yantra

A fourth genre consists of yantras. Suri mantra yantras (figure 2) and Vardhamanavidya yantras were (and to some extent still are) made for use as part of the rites by which a monk is promoted to the more senior post of acharya (suri) or upadhyaya.

Amidst the Islamic and European influences, Bondre also spotted patterns that reminded her of the sacred yantras , tantric symbols of India.

This meditative DVD, filled with hauntingly beautiful chanted mantras (in Sanskrit, man means "mind," and tra means "to free" so a mantra is "sound that frees the mind") and light-filled yantras (yan means "journey" so yantra is a visual journey to freedom) is described as "a direct portal to the authentic beauty and profound power of yantras and mantras.

The team from SPACE explained all the four yantras - Jai Prakash Yantra, Ram Yantra, Samrat Yantra and Mishra Yantra to all the people present there.

Informing the reader of how the shape of a building or property affects success, the powerful influence of the Cardinal Directions and the Planets, Mantras and Yantras: sacred codes to awaken priority, correcting geopathic stress in home or office, how using altars and ceremonies might generate abundance, and how to coordinate interior design to create a balance and harmony.

The suspended "roadways," in addition to being extensions of Islamic design motifs, could have been ley lines or elements from tantric yantras; the turned plaster pendants could have been ancient stupas or modern chandeliers; and the eight-pointed stars on the floor invoked both the Star of David and Islamic designs from eighteenth-century Morocco.

Here the commentator makes a direct appeal to the notion of a holy yantra in order to try to make the format of a stupa more comprehensible to Westerners (interestingly enough, the text itself is on yantras).

To make sure that the yantras would be stable and observations of the horizon would not be disturbed, they were built partly below the surrounding ground level.