The Mandala: Sacred Circle in Tibetan Buddhism. By
Martin Brauen. Translated by Martin Wilson, with photographs by Peter Nebel and Doro
Roethlisberger. Boston: Shambhala, 1997. Pp. 151. ISBN 1-57062-296-5, US $45.00.
- Reviewed by
- Frank J. Korom
Curator of Asian and Middle Eastern Collections
Museum of International Folk Art
Santa Fe, New Mexico
fjkorom@nm-us.campus.mci.net
This lavishly illustrated book is a translation of the author's German original
entitled Das Mandala: Der Heilige Kreis im tantrischen Buddhismus, which was
published in 1992 by DuMont. The volume, released as a companion publication to an
exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich bearing the same title,
is not simply a catalogue of the objects displayed in the show. Instead, Brauen provides
us with the most detailed study of the mandala form's conceptual basis, its visual
representations in a number of media, and its ritual usages. There is also a useful
conclusion drawing on universal notions of the mandala developed by such noted Europeans
as Carl Gustav Jung. The English edition is also slightly different in format and
presentation from the German original. It therefore deserves to be reviewed in this newest
incarnation.
Brauen begins with the idea of the "picture-friendliness" of Tibetan
Buddhism, linking it with the practice of visualizing deities as a form of meditation. As
he states: "To impart the most profound religious truths, Tantric Buddhism employs
pictorial representations with an intensity found in no other form of Buddhism and
scarcely in any other religion" (p. 9). While the latter portion of his statement
needs to be qualified to a certain degree in light of the fact that many non-literate
religious traditions rely heavily on visual images for religious and healing experiences
(e.g., Australian Aborigine or Navajo), his claim is certainly true within the galaxy of
the world religions. Given the extremely esoteric nature of Tibetan mandala practice,
Brauen seeks to make the esoteric comprehensible to a Western audience by using modern
visual conventions by utilizing cutting-edge computer technology to depict pictorially the
fundamentally three-dimensional reality of mandalas. By doing so, he is essentially
explicating "something that cannot be grasped in words" (p. 10). Brauen notes
that many previous writers, including the well-known Tibetologist Giuseppe Tucci in The
Theory and Practice of the Mandala (London : Rider and Company, 1961), attempted to
understand, in the spirit of Jung, the universality of the mandala. His well-taken cue
that we must first understand the Tibetan mandala on its own terms is the starting point
for any analysis.
Rather than focusing broadly on mandalas in general, he focuses on the kaalacakra
mandala (dus kyi 'khor lo) specifically, not only because it was the one
constructed at his museum, but also because it is one of the most important in the
tradition, belonging as it does to the Anuttarayoga Tantra. But this raises an
important ethical dilemma for Brauen. How does an objective author convey something
intended to be secret, meant for the initiate only, to a general audience? His answer is
to draw on a methodology that incorporates only work already sanctioned and published.
This is sound, since the literature on the philosophy and ritual practice of the kaalacakra
mandala is quite immense, given the fact that it has become the most popular initiatory
ritual among Westerners since the beginning of the Tibetan diaspora in 1959. Brauen's work
thus deftly distills this vast corpus of technical and popular literature, while also
adding his own observations as an ethnographer of religion. The result is a very readable
volume that will be of use to both the specialist and the non-specialist.
The book covers all of the numerous angles from which to interpret the kaalacakra
mandala. Chapter three initiates the technical discussion by explicating the meaning of
the "outer mandala." As with Tantric Hindu theories of the relationship between
the microcosm and the macrocosm, Tibetan Buddhism also posits an inviolable homology
between the world and the human body. Brauen depicts the "outer" dimension of
the mandala by drawing in words, diagrams, and illustrations the cylindrical world of the Abhidharmakosha,
which places the gods at the center of the cosmos and humans on the periphery. Thus,
because the aforementioned text makes a strong connection between the cosmos, the person,
and the mandala, the entire ritual process of mandala meditation can be understood
metaphorically as a journey to the center, since the meditating individual strives to
become the deity depicted at the center of the geometric pattern. Moreover, Brauen
discusses the relationship of the sacred architecture of the stuupa (mchod rten)
with the mandala form, stating that both are replications of the cosmos in structured
space. By making a correlation between physical movement around the stuupa towards
the center with spiritual movement during the "meditative walk" (p. 29) to the
center of the mandala palace, Brauen is able to complete his integrated model of the
mandala as a blueprint of the natural and spiritual worlds.
