TUCCI GIUSEPPE Mandala (translated by Ireneusz Kania, dedication by the Translator)

Kraków 2002, Znak, p. 170, form. 14 x 20, softcover, on the pre-title page a dedication by the author of the translation, Ireneusz Kani.

"Mandala" is one of the most common oriental words in today's culture - even popular culture.
The word mandala means "circle"inSanskrit. This five-divided geometric figure, which appears in many ceremonies and rituals of Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism, sometimes very elaborate and artistically sophisticated, is not only a symbolic representation of the Universe, but also of the structure of the human psyche. The meditator, recognizing the individual elements of the mandala that correspond to divine and cosmic powers, reaches its center, where he experiences fullness - union with cosmic consciousness. This journey also symbolizes the process of reintegration - the meditator's merging of the scattered elements of the cosmos. Here we touch on one of the sources of the mandala's modern popularity: on a symbolic level, it figuratively represents the possibility of restoring the original unity of the shattered world - the one around us and the one within us. The unityto which modern man greatly longs.
All the themes sketched above are exhaustively and brilliantly discussed in this book by Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984),the famous Italian indologist and Tibetologist, discoverer and publisher of many important texts on Buddhist philosophy and logic, founder of the Italian Middle and Far Eastern Institute, traveler and researcher of Tibet. The book Mandala is already a classic position, translated many times around the world.