&quot;Translating the Tibetan Buddhist “Thangka” (An Adapted MA thesis).&quot; Tibet Journal, Spring/Summer 2016, XLI, No. 1 (July 2016).

Laura A . Weinstein

This article is an examination of three 18th-19th century Tibetan thangka paintings in the Chazen Museum collection through the lens of a Tibetan soteriological-aesthetic-ritual category “sku rten” or “bodily support.” Herein, I argue that viewing the thangkas as sku rten allows us to understand how Tibetan Buddhists construct not just “sight” or seeing but also (drawing on work on religion and visual culture by David Morgan) “vision,” a category of perception that includes consideration of the power structures and relationships in which religious art is embedded. As sku rten, the paintings not only serve as meditational tools for religious viewers to learn to envision or embody deities and ultimately non-dualism, they also model for viewers how to transform themselves into sku rten or bodily support for achieving these soteriological aims. I examine the three successive levels of sku rten and accompanying texts (sadhana) and rituals through reference to the three paintings: analyzing their imagery, consecration inscriptions and other historical evidence and suggesting how they may have been used and viewed by practitioners. The larger theoretical point of the thesis is to argue for understanding these Tibetan sku rten practices as a “soteriology of the senses,” joining with Robert Orsi’s contentions about religion as embedded in networks of relationships and the body.

Translating the Tibetan Buddhist “Thangka” (An Adapted MA thesis) Laura Wein Introduction In an age when the “Secret Vehicle” is exhibited in public spaces it is essential to remember that thangka are unlike paintings that arise out of other religious traditions. They are ritual objects. A ‘thangka’ is a Tibetan scroll painting marked by its distinct material composition as well as its religious imagery. Thangka paintings almost always depict a Vajrayana Buddhist subject, be that a deity, the dwelling place of that deity, venerable yogis, or monastic lineage holders. The most observable quality differentiating thangka paintings from religious paintings that arise out of other traditions is the rigidly structured construction and painting process itself, which I had the opportunity to observe irst-hand at Sechen Monastery’s Tsering Art School in Kathmandu (see Plate I) during the summer of 2014. According to the school’s principal, Kelsang Namgyal, a minimum of six years experience in acquiring technical skills is required of a traditional thangka artist.1 The process begins with stretching and preparation of the canvas, typically linen, to which gesso (a plaster-like mixture of glue and chalk) is applied. Then methodically, iconometrics are noted, and outlines are drawn on the canvas. After precisely executing the proportional requirements and a balanced compositional design, colors are added. The faces and eyes are always painted last unless the artist plans to include any gild-work. When the painting is completed the brocade framing, wooden bars, and protective veil are attached. “How do I know if it is a good thangka or not?” Kelsang Namgyal stated rhetorically, “It depends on the artist…You can go outside to learn thangka painting. There are so many schools. Here we have so many rules to follow… and what we are teaching here is how to be a good person, not just thangka painting…the painter has to have good motivation.” Evidently, the material and visual prerequisites do not sufice. If a painting is done according to tradition and with “good motivation” for the beneit of others, consecration should and typically does immediately follow production. Today’s large population of commercial artists often sidestep these religious requirements. For the purposes of this paper, however, I am concerned only with those thangka paintings that are consecrated and thus indicate a history of traditional Vajrayana Buddhist ritual engagement. 10 TibeT Journal Tracing out this history of ritual engagement is the empirical foundation of my argument about the functional aspects of thangka and the concordant theory of interpreting thangka I have devised. Visual evidence of consecration by means of shared Tibetan Buddhist conventions is indicative of a thangka’s status as an eficacious ritual object. In his technical treatise on thangka painting, David Jackson describes four religious activities enabled by the medium: (1) the accumulation of merit, prosperity, or the overcoming of an obstacle, (2) assistance for the deceased in the process of transmigration, (3) devotional practices or single pointed meditation, and (4) elaborate Tantric visualizations.2 In each of these four religious contexts, the thangka takes on the role of sku rten or “body support.” This is the category Tibetan Buddhists use to distinguish thangka from “art” (Tib. sgyu rtsal). The Tibetan category sku rten is one that designates transformative power and therein justiies classiication of Tibetan thangka paintings as a “ritual objects.” As the twentieth century Italian scholar of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, Guiseppe Tucci says, “tankas, though they represent religious subjects and never touch profane themes, have a practical purpose; they are not free creations of the artist’s fancy, but on the contrary a necessary element in liturgy, and they are bound, as we shall see, by exact and inviolable rules.”3 In this article I argue that traditional Tibetan thangka paintings are unique ritual objects that are functional in addition to being symbolic and that latent insights into these functional aspects of Tibetan “art” can be gained by utilizing the Tibetan category sku rten to access them (refer to Plate II). My method is based on the conviction, simply stated by Religion scholar Robert Orsi, that “religion