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What is mandala?

September 28, 2021 by Steven

What is mandala? A mandala is a representation made through concentric type designs, used to refer to different symbols, whether spiritual, economic, informative, natural, etc. These are generally used in Hinduism and also in Buddhism, although they have managed to reach different cultures in multiple countries.

Thanks to this, we can find a variety of mandalas, differentiated, specifically in terms of their representations. We are going to know how mandalas can be classified, discovering their functions and what are their most distinctive features. To start, let’s get to know its main function

What is it for?

What is a mandala? .In the first place, it should be noted that mandalas are a form of expression, that is, a way of representing different phenomena or concepts. Therefore, these can offer different functions, depending on the context and the representation that is assigned respectively.

We find different answers for the same question, and in this sense, we can say that a mandala serves to:

Create a channel to the energy of the universe: In some religions such as Hinduism, the mandates are used to create a connection with the universal energy, which is represented with the circle and all the concentric elements that make it up. When a person elaborates a mandala, it can harmonize his energies with everything that surrounds him, enlivening his spiritual stability, and with it, some faculties such as concentration.

Meditation and relaxation: On the other hand, some cultures suggest that the design of a mandala allows a person to reach the cessation of thought, giving way to processes such as meditation and relaxation. Thanks to this function, the drawing and coloring of mandalas is considered an activity that strengthens psychological well-being.

Spiritual growth tool: In religions such as Buddhism, the representations of a mandala are designed as a form of spiritual exercise, which is considered to provide benefits such as detachment, wisdom, creativity and development of new skills. Buddhist mandalas are, in fact, one of the most complex in terms of their design.

Therapeutic treatment: Carl Jung, considered the prince of psychoanalysis, dedicated a part of his studies to understand the effects that mandalas offer. This determined that the representations of the mandalas constituted a way of externalizing the collective unconscious, considered by it, part of the totality of the human. Through this phenomenon, Jung argued that painting mandalas was a very helpful activity in the face of different ailments such as anxiety, memory problems, anguish, stress, insomnia and concentration. The explanation for this lies in the use, and therefore exercise, of both cerebral hemispheres during coloring.

Representation of the divine: Last but not least, we find that one of the most traditional uses of mandalas is the representation of the divine, in a quest to illustrate what cannot be described in words. Mandas are a way of explaining those phenomena that transcend human understanding, making use of these symbolizations to characterize deities, the universe, and creation.

These are the main uses of mandalas. However, it is possible to come up with other assessments as to the functions they can perform. For example, some people may speak of mandalas as a means of artistic expression, a function that, while not the most typical, can be fully accepted.

Informative

An informative mandala is one made with different signs that refer to a specific topic, in order to bring certain information to its viewers. As its name implies, it is made to inform through geometric figures, reference drawings or colors associated with certain ideas.

Informational mandalas are used to develop certain topics of interest in a more interactive way, facilitating the development of information written by images that offer a more comfortable understanding of the content. However, this does not mean that they cannot contain written information.

Typically, these contain images that allow the ideas of each section to be synthesized, which, in turn, are accompanied by some sentences to specify the points of interest. For example, we can find an informative mandala that classifies animals according to their diet.

On the one hand, we will observe that one of the sections will be made up of images of carnivorous animals, together with a short written explanation. In the same way, the other sections will be appreciated according to their respective images and brief writings. This is what is known as an informational mandala.

Educational

An educational mandala is a design elaborated to favor multiple capacities during the child’s school development. They are used as exercises that reinforce attention and concentration, but also promote other benefits such as stress treatment and, therefore, a way to provide relaxation to infants.

In most cases, these mandalas are used as sketches for coloring tasks, or even for children to try to draw their design as accurately as possible. As can be seen, they stand out as a part of education, with regard to the formation of motor skills and fostering a better learning process.

Although they are used in the school area, it is possible to find their use in more complex environments, as part of dynamics aimed precisely at promoting healthy habits in a person, facilitating not only learning, but also the way to face situations of daily life and improve performance in multiple activities.

Of values

A mandala of values is a schematized representation of a series of values that, according to the criteria of the person who designs it, are related to each other. In other words, this mandala is used to explain how some values, in combination, give rise to others.

The use of these mandalas is very common in school spaces, to explain the way in which values such as sincerity and humility can shape loyalty, just to speak of an example. Thus, the values that are at the extremes are usually considered as the basic ones, and those that are close to the center are recognized as the result of combining two of the basic ones.

