Sunday 7 October 2007

MANDALA THEORY AND PRACTICE AS HERMENEUTIC STRATEGY IN EXPLORING THE COSMOGEOGRAPHIES OF WENGER AND MALTWOOD: THE WOMB MANDALA AND INDUCTIVE THOUGHT

MANDALA FORMS IN ASIAN AND AFRICAN ART AND THOUGHT

















































Let us begin our navigation of the landscapes which the artists have transformed into cosmographic spaces. We begin from the centre of the patterns they have created. Beginning from this spatial and ideational nexus will enable us gain orientation as we move ahead into the larger space.

We are thereby navigating the landscapes in terms of the mental navigation of a mandala.A mandala can be navigated in one of two ways,each of them corresponding to the conception of either the womb mandala or the diamond mandala.The womb mandala represents the emergence of the universe from a primal centre,and,one could say,suggets the emergence of the multiciplicity of the human mind or even of the complex structure of a human life,or of any phenomenon,from a unifying centre.The emergence of the many from the one.It corresponds to a centripetal movement,where one navigates the mandala outward from its centre to its outer edges.It can also correspond to an inductive process of thinking,where one moves from the general or the universal to the particular.Deducing particular examples from a general point or rule.

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