṇḍala.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2003.

Lessing, Ferdinand, and Alex Wayman, trans. *mKhas grub rJe’s Fundamentals of the Buddhist Tantras*. Indo-Iranian Monographs 8. The Hague: Mouton, 1968.

Luczanits, Christian. “On the Earliest Maṇḍalas in a Buddhist Context.” In *Mahāyāna Buddhism: History and Culture*, edited by Darrol Bryant and Susan Bryant, 111–36. New Delhi: Tibet House, 2008.

———. “Ritual, Instruction and Experiment: Esoteric Drawings from Dunhuang.” In *The Art of Central Asia and the Indian Subcontinent in Cross-Culture Perspective*, edited by Anupa Pande and Mandira Sharma, 140–49. New Delhi: National Museum Institute and Aryan Books International, 2009.

Linrothe, Robert N., Debra Diamond, Kathryn Selig Brown, Caron Smith, and Rubin Museum of Art. *Holy Madness: Portraits of Tantric Siddhas*. New York: Rubin Museum of Art; Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2006.

Lindsay, Rory. *Saving the Dead: Tibetan Funerary Rituals in the Tradition of the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra*. Vienna: Arbeitskreis für Tibetische und Buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 2024.

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Snellgrove, David. *Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan Successors*. Boston: Shambhala, 1992.

Sopa, Geshe Lhundub, Roger R. Jackson, John Newman, and Beth Lee Simon. *The Wheel of Time: The Kalachakra in Context*. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1985.

Thubten Yeshe, and Jonathan Landaw. *Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire*. Rev. ed. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001.

von Rospatt, Alexander. “Remarks on the Consecration Ceremony in Kuladatta’s Kriyāsaṃgrahapañjikā and Its Development in Newar Buddhism.” In *Hindu and Buddhist Initiations in Nepal and India*, edited by Astrid Zotter and Christof Zotter, 197–260. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010.

———. “Negotiating the Passage Beyond a Full Span of Life: Old Age Rituals among the Newars.” *South Asia: Journal of South Asia Studies* 37, no. 1 (2014): 104–29.

———. “The Sacred Origins of the Svayambhūcaitya and the Nepal Valley: Foreign Speculation and Local Myth.” *Journal of the Nepal Research Centre* 13 (2009): 33–91.

Wallace, Vesna Acimovic. *The Inner Kālacakratantra: A Buddhist Tantric View of the Individual*. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Wedemeyer, Christian K. *Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and Transgression in the Indian Traditions*. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.

Yoeli-Tlalim, Ronit. “Medicine, Astrology, and Divination.” In *Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine*, edited by Theresia Hofer, 90–109. New York: Rubin Museum of Art; Seattle: Distributed by University of Washington Press, 2014.



 

Author Biography

### Rae Erin Dachille 

 

Rae Erin Dachille (PhD in Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley) specializes in the religious and artistic traditions of Himalayan Buddhism. Her research focuses on representations of the body in art, ritual, philosophy, and medicine in Tibetan and Sanskrit sources. Dachille’s book, *Searching for the Body: A Contemporary Perspective on Tibetan Buddhist Tantra* (Columbia University Press), explores a scholastic exchange between two prominent 15th-century Tibetan monks on the ritual practice of body mandala and considers its relevance to broader conversations about embodiment.

Dachille’s research and teaching explore gender, ritual, representation, and embodiment in the visual, textual, and performative cultures of South Asia and the Himalaya. She teaches courses on Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist art, Buddhism and healing, Tantric Buddhism, and theories and methods for the study of religion. She is an affiliate faculty member in Gender and Women’s Studies and Social, Cultural and Critical Theory and received the 2024 Chatfield Outstanding Tenured Researcher of the Year Award.

Areas of specialization: Indo-Tibetan Buddhism; Tantra; visual cultures of Asia; representation; embodiment



 



      ![Rae Dachille smiling into the camera](/sites/g/files/omnuum4346/files/styles/hwp_1_1__480x480/public/2026-08/Rae.Dachille2018.jpg?h=5b898e03&itok=WDz8LCRI) 

 

 

  

 



 

 

 

##  Suggested Citation 

Dachille, Rae Erin. "Maṇḍala." *Archive of Mystical Experiences*. Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2026.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Archive of Mystical Experiences ](/topic-tags/archive-mystical-experiences)
- [ Buddhism ](/topic-tags/buddhism)