In the Bhagavad Gita, a steady mind is compared to a lamp in a windless place, its flame upright, still and bright. That image has stayed with me for a long time, and this autumn it became a new collection of colouring pages.
What's in it
Eighty original mandalas, each paired with a short quote to hold in mind while the colours go in. The mandalas range from lotus and flower designs to Tibetan-style palaces with four gates, stars and sunbursts. The quotes come from the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddha's Dhammapada, the Upanishads, Kabir, Tagore and the Tao Te Ching, with a few reflections of my own, such as "Colour by colour, the mind settles."
Behind the scenes
Every mandala was generated with a small Python program written for this project, with settings for rings, symmetry, detail and how "square" the design becomes. I generated a large batch, picked the best eighty, then measured the total length of line in each one to sort them by difficulty. That gave two books:
Book One (easy): bolder shapes and open spaces, for relaxed colouring
Book Two (challenging): finer detail for longer, absorbing sessions
Choosing quotes took longer than drawing mandalas. Every quote comes from a public-domain translation or a new translation made for the books, so each page can be printed freely at home or in the classroom.
Where to find them
Book One, Book Two, a discounted bundle of both, and a free four-page sample are all in the shop: payhip.com/RamapaniShop
Thank you
Every coffee here helps make projects like this possible: the apps on ramapani.com, the books, and the hours spent searching old translations for the right line. If any of these pages end up coloured in, I'd love to see them. Tag @ramapani_gram or use #ramapani.
Ram