cannot be understood apart from its place in the everyday lives, preoccupations, and commonsense orientations of men and women.”4 Therefore, in addition to using Tibetan Buddhist categories to explain thangka paintings, I argue that it is useful to imagine how a Tibetan Buddhist might have incorporated such an image into his or her environment or religious practice. This exercise requires some historical speculation since we do not know the exact ownership histories of the thangka I will examine, but drawing on broader ritual studies of thangka practices will allow us to assemble some reasonable conjectures about how these particular paintings may have been used. One of the foremost signiicant uses of thangka for transformative purposes by Tibetan Buddhists is as a basis of visualization in Deity Yoga. Therein, it takes on the role of sku rten (body support). When practicing Deity Yoga Tibetan Buddhists engage thangka, in the vivifying words of observer Guiseppe Tucci, along with, “secret instructions which will produce his paligenesis.”5 The instructions Tucci is referring to are sgrub thabs (Tib.) or sadhana (Skt.), which are essentially guides authored by a grub thob (Skt. 11 TibeT Journal siddha or highly accomplished practitioner) to visualizing a deity in its other worldly abode as a means to practicing Deity Yoga. Such guides “[supply] a psychological and symbolic apparatus by means of which the practitioner (sadhaka) successfully identiies himself with the ultimate reality personiied in the Buddha.”6 Thangka also supply psychological and symbolic apparatuses. Through exploring the visual content and qualities of a thangka that Tibetan Buddhists internalize during the practice of Deity Yoga as well as the practice itself, one can begin to discern how that thangka’s visual qualities “work” and why. This is the most fundamental piece of my method for interpreting thangka. The Vajrayana notion of the liberation through vision, which begets the functional qualities of the thangka, is a systematized soteriology that demands diligent practice and prescribes engagement with ritual objects. In this article I demonstrate the insight that these modes of engagement yield to how and why such numinous forms are translated into two-dimensional ones and the ways in which they operate instrumentally within the Tibetan Buddhist belief system. Through an analytical approach like this one it becomes possible to discursively approximate a “religious” rather than merely visual encounter with esoteric “art” like this in reasonably ordinary language. As David Morgan points out, sight is founded in one’s corporeal foundation, while “vision” is grounded in the power dynamics surrounding religious symbolism and iconography. Merely examining the origins and aesthetics of Tibetan Buddhist symbols and iconography is insuficient to understanding the dynamic underpinnings of the Tibetan Buddhist forms of “vision.” Acknowledging problems Catherine Bell raises about a tendency among scholars of religion to employ ritual as a reiied category and the structure it imposes on theoretical discourse, I will use the category ritual in the manner she suggests, which is, more disclosing of the strategies by which ritualized activities do what they do.7 Rather than theoretical formulations of ritual, I will offer descriptive ones that begin with the historical foundations and beliefs that precede them. Bell also suggests that using the Euro-American category ritual tend[s] to override and undermine the signiicance of indigenous distinctions among ways of acting.8 This is why I have taken the time to directly discuss the thangka and rituals I describe with Tibetan Buddhists such as Kelsang Namgyal (Principal of the Tsering Art School), Jampa Khedup (former student of Geshe Lundup Sopa), and Geshe Tenzin Sherab (abbot of Deer Park Buddhist Center in Madison, Wisconsin). I include many references to these invaluable discussions in the paper that follows, as they have aided me in understanding such indigenous distinctions. My search for a deeper understanding of these Tibetan scroll paintings is motivated, irst and foremost, by the ubiquitous nature of thangka paintings, 12 TibeT Journal which are, according to Weber’s Images of Enlightenment, “not meant as decorative wall-hangings to be admired once in a while or looked at occasionally for leeting inspiration.”9 Thus, I ultimately hope to elucidate the qualities of thangka paintings that preclude perfunctory visual encounters and to convey an understanding of them that aligns with the indigenous Tibetan classiication of sku rten or “body support” under which they fall. In this paper, I will demonstrate the possibility of discerning the dynamic connections that make these body supports eficacious tools—those that lie between the visual content of a thangka painting, Tibetan Buddhists beliefs that give meaning to that visual content, and the religious practices that utilize it. These are the types of relationships that Robert Orsi says constitute “religion” itself. I discern these connections by employing Tibetan categories and what I know about ritual forms of engagement directly from the aforementioned Tibetan Buddhists teachers and practitioners. I have chosen three particular eighteenth and nineteenth century thangka paintings from the University of Wisconsin—Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art (about which there was no prior research at all) as my means to doing so. I will begin by discussing visual content of each of these paintings by way of Tibetan Buddhist histories, liturgy, and iconographic conventions in order to establish the context for Tibetan Buddhists’ encounters and ritualized forms of engagement with the images. This is all to establish a foundation with which I then attempt, in the second half of my paper, to synthesize what it is thangka do as form of