Mandalas function by re-tuning perceptual phenomena. As cosmic tuning forks, they attune minds and hearts to the frequency of the infinite. As diagrams, they retune reality by acting as visual aids for directed contemplation and metaphorical temples for transforming everyday experience. 

Mandalas are widely used in meditation, particularly in Tibetan Buddhism, Tantric Hinduism and Japanese Kukai Buddhism. Similar motifs feature in Native American symbolism as well as in the Celtic and Christian traditions. In these spiritual traditions, mandalas have an essentially psychedelic (‘mind-manifesting’) role as tools for invoking sacred spaces outside of ordinary space-time and as aids for inducing trance-like states. They help to manifest forcefields that transport us to blissful places separate and protected from the ever-changing world of appearances.

Mandala, translated from Sankrit, means "circle-circumference" or "completion". In the various traditions that use it, the mandala symbolizes the totality of inner and outer appearance and existence; it is a microcosm embodying the energies at work in the universe and serving as a focal point for these forces.

The primordial circular mandala-shape takes its cue from the sphere, which symbolises the world or cosmos, the mind, as well as from the eye – the organ that ‘drinks-in’ the universe.  The pupil of the eye forms the central focal-point of the mandala: the symbolic circular gateway wherein phenomena are ‘squared’ by thought. Simultaneously, the mandala is the sacred dancefloor on which deities, avatars and conscious beings dance, giving physical expression to the nature of things. Each layer of the mandala represents an aspect of the cosmic dance – each aspect, corresponding with a deity or force of a specific colour.

The images or colours invoked in mandalas are often bright and hyperreal, symbolising intense states of divine abstraction as well as intensive acts of physical participation. Each image, symbol or colour refers to actual experiences or mental states as well as their cosmic transformation into pure energy. By visually representing the process whereby reality unfolds to reveal spiritual luminosity, mandalas expose the essential unity of all phenomena. Viewers or participants are invited to experience and transform the fourfold aspects of reality. These, in Tantric terms, are the senses, the passions, the elements and the skandhas (the constituting factors of all things). These aspects may also simply be the four essential material elements (fire, water, air and earth) that are transformed into the fifth (spirit).

Working with the experiential cosmic diagram of a mandala necessitates a direct engagement with the elements and the nature of ‘being’. In Buddhist terms, this active participation involves a contemplation of heart, throat and mind (namely, the worlds of experience, expression through language and dance, and thought itself). The mandala invokes and transforms each of these in turn as it points toward the heart of the cosmic beat. Whatever the tradition, mandalas remind us of the immanence of the Universe and the immense energetic potential situated within each and every one of us. As vessels of energy and intent, they demand a sense of playfulness – a willingness to surrender oneself to the cosmic dance.