Buddhist-Meditation-Systematic-and-Practical

hundreds of these mystic diagrams. It was, however,
quite a typical example and served to illustrate his
explanation.
Now we have finished the meditations of the body and
we may go on to discuss meditations relating to
surroundings.
a. Explanation of the mandala
Pointing out various features of the mandala as it
lay before him, we progressed from the outside
elements to those in the center.
The outside circle shows the eight great cemetery
grounds with bones and decayed bodies in abundance.
The next ring represents the five elements and is colored
appropriately in bands of colors, each one associated
with one of these elements. Inside this, three walls are
shown, one of vajras, one in the form of blooming
lotuses, and the last composed of skulls.
One must remember that while the mandala picture is
only in two dimensions, it is to be visualized as
three-dimensional. For this reason, some features of the
mandala are hidden under the surface of the two
dimensional picture. For example, in the center of the
mandala, under the palace, is a large crossed-vajra.
Again above the surface of the picture and therefore
above the palace and its surroundings is a vajra-net,
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