sku rten (body support) in those Tibetan Buddhist ritual contexts. I will also attempt to explain how and why they do so by drawing upon the qualities of the three thangka and associated Tibetan Buddhist views I expound in the irst half of my paper. By exploring various religious activities connected to these thangka that treat them as sku rten within both lower and higher levels of Tantra, I hope to demonstrate the Tibetan Buddhist vision that unites all levels of religious engagement with thangka and, perhaps, the possibility of a deeper theoretical understanding of them. The convergence of materiality and transcendence contained within the category ‘sku rten’ helps us see the functional qualities of thangka more clearly—how paintings it in to a systematized soteriology that relies on practice. As a physical form of spiritual support, or sku rten, the Tibetan Buddhist thangka affords sensory access in material form to religious experiences that transcend the physical. “Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas”: A Means for Merit and Prosperity For the purposes of this paper I will use the “Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas” (Plate III and IV) to explore the vision of a lay practitioner. Exploring Tibetan Buddhist lay people’s engagement with and ritual usage of thangka 13 TibeT Journal is important for many reasons—the foremost being the mere fact that the majority of Tibetan Buddhist lay practitioners hang thangka in their homes. Furthermore, the majority of Tibetan Buddhist lay practitioners have personal shrines in their homes that most often include thangka. “Even the humble tent of the nomad is not without an altar.”10 There, a Tibetan Buddhist can practice a wide variety of merit-making rituals, largely facilitated by the enlightened forms or pieces of Tibetan Buddhist “art” contained in those personal shrines. The central igure, a buddha bearing an appearance common to all Buddhist traditions, stands out from its ten-igure retinue primarily because of its size. Multicolored and gold-embellished robes distinguish the central buddha further. Traces of the delicate gold streams that once emanated from the bicolored disc atop the igure’s lotus throne are still evident. The buddha sits atop a lotus throne which has the majority of its gild-work still intact at its base, surrounded on east, north, and west sides by lush lotus lowers, curled leaves, and suspended buds. An ornamented red table of objects including a bum pa (“vase”), three rin chen (“jewels”), chos kyi ’khor lo (“dharma wheel”) and a small stack of dpe cha (religious texts), sits directly in front of the lotus throne. The table’s base is partially obstructed by a buddha igure atop a loating lotus (which more closely resembles a cloud in the thangka’s current state) with the same facial features and proportions as the central igure, making the same gestures, only lacking the hand implements (bowl and plant). In fact, there are two igures that resemble the central igure in these precise ways. Save the hand gestures, or phyag rgya (Skt. mudra), the same can be said for the seven other buddhas. Each of these buddhas sits in the same posture, wears the same style robe, has the same proportions, the same facial expression, and most notably, the same protruding bump atop his head (Skt. ushnisha). They differ in their hand gestures or phyag rgya (Skt. mudra). Pointed yellow hats and garments of many more layers distinguish the three igures on the top of the canvas from the seven buddhas surrounding the central igure. Two distinct columns draw the eye from where these igures sit at the top of the canvas straight down to its base. They are rocks made to form long narrow columns, angled to intersect. This short wall of rocks lines a stream of water between two oddly angular pieces of green land—an arrangement that alone gives shape to a mystical kind of landscape. Traces of patterned gild-work atop the table of offerings lead the eye to discover gold remnants throughout nearly every part of the canvas except for those areas restricted to the landscape. It looks as if the ten surrounding igures, which loat on lotus leaves, were once equally as embellished as the central buddha igure. Such a contrast between the bicolored landscape 14 TibeT Journal and hovering igures would certainly have an even more pronounced effect. Naturally, the correspondingly soft colors of the painting in its current state do not match the original ones. However, the canvas still holds some memory of the vibrant primary colors that originally dominated the encircled igures and the saturated pastel-like blues and greens with which the artist irst rendered the landscape. These details are those that any viewer of the Chazen’s Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas has the capacity to see. Moreover, in this globalized world, anyone who has access to a Tibetan thangka, whether in the physical or digital form, likely has some visual associations that at least enable them to identify the central igure as a buddha through basic cultural osmosis if nothing more. One level of understanding is revealed through a basic recognition of the many pieces of iconography present in this thangka, as they (like all Tibetan symbols) bear deep historical, philosophical, and ritual signiicance. One cannot begin to understand the prescribed meaning of this visual composition without familiarity with these profoundly established symbols. Tibetan Buddhists identify Vajrayana deities through reading and recognizing their hand-held implements, garb, and countenance. At the most basic level, a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, lay person or ordained, has to use their familiarity with iconographic conventions such as these to identify the deity in order to engage with the image in the ritualized ways prescribed by Tibetan Buddhist