The Theory and Practice of the Mandala

by Giuseppe Tucci

Book Overview

Mandalas are complex arrangements of patterns or pictures used in Hindu and Buddhist Tantrism to represent the cosmos and to give expression to the infinite possibilities of the human subconscious. Believers rely upon this powerful figure as a focus of ritual and a support for meditations, using it to gain possession of the energies signified by its images or symbols.
This intriguing, thought-provoking study by one of the world's leading authorities...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 048684238X
• ISBN13: 9780486842387
• Release Date: July 2020
• Publisher: Ixia Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Good and important book

Definitely, Tucci is an expert. I didn't do a thorough study but only a short glance makes an impression of potent material. This book is relatively easy in style but still deep. Something like Eliade. Though you must have some preliminary knowledge of indic terms like maya, karma etc. Tucci also uses specific terms in his own fashion; like for exaple intellect for him is robust monster of modern age in its dissociatin with soul. Mandala for Tucci is "...psycho-cosmagrammata which may lead the neophyte, by revealing to him the secret play of the forces which operate in the universe and in us...the way to the reintegration of consciousness." What stroke me was also next quote about Vijnanavadins concept of "store-consciousness". "No act or thought is ever lost but is deposited in that universal psyche which, therefore, and implicitly, is not an immobile entity but an "experience" continually being enriched. In it, past and present live together, form a fruitful and inexhaustible soil in which grows the plant of the individual, so that when it dies it lets fall into this soil the seeds which perpetuate the life-cycle" Seems so similar to Castaneda's "Eagle". Also recommended: Yoga : Immortality and Freedom, The Myths and Gods of India: The Classic Work on Hindu Polytheism from the Princeton Bollingen Series...

Classical text on mandala interpretation

This book was first pubblished in 1949, when Giuseppe Tucci had been regularly visiting Tibet and India. The dominating cultural ideas in psychology in that period were jungian and since Jung had envisaged in mandalas the practical application of his archetype theory and orientalism was at one of its reiterating climaxes, Tucci pubblished his "Theory and Practice of Mandala" in the Italian series of Astrolabio Psychanalytical books. A brief phrase accompanies the title "with particular regard to modern psychology of the deep". Presently jungian theories on mandalas have been discussed and modern scholars think jungian theories have done to oriental thought what Hollywood has done to the Tibetan cause. However, independently from the very few sentences in Tucci's book referring to the psychology of the deep, this text still is maybe the first and most authoritive illustration of the mandala theory written for western readers. Like all Tucci's texts I've read up to now it is objective and does not convey the authors opinions. The book is divided in five short chapters that start from the doctrinal bases of the mandala and lead to the mandala inside one's body. The history of this interesting form of meditation is not limited to the Tibetan lamaism, but is illustrated also in Hindu religion, from where it started, with particular attention to Kashmir Schivaism. Mandala symbolims is well described, even if there are no practical descriptions or examples, differently from what would be expected from a modern book. The most interesting chapter is the last on the similarities and identities of Yoga practice and mandalas. A book for scholars of this age-old meditation practice even if dated.