The mandala is about the journey to the center. It is a symbol that signifies wholeness and inner transformation. The mandala is a symbol with unlimited potential - it is a spiritual map to help guide us back to our natural state.

I have gathered these 28 quotes to bring greater understanding to the mandala as a tool for healing, balance and transformation. As you read these quotes, you may explore your own life, or your own experience in the moment, for they are the mandala in an interconnected dynamism that unfolds and reveals ever new forms of your potential.

Here are 28 quotes

“Mandala simply means “center and surroundings”. That is what we see in a mandala – a circle that contains a square…The practice of a mandala is simply to place ourselves in the middle of it and learn to relate with the social structure and atmosphere around us as a sacred environment.”

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche

“A mandala is...an integrated structure organized around a unifying center.”

Longchenpa

“The flower’s perfume has no form, but it pervades space. Likewise, through a spiral of mandalas formless reality is known.”

Saraha

“We should learn to see everyday life as mandala - the luminous fringes of experience which radiate spontaneously from the empty nature of our being. The aspects of our mandala are the day-to-day objects of our life experience moving in the dance or play of the universe.”

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

“Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life.”

Pema Chödrön

“In the state of consciousness natural to the field within the mandala - that of Self-realization, or non-duality - such opposites as inner and outer, or subjective and objective, male or female, matter and spirit, are all grasped as connected, married, ultimately unified.”

Judith Cornell

“When there is no more separation between “this” and “that” it is called the still-point of Tao, at the still point in the center of the circle, one sees the infinite in all things.”

Chuang Tzu

“Your consciousness, your soul, is the center of this mandala, and the rest of the universe is the environment surrounding it. The totality of the mandala is unfolding according to an intelligent pattern; it is a dynamic mandala.”

A.H. Almaas

“The mandala describes balance. This is so whatever the pictorial form.”

Stephen Gardiner

“Mandalas are often described as cosmoplans in both the external sense, as diagrams of a cosmos; and in the internal sense, as guides to the psycho-physical practices of an adherent.”

Denise Patry Leidy

“Everything that shows up in your mandala is a vehicle for your awakening. From this point of view awakening is right at your fingertips continually.”

Pema Chödrön

“Making a mandala is a universal activity, a self-integrating ritual.”

Jose Arguelles

“That said...the word Mandala is derived from the root Manda, which means essence, energy or spirit, and by adding the suffix la to any Sanskrit word, it becomes the container or vessel for it; thus revealing the Mandala as a container for essence, energy or spirit.”

June-Elleni Laine

“The mandala is a map for spiritual transformation.”

Tsultrim Allione

“In the infinite mandala of space, all phenomena are easily accommodated. They have easy space and there is still space.”

Padmasambhava

“The center of the Mandala is the Now-moment, where, through the quality of attention, we constantly create ourselves anew.”

Richard Moss

“We experience the seamless, unimpeded flow of everything that arises and dissolves within the reality-sphere that is the mandala of our own existence. Nothing is out of place; everything gives unique expression to an infinite network of conditions that are implicated in every manifestation from the most miniscule to the most cosmic, from the most insignificant to the most magnificent.”

Peter Fenner

“Awareness of the mandala may have the potential of changing how we see ourselves, our planet, and perhaps even our own life purpose.”

Bailey Cunningham

“We have the symbolism of the mandala and we have the basic principle of the mandala.”

Trungpa Rinpoche

“The mandala is a microcosm within itself, a tiny representation of the universe where myriads points unite and oppose each other to achieve a harmony of peaceful unity.”

Peter Patrick Barreda

“The architecture of the mandala represents both the nature of reality and the order of an awakened mind.”

John Powers

“A mandala is “a primary centering tool that maps the psyche’s journey of transformation.”

Tsultrim Allione

“Our lives can only be seen as a mandala if we include everything, all positive qualities as well as all that we would like to ignore, reject, or distance ourselves from.”

Judith Simmer-Brown

“The pattern found within the mandala can help describe the nature of our being as well as the nature of our cosmos.”

Lori Bailey Cunningham

“The study of mandalas often includes contemplating the core of reality, what is at the ‘true center’ of the world in which we live.”

Lori Bailey Cunningham

“Sometimes ‘mandala’ is translated as ‘essence container’, a phrase that hints at its psychological and mystical meanings.”

Madonna Gauding

“The mandala principle expresses the experience of seeing the relatedness of all phenomena.”

Chogyam Trungpa

“When our minds are conditioned to live close to the perimeter of the Mandala – away from the Now center – we have a false sense of self and a mistaken view of others that blinds us to their essence and us to our own.”

Richard Moss