liturgy. Tibetan viewers of this painting understand relexively that the buddha igure at the center of the painting is not the historical igure Shakyamuni Buddha who was once granted the title by virtue of his re-discovery of the dharma in this world-cycle (Skt. kalpa). This buddha is similar in appearance, but holds a lapis blue bowl with medicinal nectar and fruit in his left hand. His physical form as well as the crossed position of his legs (Tib. rdo rje skyil krung, Skt. vajraasana) which secure the soles of his feet in an up-turned position atop his knees, is just like that of Shakyamuni’s Tibetan Buddhist iconography. However, this buddha’s sright hand sits in front of his knee in the blessings-granting gesture (Tib. mchog sbyin gyi phyag rgya, Skt. varadamudra) holding the stem of a myrobalan plant.11 This image of a Medicine Buddha is often referred to by its epithet, “the Healing Master of Lapis Lazuli Radiance.”12 While Landlaw and Weber, for instance, call this radiant coloring its “most distinctive” identifying feature, the Medicine Buddha rendered in this thangka is golden, as are the surrounding buddhas. The absence of his characteristic lapis blue color, while unusual, does not preclude identiication. The Chazen image can be identiied as the 15 TibeT Journal Medicine Buddha of Lapis Lazuli Radiance (Tib. sman gyi bla bai dur ya ’od kyi rgyal po) as the central deity is the only one of the eight Medicine Buddhas who holds these implements. These strongly held iconographic associations were established early on in the sutra (Tib. mdo) tradition of Bhaisajyaguru (Skt. for Medicine Buddha of Lapis Lazuli Radiance), thus relayed in the words all Buddhists to be spoken from the historical Buddha Shakyamuni himself. Establishing this connection, moreover, provides insight into the visual content of the “Thangka of Eight Medicine Buddhas.” According to Landlaw and Weber, the foremost characterization of the Medicine Buddha is as a deity “whose practices confer long life, health, and prosperity.”13 The present symbols, such as the myrobalan plant (Tib. a ru ra), the mchog sbyin gyi phyag rgya (Skt. varadamudra), and so forth, are recognizable ones whose so-called ‘meanings’ have been reiterated by Buddhists of various vehicles and traditions for centuries. They are symbols directly connected to the deity’s enlightened status and to twelve vows the Medicine Buddha is believed to have taken as a bodhisattva which are detailed in the Medicine Buddha Sutra such as the following: “May my name become a mantra that heals all ailments. May the sound of my name and the image of my nirmanakaya be a balm that eases all pain. May the sound of my name or visualization of my image cure physical troubles and sickness. If this does not come to pass, may I not reach enlightenment.”14 The myrobalan plant this Medicine Buddha holds is one central to Indian Ayurvedic and Tibetan Medicine and, therefore, acts as a conventional reference to his ultimate healing power.15 Moreover, the Medicine Buddha of Lapis Lazuli Radiance’s hand gesture (Tib. mchog sbyin gyi phyag rgya or Skt. varadamudra) is known in English as the blessings-granting mudra. His posture and physical attributes, just like that of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, convey his status as a fully enlightened buddha and thus, his power to act in the way he vows in the sutra. Extant versions of the original sutra date to the fourth and seventh centuries, evidencing the fact that the foundation for this imagery predates the advent of Buddhism in Tibet and hence, the possibility of this being an interpretation of the Medicine Buddha of wholly Tibetan origin. The Bhaisajyaguruvaiduryaprabharaja Sutra identiies each of these seven accompanying Medicine Buddhas, tying the origins of their prescribed signiicance to earlier Mahayana schools as well. By virtue of this history, this particular image is accessible even to those uninitiated into Tantric Buddhism. In fact, few iconographic elements distinguish this thangka’s imagery from that prescribed by earlier Mahayana traditions. The “Thangka of Eight Medicine Buddhas” does, however, include the most telling and distinctive iconographic element of 16 TibeT Journal Tibetan Buddhist thangka paintings—the three lineage holders seated, yet similarly loating like deities at the top of the canvas. Such an element serves a purpose similar to other forms of retinue igures I will elaborate on later, which Guiseppe Tucci so aptly describes as “[expressions of] the irradiation of truth and the spiritual link uniting those who have been initiated into the same mystery.”16 It is this community of initiates that distinguishes Vajrayana Buddhism from earlier Mahayana traditions, as well as these particular visual elements found on thangka. Moreover, the spiritual link between historical Tibetan Buddhist igures and otherworldly buddhas is crucial to understanding thangka as sku rten. This “Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas” is unique among related Mahayana and Vajrayana depictions of the divine irst and foremost by virtue of its size and particular marks, which provide evidence of a very special mode of consecration. Unusual for a consecrated thangka, the painting is a mere ten inches tall and seven inches wide, and its silk and cotton constitution makes it practically weightless. The average thangka is at least four times the size of this one. The inscription on the back of the “Thangka of Eight Medicine Buddhas” allow us to draw some educated guesses about the possible uses for which this uniquely sized painting was intended (Plate II). On the backside of this thangka, the following is written in cursive Tibetan script, which I have converted here to Uchen: ྱལ་ྣམས་བདེ་ཆེན་ློང་ུ་རོ་གཅིག་ྱང་། ྙིགས་མའི་འྲོ་ལ་ུགས་ྗེ་ྨད་ུང་བ། བཅོམ་ྡན་ བདེ་བར་གཤེགས་པ་མཆེད་བྱད་པོ། འདིར་བུགས་ུ་ྱོར་ལ་སོགས་འྲོ་བ་ྣམས། གནས་ ྐབས་དམ་ཆོས་བུབ་པའི་ྱེན་ཚང་ཞིང་། རིང་མིན་ུང་འུག་ངེས་པ་ྔ་ྡན་པའི། ངེས་པ་དོན་ ྱི་བཅོམ་ྡན་ྨན་པའི་ྱལ། མངོན་ུ་འུར་པའི་དགའ་ྟོན་ྩལ་ུ་གསོལ། ཅེས་པ་འདི་ནི་དད་ བྩོན་ྣམ་དྱོད་ྡན་པ་ྗེ་བུན་མ་ློ་བཟང་ྲོལ་མ་ནས་བདེ་བར་གཤེགས་པ་མཆེད་བྱད་ྱི་ུ་ ཐང་གསར་ུ་བཞེངས་པའི་ྱབ་ཡིག་ྨོན་ཚིག་འདི་ྟ་ུ་ཞིག་དགོས་ཞེས་བུལ་བའི་ངོར་གོང་མ་ ཆེན་མོའ ི་ུང་གིས་ྭ་སེར་བྟན་པའི་གསལ་ྱེད་་་ཨ་ཆི་ུ་ནོ་མོན་ཧན་ུ་འབོད་པས་ྱར། My translation goes as follows: Although all victors are of one taste17 with the expanse of great bliss, eight exalted, blissfully-departed companions arise out of marvelous compassion for degenerate sentient beings18. May the patrons who are present here as well as all sentient beings in this temporary situation have the complete conditions of practicing the holy Dharma. I ask you to bestow, before long, the joyful moment of manifestation; the state of union endowed with the ive certainties19, which is the ultimate reality of the exalted king of medicine. As for this prayer, it was written behind the newly created thangka 17 TibeT Journal of the eight blissfully departed companions by the highest of the yellow hat’s supreme luminary of teachings Achi Tunomonhan in response to the faithful, devoted, and discerning Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma’s request. This inscription suggests that the primary religious pursuit behind the commissioning of this work was merit making. The inscription tells us this by identifying a patron, Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma, and inscriber, Achi Tunomonhan (tutor to Seventh Dalai Lama Kelzang Gyatso of the 18th century as well as the 54th Ganden Tripa, spiritual leader of the Gelugpa sect). Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, abbot of the Gelugpa Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu, tells us that the act of commissioning such a work is an act of merit making because it provides others “the opportunity to look at it and to purify the mind and to plant seed of enlightenment.”20 Thus, “If you produce holy objects, such as pictures or statues of buddha, it beneits very much not only you but especially other sentient beings.”21 The “holy” status of this particular object is conferred by the colophon that follows this short composition, in which the writer identiies himself as “Achi Tunomonhan” (a title he was granted by the Qianlong Emperor) and therein, details the circumstances of the thangka’s production and consecration. When the contemporary Nyingma monk and Tsering Art School principal, Kelsang Namgyal, read this inscription he noted that it is unusual to consecrate a thangka with such a personalized inscription and that they would not do so at the Tsering Art School. However, since it was a great master who inscribed this thangka, it is suficient for consecration. Such details provide evidence of an initial history of ritual engagement concordant with doctrinal prescriptions (consecration and simultaneous inscription) and subsequently provide evidence of the eficacy of Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma’s merit making act of artistic patronage. This inscription does not make reference to the Tibetan Buddhist practice of merit making related to the commissioning of the production and consecration of the thangka itself. The inscription does, however, describe the supramundane goals that the master asks to “bestow” upon the patron. That he does so by way of invoking the eight Medicine Buddhas is implied by the material combination of the image and words. The author’s sentiment indicates that it is that Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma’s patronage was in fact aimed at more than this initial merit-making project. Perhaps the patron was a khyim pa, or ‘householder’ in the common Buddhist sense, a layperson who took refuge in the three jewels and abided by the ive precepts, which declare abstention from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and alcohol consumption. Many Tibetan Buddhist lay people orient their practice around proximal goals such as happy rebirths and do not necessarily take on these 18 TibeT Journal precepts. Despite their lay status, those who deem themselves ‘khyim pa’ might instead aim for the supramundane or ultimate goals of Vajrayana Buddhism: “the complete conditions of practicing the holy dharma...[and] the joyful moment of manifestation; the state of union endowed with the ive certainties”—“the state of union” refers to the essence of enlightenment, which is most commonly formulated in English translations of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures as “the realization of both emptiness and bliss.” The ive certainties are the result, all of which are embodied by the body of perfect rapture—eight representations of which are pictured on the painted side of this thangka. Based on this visual and iconographic insight as well as evidence of the patron’s ostensible desire to achieve more lofty spiritual goals, I can then engage the relevant Vajrayana ritual texts to make credible inferences with regard to how a Tibetan Buddhist lay practioner such as Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma might have employed a thangka like this one for transformative purposes. The most common ritual related to the Medicine Buddha among Tibetan Buddhist lay practitioners, sman blas gyi mdo chog (“Sutra Ritual of the Medicine Buddha”), is a practical ceremony in which a Tibetan Buddhist can engage with a thangka such as this one (which would likely be found in a personal space) and requires this particular composition. The prayer evokes and calls for the blessings of these eight Medicine Buddhas as each is addressed individually by title in the text. This ritual, which comes in more than one form and in various lengths composed by various Tibetan Buddhist teachers, is a Vajrayana ritual of the bya rgyud (Skt. Kriya Tantra), or “Action