In this way, value mandalas are a way of schematizing values, explaining how they are composed. To give an image to the schematization, the extreme points are used as a reference, whose intersection will represent the value resulting from the composition of the previous two.

A very common characteristic of value mandalas is the use of colors to represent relationships and such combinations. They are used to color the background of the figures in which the names of the values are written, and in turn, the color of the value obtained in the combination will be the one obtained by merging the color of the previous ones.

Of money

The money mandala, better known as the pyramid scheme or flower of abundance, is a method used to generate large amounts of money through the participation of a specific number of people who invest.

It is a scalable system, in which investors progressively advance to, at the time of reaching a position on the scale, being the ones who will receive the money. In this model, a mandala is used to represent the location of all the people, expressing precisely the level at which they are according to the scale. Let’s understand a little more about these levels:

At level 1, there is the first member, who will be located in the center of the mandala, and in this way, will invite two more people to be part of the mandala.

At level 2, there are those who have been recruited by the person from level 1 respectively. These, in turn, must recruit four people (two each).
In level 3, they are the four previously recruited by the people of level 2, who, later, must recruit 8 people (two each).
At level 4, there are the people who would be recruited by the four from level 3. These must be those who will invest their money to rise to level 3, money, which will be directed to the person from level 1.

When people at level 4 make the investment, the person at level 1 receives the money and starts to withdraw from the mandala, making those at level 2 rise to level 1, thus subdividing the mandala in two.

Meanwhile, those who were at level 3, become part of level two, that is, two for the pair that now passes separately to a different level 1. Finally, those from level 4 go to 3, so now they must each recruit 2 people to carry out the same cycle.

With the use of the money mandala, it is intended to create money movements that can progressively benefit all the members of the mandala, to the extent that it can rotate.

Sources

(2021). Meaning of Mandala. Meanings. Recovered from:https://www.significados.com/mandala/
(2018). What is a mandala and what is it for? Sight. Recovered from:https://www.revistamira.com.mx/2016/07/20/que-es-un-mandala-y-para-que-sirve/

What is history?

September 27, 2021 by Steven

What is history?. History is a science that is responsible for describing information related to events that occurred in the past, in order to preserve as much data as possible about them. Thanks to history, we can understand a lot about our ancestors and those events that would have forever marked the course of life itself in our societies.

What is philosophy?

April 2, 2022September 24, 2021 by Steven

What is philosophy?Philosophy is a set of proposals and reflections with transcendental purposes that are carried out to respond to the beginning and end of multiple phenomena present in the universe, be it life, spirit, love, art, etc. This knowledge can be based on observation, research, text analysis, among others.

The term comes from the Latin “philosophia” and the Greek “φιλοσοφία”, which is said to have been coined in Ancient Greece by Pythagoras, whose meaning is “love of wisdom”, referring to the constant search for transcendental knowledge.

There is an infinity of ideas and objects of study on which philosophy has devoted much of its research. In this sense, we can find a variety of ramifications on which philosophy presents multiple approaches and concepts. Next, we will make a brief approach to certain areas of philosophy respectively.

Philosophy 2022, knowledge — What is philosophy

Etymology

Previously, we explained a little about the etymology of the term “philosophy.” To this we can add that its meaning is associated with creating new schemes of thought, in order to transcend knowledge, and thus, give an answer to multiple premises about a specific phenomenon.

The mention of Pythagoras, who is claimed to be the one who is attributed the term “philosophy”, would have coined it for the 6th century BC. In fact, it is known that Pythagoras claimed to be a lover of wisdom, rather than being a proper sage, a paradigm from which his etymological explanation of the term (“love of wisdom”) is considered to come.

Philosophy has been one of the most important bases for the consolidation of the humanities, disciplines that are dedicated to answering the deepest questions and premises about what makes us human.

Although the investigations that are carried out in the different areas of the humanities, such as psychology, do not form the main resource to give these answers, they were, at the time, the bases of many of these investigations.

In this sense, we can refer to philosophy as the predecessor of many of the knowledge that today converge, among so many areas, in the humanities. At present, philosophy continues to be a reference in research in hundreds of areas, together with other branches of knowledge, giving rise to multiple investigations and specializations from different disciplines.

Christian

Christian philosophy is a current of thought that was born in the time of Leo XIII, as a way to continue with the opinions of the church, in order to attribute a set of attributions based on Christian doctrine, to the explanation of multiple phenomena present in human life.

