a reflection of the world of gods.Most of the mandala's exist of one or more circles with a square in it. In the square is again a circle. Mandala's are painted on wall, on thanga's and paper, but also made in colored sand or powder on the ground. In some cloisters new mandala's are made every day. Mandala's are also used to meditate. When a Buddhist monk looks at a Mandala if he is meditating, he sees a map witch leads him to the right way to get to the nirvana.
There are also 3-d mandala's. Those are also round, but look more like a statute. Very often is a stupa or gods in the middle of the Mandala. Houses are associated with 3 dimensional mandala's. Tibetan people believe gods are everywhere in the world. Other ritual things are rosaries made of 108 bead and holy mantra's which are connected with the gods. They also have reliquaries. Those are jewels which contains things who've been from the dalai lama or a picture from the dalai lama. There are also some holy things in tibet which are much greater, like the walls of Mani. Those are wall's which mantra's chiseled in it. Some of them are over a kilometer long! If you walk around a holy object, you have to walk clockwise.