Tantra” class. This Sutra Ritual includes homage to the eight Medicine Buddhas depicted in this thangka, which are all derived from the original Medicine Buddha Sutra (as mentioned previously). As Thubten Zopa Rinpoche says, “Just as the door to enter the Mahayana path is bodhicitta, the door to enter Tantra is initiation.”22 So those who practice any class of Tantra typically need to have received an initiation referred to as ‘empowerment’ or at the very least, an oral transmission of some kind, but in the case of this particular Sutra Ritual, one is required merely to have generated kun rdzobs byang chub kyi sems (‘relative bodhicitta’). Relative bodhicitta is the altruistic motivation of bodhicitta in absence of the cognition of stong pa nyid (Skt. sunyata) or emptiness. This ritual is an example of that class of Action Tantra texts that does not require special permission to picture the deities. The ritual, as fully expounded in The Wish Fulilling Jewel, goes as follows. First come the oral statements of refuge for recitation: “I seek refuge in the eight brothers gone to bliss, the lord Medicine Buddhas with their hosts of retinue deities”23 is a statement that is included among these and aligns the intention behind the “Sutra Ritual” to the intention behind the commissioning 19 TibeT Journal of this small, devotional thangka. A prayer for generating bodhicitta, contemplating the Four Immeasurables (equanimity, love,compassion, joy), “special bodhicitta,” puriication of the place of practice, and preparation of the offerings is done in that sequence to prepare for the actual seven-limb practice. What follows depends greatly on the invocation of the Medicine Buddhas. According to the elaborations of the Dalai Lama on Tsongkhapa’s action Tantra instructions24, when inviting the deity one should, “face in the direction where the painted igure or the like is” and prostrate, then assume the same position as the deity.25 Moreover, all of the ritual procedures should, according to the Dalai Lama, be oriented towards the present visual forms.26 This includes verses of prostration, beseeching, prayers to each of the eight Medicine Buddhas, which include prostration, offerings, rejoicing, and refuge, a prayer to the dharma, requesting beneits of the practice, mantra recitation, request for forgiveness, a request to remain, auspicious verses, and inally dedication of merit. In the case that Jetsunma wanted to invoke sman gyi bla tu rya’i ’od kyi rgyal po (the Medicine Buddha, King of Lapis Lazuli Radiance) in a more expedient fashion, she may not have performed such a lengthy ritual. It is often the case, as Geshe Tenzin27 Sherab conirmed, that lay practitioners receive oral transmissions through public teachings. Those enable them to practice the most popular and expedient form of deity invocation, zlos pa sngag or mantra (Skt.) recitation and this ritualized action may also be oriented towards the devotional thangka hanging in or nearby her personal shrine. It is also conceivable that Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma did not keep the thangka for herself after commissioning the work. As former Gelugpa monk, Jampa Khedup, suggested it is quite possible that this patron not only had the “Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas thangka inscribed by Achi Tunomonhan, but gifted the thangka to the monastery in an effort to reap even more merit. Regardless of her involvement or lack thereof with the thangka after its production and consecration, each possible scenario involves some form of merit-making activity, pointing directly to the transformational power of the object. “Thangka of Khadiravani Tara”: An Image Made for Mind The Chazen Museum of Art’s “Thangka of Khadiravani Tara” (Plate V) will assist me in exhibiting another facet of the Tibetan Buddhist thangka’s transformational power. I will use this thangka to explore the vision of a committed Tibetan Buddhist practitioner, practicing Deity Yoga in the pursuit of higher spiritual goals. Exploring Tibetan Buddhist Deity Yoga, a ritualized practice, which incorporates the thangka, is the most patent demonstration 20 TibeT Journal of “taking result as path,” the most expedient and common description for Vajrayana philosophy at large. Therein, the traits of Buddhahood depicted in thangka are internalized, meditated upon, and utilized for transformative purposes. It is during the practice of Deity Yoga that the aesthetic qualities we see on the thangka take on a particularly instrumental role. Here the central igure’s elongated white eyes pierce through the forestgreen complexion of her skin drawing the viewer’s eye straight in to this thangka’s complex and colorful composition. Her hair sits atop her head, adorned in lowers and a crown with the image of a red buddha. Her distended earlobes carry gold, jeweled earrings. Her female igure, distinguished by her very-circular breasts, is entirely dressed in colorful silks and jewels; She even wears “rainbow-colored stockings”28 on her legs. Her left hand sits atop her knee upon which the upturned tips of her thumb and irst ingers hold the stem of a blue lotus lower. Between the thumb and ring inger of her left hand, which sits in front her of breast, she holds an identical lotus lower. Her right foot is drawn up and her left foot is slightly extended. Just below her left foot sits a square-framed pool of water. There, a thick bed of green leaves protects a full lotus upon which a gold mirror and two fruits are assembled. To the right and left are the second largest igures in size; similarly adorned female igures standing straight up, gesturing and gazing toward the space between them with a palm extended in the same direction. The igure on the right is blue, holds a leafy plant upon which balances a skull cup with gri gug (curved knife) sitting on top. The igure on the left is yellow