Like sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives

March 23, 2005 8:09 PM

A mandala is a symbol of the universe. It is a diagram whose colors, lines, and forms all have meaning. In the Buddhist religion, mandalas are used in sacred ceremonies and meditation, to help people on their journey toward spiritual enlightenment. Mandalas have been made since ancient times. They can be painted on cloth or carved or created from sand.
If you don't like those, you can just make pretty sand pictures on your monitor.
posted by DeepFriedTwinkies (9 comments total)

Mandalas are works of ancient beauty and tradition, but I'm going to be playing with the pretty-sand-picture-maker all night.
posted by ontic at 9:19 PM on March 23, 2005

No, I didn't have anything I was planning on doing tonight...
posted by cmyk at 9:42 PM on March 23, 2005

Awesome, thanks Mr. Twinkie
posted by yodelingisfun at 9:50 PM on March 23, 2005

Excellent post. But I must declare you my nemesis for beating me to post quite like this that I've been toying with for a few months, off and on. Salutations! /twiddles mustache diabolically.

I'm fascinated with the things, and make a form of them myself. God's eyes. Voids and orbs.
posted by loquacious at 12:00 AM on March 24, 2005

I was forwarded a Word document that recorded with beautiful pictures the painstaking making and the destruction of a mandala. If only the format were different, it would've made a good mefi post. As it is, I'd be happy to forward that document to anyone who's interested in it. (Email address in my profile.)
posted by of strange foe at 7:45 AM on March 24, 2005

on that same topic, of strange foe, a while ago someone here (I believe) posted a time lapse video of monks creating & then uncreating a sand mandala - does anyone have a link to that video?
posted by jonson at 8:42 AM on March 24, 2005

Bingo. (The original page is gone, but gwint's is still up.)
posted by of strange foe at 9:03 AM on March 24, 2005

Carl Jung was quite fond of mandalas as symbols for the self. Often, he had his patients paint or draw them as a means of "measuring" the self. These patients would paint symbols they had no knowledge of, but symbols that often show up in western and eastern religious thought.
posted by WC_Helmets at 10:51 AM on March 24, 2005

WC_Helmets, that reminds me of something in the Unicode post a couple of days ago.
posted by of strange foe at 11:40 AM on March 24, 2005