In Chapter four, the "inner mandala" is described by the author. Because the
human body is understood to be a mandala in the Kaalacakra Tantra, Brauen devotes a
whole chapter to the theory of cakras and the other elements of the subtle and
physical body, such as the ten winds and their directional orientation. Using diagrams and
drawings of the body and its composite parts, Brauen aids the reader in visualizing and
spatializing the numerous correlates that comprise the human-cosmic connection, which in
turn allows him to move easily into a discussion of the "other mandala," the
method of tantric meditation. In order to realize emptiness, the meditator creates a
mental mandala which enables him to understand the correlation between the adept's body
and the universe through a process of analogy. As Brauen states, "The inner kinship
of all beings forms the basis for the complicated Tantric system of analogies and
correlations, and through 'thought and action by analogy' death and rebirth eventually
lead to an awareness of blissful emptiness and the attainment of an (immaterial) divine
body" (p. 61). Brauen argues convincingly that central to this process of realization
is the cleansing of the body's winds, which allows the adept to visualize the deities
during mandala meditation. These are, perhaps, the most unique features of Tantric
Buddhism, but the author is quick to point out that while the utilization of the subtle
energies and the visualization of deities may be peculiar to this method, the final
Buddhist goal remains the same: realizing that nothing exists in and of itself. Thus, to
realize this fundamental truth, the meditator must pass through two phases of experience,
that of generation and completion. The generation phase occurs as the adept visualizes the
deity, and the completion phase occurs when he or she becomes the deity, described as
"water in water" (p. 64).
Having described the practice of mandala meditation, Brauen moves on to a detailed
discussion of the making of a particular mandala of the kaalacakra. As with the
homologies drawn in the previous chapters, he points out that the kaalacakra palace
at the center of the mandala symbolizes the relationship between body and universe, for it
is constructed around three principal regions representing the body, speech, and mind of
the Buddha. As he suggests, the entire mandala is regarded as an emanation of the Buddha,
and its various regions are considered to be different facets of the enlightened Buddha.
Just as with the physical journey around a stuupa, the mandala meditator approaches
the sacred center from without. The preparatory rites for the construction of the form are
thus focused on the center because the deity's throne is placed there.
Brauen's brief, concluding chapter explores the way that the mandala has been
understood by Western analysts. He dismisses some early theories by Camman and Hummel that
suggest a Chinese origin for the mandala and cautions the reader against accepting Jung's
interpretation of individual elements of the form. However, he does note that although
Jung's knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism was severely limited due to the paucity of reliable
texts available during his lifetime, he did grasp intuitively much of the esoteric meaning
of the mandala's psychology. For example, Jung realized that the deeper meaning of the
mandala had to do with becoming "inwardly aware" of the deity in order to break
the bonds of illusion for the purpose of merging "individual existence" with the
"universal totality of the divine state" (p. 121, Jung's words). Brauen accepts
this basic premise "as long as by 'divine state' is meant not an image of the divine
shaped by Christianity, but Buddhahood" (ibid.).
On a concluding note, Brauen states that there is a danger in Western understandings
and practices of mandala rites because of the West’s preconceived notions of
individualism; that is, because visualization is a process of finding — and situating
oneself at — the center, the entire process can become an egocentric one. This, he
points out, goes against the compassionate reasoning underlying mandala practice in
Tibetan Buddhism. He thus sums up by stating that Buddhism's view of the
interconnectedness of all things is fundamentally different from our
"technologically-oriented and consumerist world, and the attitude that the universe
— with man at the centre — belongs only to us and is our rightful property"
(p. 124). True enough, but we might still ask what role mandala initiation can play in a
diasporic world fraught with decentering tendencies.
Brauen's book is one of the clearest and most lucid expositions of mandala theory and
practice to appear in recent years. His use of computer-generated images as an aid to
understanding mandala form will assist Western students in grasping the subtleties of
Tibetan philosophy and spirituality. As such, it is destined to become a classic both in
the classroom and in the public reader's library.