and holds a small tree in her left hand. Bare-chested, white igures dance, play instruments, and hold banners on either side of the yellow and blue haloed females. Trees line the ground at the base of the palace. They sit behind the moon disc, which supports the central igure’s back. The architecture reaches the top of the canvas, where directly under the gilded roof, lies another seated red buddha. Two triangular spaces made by the trees lining the palace open up to the sky, in which two igures loat on lotus thrones surrounded by curling clouds. On the left is a igure with three heads, one yellow, one white, one blue, six arms, holding various implements, the irst two in mnyam bzhag phyag rgya (Skt. dyanamudra) and mchog sbyin gyi phyag rgya (Skt. varadamudra). The igure on the right is all white, siting cross-legged, holding a single lotus lower in the right hand just as the green central goddess does, with the same boongranting gesture save the second lower. Basic elements of the central igure, such her breasts, green color, ornaments, lotus lowers, buddha crown, and posture immediately tell Tibetan Buddhists that this igure is Rje btsun sgrol ma or “Jetsun Drolma”, “Venerable Mother of Liberation.” This is the Tibetan translation of her original Sanskrit 21 TibeT Journal name Tara, which according to Waddell is, “derived from the Sanskrit Tarak for tarika = ‘Dilveress’ or ‘Savioress’.”29 The question as to whether her origin lies in Early Indian Tantric Buddhism or Brahmanical Tantricism is a contentious one, however, her Tantric Buddhist foundation can be traced to the 7th century Taramulakalpa.30 Her Tibetan and Sanskrit names points to her protective and pacifying powers, for which Tibetan Buddhists most often supplicate her, as described in the root Tantra’s stanza (according to Susan Landesman’s translation): “Blessed Noble Tara, who assumes the guise and form of a woman, shall dispel robbers, loods, famines, and various injuries. She shall pacify all dangers [resulting from] kings, lions, tigers, buffalo, wolves, poison, robbers, humans, and non-humans. She shall also make all sentient beings who are skillful in the ritual of reciting mantras fulill [a desire for] various kinds.”31 Her green form connotes this swift liberating movement, representing her association with the wind element, and signifying her Buddha family within the Yoga Tantra class (the Action Family), whose primary igure is Amoghasiddhi, for whom Jetsun Drolma also acts as consort. However, it is ’Od dpag med (Skt. Amithabha), Buddha family leader and father of Chenrezig (Wyl. spyan ras gzigs, Skt. Avalokitesvara), who sits in her crown and atop her palace. He is the leader of Jetsun Drolma’s buddha family within the Action and Performance Tantras. This connection is also derived from the birth story relayed in Mani bka’ ’bum, “The Hundred Thousand commands of the Mani” ostensibly32 written by King Songtsen Gampo in the 7th century, in which Jetsun Drolma emerges from the preexisting bodhisattva Chenrezig’s tear.33 This legend was and continues to be reiterated by many Tibetan Buddhists, including the famous Tibetan historian Taranatha in his treatise on the origins of Tara and is widely believed. The iconographic detail that signiies this connection between Tara and Chenrezig simultaneously denotes previously mentioned attributes of the bodhisattva. In The Sacred Art of Tibet, the reasoning behind this particular form of Jetsun Drolma’s crown of Amitabha rather than that adorned by the father of her buddha family, Amoghasiddhi, is the former’s association with “immortality, since the meditator is propitiating her to remove obstacles to his life.”34 From the original Jetsun Drolma, however, twenty-one emanations emerge, some peaceful, others wrathful, belonging to various Buddha families and all representing aspects of Jetsun Drolma. One must, therefore, understand the differences among them in order to identify the present form. Though there are ive different systems of the twentyone Taras and the esteemed 9th century Kashmiri scholar Suryagupta’s includes this Tara among the 21, his 22 TibeT Journal description does not accord perfectly to this representation. Atisa’s system, however, which does not identify this form of Tara as one of the 21, but rather a twenty-second Tara”, accounts for this distinguishing feature, which is as small as the additional lotus lower in her right hand. So unlike the other twenty-one Taras, based on Atisa’s conception, this form of Tara, which is known as ‘Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma’ (Wyl. seng ldeng nags kyi sgrol ma), is not associated with one particular aspect of the primary deity. Rather, she is Green Tara as she once appeared in a particular setting to a particular practitioner, and thus, as she is presented in a particular sgrub thabs text (Skt. sadhana) or “a means of accomplishing.” Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma is the Tibetan name for Khadiravani Tara or Green Tara in her role as “Khadiravani, Dweller in the Magical Khadira forest.”35 According to Miranda Eberle Shaw, “A song of praise by Nagarjuna, possibly the earliest known literary treatment of this manifestation, places Tara in the midst of [this] earthly paradise: Holy Tara’s palace is the Khadira Forest, A grove of glomerous igs, acacias, jujube trees…”36 This Nagarjuna37 is one of the Eighty-four grub thabs chen po (Skt. mahasiddhas) and is credited with authoring a number of sadhana such as that from which this image originated. Mallar Ghosh identiies the sadhana devoted to this form of Green Tara as Sadhana No. 89 of the Sadhanamala, a compilation of about 300 sadhana authored by various mahasidhas of which the oldest extant manuscript is dated to 1165 A.D.38 There are, of course, many variations of this sadhana in this day and age, which have been developed through