A Mandala (literally ‘circle’) is essential to tantric meditation, a prop in the drama of seeking salvation. The mandala is a cosmogram, peopled with the Buddhist pantheon, and at the same time a map of the microcosm, of man himself.  The mediator visualizes and identifies with these deities, but his coal is to realize the ultimate unreality of the whole, to cut through the network of illusion with his wisdom and this escape the round of birth and death. the real religion is in the life of the mind.