Mandala of the Buddhist deity Vajrabhairava

This sculptural mandala is a slightly simplified version of the painting that serves as our meditative map. It also reminds us that the painting is merely a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional, multilevel environment of habitable space through which we visualize ourselves moving. The sculpture includes the painting’s flame circle, funeral grounds, and ring of lotus petals, here inlaid with turquoise. On the lotus’s foundation is the square palace whose bottom gateway—depicted as if falling outward from the square walls—we now prepare to enter.