Approximately 2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment while meditating beneath a fig tree in Bodh Gaya, India, after having spent years in reflection. He became the Buddha, or “awakened one,” and his teachings about the path to attaining wisdom and compassion spread from his native India throughout Asia. Each culture imbued the practice of Buddhism with its own identity, and devotional art was created wherever the religion was adopted. These twelve images are reproductions of mandalas, map-like diagrams of Buddhist deities arranged to display certain hierarchies and interrelationships in the divine cosmos.