In this way, Christian philosophy has posed a wide range of problems throughout history. However, its veracity has been questioned on many occasions, in the first place, by its nature, as well as by those who categorically reject its perspective in the face of creating problems in thought.

There are no notions that, at the same time, corroborate the Christian faith with the doctrines of philosophy, which generates, from its bases, problems in its most important criteria. Therefore, a large number of people reject the idea that Christian philosophy can be considered a valid branch of philosophy.

Christian philosophy warns of a series of notions regarding its conception of the human being, which is presented as follows:

Being: Based on God’s creation, coming from his image and likeness.
God: As the supreme being, responsible for creation, who establishes it as the cause of everything.
The truth: This is based on the perennial relationship that must exist with the orientation of knowledge and divine truth.

The scholar Origen and the Alexandrian church member Clemente are known as the creators and founders of Christian philosophy. They are credited with the first approaches that tried to unify philosophy with the doctrine of Christianity.

When we speak of Christian philosophy, we are referring to the practice of a Christian philosophizing, and not to a philosophy based on faith, or much less, on a philosophy that comes from the church itself. It is based on a reflective process that involves a way of philosophizing under Christian principles, developing speculations based on faith.

Of the right

The philosophy of law is the area from philosophy, which deals with analyzing and explaining all the philosophical arguments found in law, in both cases, both at the institutional and normative level, both based on fair behavior. of a company respectively.

All the currents of thought that allow us to offer a foundation to the law are grouped here. To do this, it addresses multiple studies of the philosophical type that allow us to understand society from a legal perspective, assessing both positive and negative aspects of a group of people, or in simpler words, a society.

The philosophy of law seeks, in this line, to address its studies on the following activities specifically:

Study of the positive legal norm: Based on the understanding of law as a science and a discipline. The objective, to develop a philosophy or critical current that allows understanding the legal experience, for which discussions are constantly being developed about the main objectives of the law.

Understand epistemology: Focusing on the understanding of each of the terms present in the area of law, offering an increasingly exhaustive explanation of all those constructs that, thanks to ontology, it has been possible to consolidate over time as concepts each more conventional.
Create reflective and historical systems: Trying to understand how some historical events have raised multiple scenarios, and on this, create a system of reflection on which it is possible to develop new ways of thinking. The objective is to transcend these scenarios in the future, in order to correct the mistakes made, and in this sense, act correctly.

Through these applications, the philosophy of law allows a correct interpretation of all the concepts that are part of a legal framework. Likewise, it allows a clear definition of the processes that take place in the application of a legal institution, ensuring the correct use of available resources.

Of Education

The philosophy of education is a branch of philosophy that is responsible for studying educational processes, understanding it as a transformation in the forms of thought of an individual, and, therefore, as a complex process, starting from a rational perspective. Its purpose is to understand how human education and all its components work.

In general, the philosophy of education can be described as a critical and reflective analysis of the purposes of education. In this way, it is defined as a discipline in charge of understanding the role of the educational process in a society, I understand that this is responsible for changing a person’s thinking.

As in many branches of philosophy, the philosophy of education does not escape some controversy between its definitions. Some authors conceptualize it as a discipline in charge of understanding educational processes, while others indicate that it is a set of thoughts aimed at giving a transcendental meaning to education about the human being.

Some authors even define it as a science that has brought together a body of knowledge aimed at facilitating the understanding of multiple phenomena, making it possible to understand the various areas of study to which a person can dedicate themselves respectively.

Of the science

We can say that the philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy that deals with studying and understanding scientific knowledge, together with all the practices that take place in scientific research. Its objective is to provide information on scientific thought through the study of all its methods and applications.

For this, different aspects are valued such as the evaluation and creation of scientific theories, the design of research methods to contrast the information, etc. It is presumed, in this philosophy, that science is capable of bringing humanity closer to the absolute truth in the understanding of different phenomena.

The empirical nature of the information has made science become one of the main access portals to solid knowledge of useful value. In this way, the philosophy of science acquires great relevance, since it must constantly study the way in which science generates this type of knowledge, in order to understand the natural processes of the human environment.

The philosophy of science can be considered a relatively new area, since, unlike the rest of the aforementioned philosophies, the philosophy of science was born only in the 20th century, so its application has not managed to expand so much until today . This, given the complexity of its main objective of study, warns of a really long path for its expansion.

Conclusion What is philosophy?

Philosophy is, without a doubt, one of the most important areas to bring a certain area closer to its constant evolution, allowing to recognize and identify those factors necessary to transform thought, and thus, continuously improve the way in which we approach knowledge. .