 The Taizō-mandara (full name: Daichitaizōsei mandara; Skrt: Garbhakośadhātu mandala; “Great compassion womb repository birth mandala”) represents the “female principle” and expresses the material world in its underlying empatternment of ri, which is the Buddha’s view to truth from the summit of enlightenment downward to the mundane world of humans. Ri (Chn: li) often translated into English as “principle,” in fact has the sense of “pattern,” and in the esoteric Buddhist context signifies the pattern found in the interplay of the five material elements that constitute the myriad thing-events and phenomena. As the material elements form the objects of cognition, the mandala depicting the rishin represents the known. In his commentary on the Dainichi-kyō (Dainichi-kyō kaidai), Kūkai equates the nature of Dainichi taken as jishō hosshin with this rishin. He then in turn identifies the rishin as the original enlightenment intrinsic to all sentient beings but hidden in its unmanifest potentiality as what is to be known. 