The Tantric MandalaThe key to understanding Tantric practice is the mandala, the energy grid that represents the constant flow of divine and demonic, human and animal impulses in the universe, as they interact in both constructive and destructive patterns. Like the Vedic sacrificial altar of which it is a streamlined form, the mandala is a mesocosm, mediating between the great and small (the universal macrocosm and the individual microcosm), as well as between the mundane and the sublime human. This grid is three dimensional, in the sense that it locates the supreme deity (god, goddess, celestial Buddha, bodhisattva, enlightened Tirthankara), the source of that energy and ground of the grid itself, at the center.
