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The Toro-danyo Mandala was re-introduced to the West by a small group of European aid workers assisting with the massive influx of Tibetan refugees into India after the Chinese invasion of 1959. Struck by the unusual simplicity of the diagram compared to most Tibetan forms, the team immediately found it more attuned to the modern Western psyche than traditional contemplative designs, including even the Sricakra Mandala of the Sakta School which reduces the opening lotus to its essence as a geometric diagram of nine interlocking triangles, curiously reminiscent of the Magen David - the Judaic Star of David.
The Sricakra Mandala (left) and the Magen David
The greater reduction to a more perfect essence, which is the intrinsic virtue of The Toro-danyo Mandala, while retaining the basic form of the equilateral triangle, even goes so far as to eschew the normal indications of the encompassing circle or circles and the four cardinal points often considered essential to the form of the Mandala, leaving both these aspects entirely to the will and vision of the contemplator. Indeed, the will has to come to terms with the fact that one of the ten circles, or spheres, of the diagram is actually symbolic of the superscribed circle; and it can be any one of the ten. In this respect, The Toro-danyo Mandala is considered to be the nearest approach made by the usually syncretic practice of Mandala to the far more auster philosophy underlying Zen Buddhism.
Shamanistic origins
The Buddhist historian, Dr. Paul Y. Dirking of Bombay University, notes in his seminal work, The Light That Failed (Lock-Standay, Bombay, 1963), that several examples of ancient drawings and rock carvings display close similarities to The Toro-danyo Mandala. These carvings are found mainly across Northern Europe and Asia, with rare examples in the Americas. Very few of the ancient carvings adhere closely to the tight triangular form of ten circles, spheres, or cups, and some have the cups located apparently at random on concentric rings. However, more recent examples which have come to light amongst the Samoyed and Cheremis peoples, across the lands of Northern Russia, always show the ten points in triangular array, whether inscribed within circles or not.
Mader-Atcha (left) and his wife, Mader-Akka
(Lapp shaman drum drawings)
One of the more important of these discoveries is a quite unique drum design depicting the Finno-Ugric supreme deities, Mader-Atcha and Mader-Akka. Whilst Mader-Akka, or Rauni, is goddess of fertility and of the body, her husband, Mader-Atcha, also known as Ukko the thunder-god and portrayed here clothed in the "thunder-dawn" triangle of ten circles, has the ultimate care of the soul. Although the other examples are not quite so obviously indicative of the connection between the concepts of thunder and transcendence of the body as this one is, the overall meaning is quite clear. One cannot but conclude that the diagram was originally and anciently an attempt to portray the heavens which later came to be used symbolically as a device by shamans to aid them on the soul-journey undertaken in trances induced by a mixture of narcotic agents, chanting, the beating of drums, and contemplation of various geometric figures.
The Buddhist adoption
As Mahayana Buddhism ventured northwards out of India, many small groups found themselves geographically isolated from their mother communities for long periods. Mahayana Buddhism being a syncretic religion, local ways and old gods were assimilated by these isolated sects as they converted the local people from primitive animism and shamanism. It is entirely likely that The Toro-danyo Mandala was adopted by them at this time as an eminently suitable vehicle both for easing the transition into Buddhism of the jealous shamans and for the practice of Mandala itself.
Since The Toro-danyo Mandala diverges from mainstream Mandala representation, it would hardly be surprising had it remained a religious device only of isolated monasteries. Mahayana Buddhism, however, is as many layered as the opening lotus, especially in the Northern, Himalayan, Lamaist sects which owe so much of their culture to the ancient, pre-Buddhic, Bon-po religion. Considered suitable neither for the laity nor for the common orders, The Toro-danyo Mandala did find a place as the diagram par excellence of the primary dichotomies of the Bodhicitta among the more esoteric practices allowed the adept Masters in a small number of monasteries not only in Tibet but, it now transpires, also scattered throughout Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. There is also some circumstantial evidence that it is recognised by at least one very secretive Shaivite sect in Hinduism.
Other traditions
Although evidence of its transmission to the West is thin, to say the least, there can be little doubt that The Toro-danyo Mandala (the "Thunder-Dawn" diagram of the universe) is the inspiration behind three of the the most important and formative concepts in the religion and philosophy of Europe and the Near East:
(a) the Pythagorean Decad and corresponding philosophy of number, which has as its logo the self-same symbol,
The Decad of Pythagoras
(b) the Cabbalistic Tree of Life, a diagram composed of ten nodes, called sefirot, forming twenty-two spiritual paths, which is in effect a lotus opening of the decad into points corresponding to the spiritually important nodes of the human body,
The Tree of Life
(c) the Gnostic poem, Thunder, Perfect Mind:
I am first and last,
I am honoured and scorned,
I am Whore and Saint,
I am Wife and Virgin,
. . .
I am the silence that cannot be grasped,
I am the sound of my name.
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All these philosophies offer, as does the practice of Mandala, study of the inherent paradoxes of dichotomy, which cannot be resolved through the intellect, as the way to achieve unity or wholeness of the spirit. In seeking the truth within the infinite possibilities afforded by both diagram and words, our mind finds itself constructing an ever more complex web of associated meanings until all meanings are possible. Herein lies the paradox: when all meanings are possible, where is the meaning? Only when we have achieved this state of confusion might the dawn of enlightenment strike us with a force like the clap of thunder referred to in the name: there is no meaning, it is just so.
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