adaptations of length and detail to it the needs of a diverse body of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. The Chazen Museum’s Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma thangka accords perfectly to how sgrub thabs or sadhana commonly describe her: “mdzes thams cad kyi phul du phyin kyang rin po che’i rgyan thams cad kyis yid du ’ong bar brjid bzhin pa bcu drug lon pa’i lang tsho can,”39 with totally perfected beauty and completely adorned by jewels, endowed with the resplendent beautiful youth of a 16 year old. The Chazen’s thangka depicts her two attendants according to the liturgical form, pictured on the lower left and right respectively: Odzer Chenma (Skt. Marici) and Ral gcig ma (Skt. Ekajata). This thangka does, however, diverge from the basic formula of Sendeng Nagkyi Drolma in that it also depicts Drolma Kar or ‘White Tara’ (Skt. Sitatara) in the top right corner with seven eyes and on the top right is Tsugtor Nampar Gyalma (Skt. Usnisavijaya), the fourth of the twenty-one Taras, who along with White Tara and Amitabha (Tib. ’Od dpag med) acts as a longevity deity. As evidenced by this image of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma’s origin in the Tantric scriptural tradition of sgrub thabs, the primary role served by this thangka’s imagery is as an aid in facilitating Deity Yoga (the very basic 23 TibeT Journal instructions for which are provided in the sgrub thabs text itself). When I asked Geshe Tenzin Sherab whether or not a lay practitioner would be likely to identify this particular image of Green Tara as Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma, the irst step required to acquiring the proper sgrub thabs text, he responded: I think it is dificult for one to know the difference [among the Twenty-One Taras] usually those of us who have not become monks don’t pay a lot of attention and then do not understand. Given the direct connections between this thangka and sgrub thabs literature, with the additional evidence of consecration, it is very likely that a Tibetan Buddhist once used this very thangka for the purpose of for a practice of sgrub thabs. While it is impossible to verify this historically based on the information available about this painting, it has compositional and visual qualities that strongly suggest this usage: consecration constituting its status as sku rten, standard imagery, and accuracy. Practitioners who use thangka for support in sadhana practices related to Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma rely on these aspects of the thangka as the ritual texts prompt them to internalize and animate the imagery they see in the painting in the mind’s eye. sGrub thabs practices related to Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma are likely to involve self-generation and such requires initiation by means of ritual referred to as rjes gnang—“subsequent permission”, which is not full empowerment, but permission to picture the deity that assumes the practitioner has already received an empowerment of the higher tantric classes. As stated previously, “the door to enter Tantra is initiation.”40 So those who practice Deity Yoga involving self-generation into Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma as the tutelary deity, need to have gone through the rjes gnang. When I showed Geshe Tenzin Sherab la, in relation to this thangka, what kind of practice a Tibetan Buddhist should engage in following a Green Tara rje gnang he said, བདག་ྱེད་ྟོས་ནས་བདག་ྱེས་ཟེར་ུས་ཉི་མ་ྟག་པར་ྷ་དེ་ྒོམ་དགོས་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད་ྷ་དེ་ལ་ མཆོད་པ་ུལ་དགོས་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད་ཨ་ནི་དེ་དང་མཉམ་ུ་ྡོམ་པ་དེ་ཚོ་བུང་དགོས་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད། དེ་ ྭ་པ་དང་མི་ྱ་དེ་ཚོ་ལ་ྱེད་པར་ཡོད་མ་རེད། To paraphrase his answer in English: One should practice what is called self-generation of that deity [Green Tara] every day and make offerings to that deity. Then, with that those praises [the 21 praises of Tara] should be spoken. Further, there is no difference in that for monks and lay people. For the purpose of my aim to explore each of the four tantric levels of engagement with thangka as sku rten I will, however, imagine that the holder of this particular thangka is a Gelugpa monk who has been initiated to the 24 TibeT Journal Highest Yoga Tantra (Tib. bla na med pa’i rgyud). A Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma sgrub thabs text that involves self-generation is often classiied as bla na med pa’i rgyud (Skt. Anuttarayoga Tantra). Though there are many versions of sgrub thabs practices that engage with Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma of lower Tantric classes as well as various lengths and styles within each, all share the same formula and objective. In addition to a variety of sgrub thabs texts on the same bodhisattva, there are also secondary texts such as commentaries and simpliied explanations of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma’s sgrub thabs. In addition to the sku rten provided in the form of the thangka, a practitioner may employ any of these texts to aid their practice. As plainly stated by the Dalai Lama in his preface to the founder of the Gelugpa school, Tsongkhapa’s treatise on Deity Yoga, one should engage the thangka “as a basis of imagination by placing it in front of you” at the outset of such a practice.41 Advanced practitioners typically memorize the text of their chosen sgrub thabs (Skt. sadhana) in order to enhance that practice, removing the visual distraction of reading, which precludes complete engagement with the act of Deity Yoga itself. Dechen Nyingpo (an esteemed Gelugpa monk from the late 19th century), for example, has designed a sgrub thabs of the Highest Yoga Tantra class related to Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma that treats her as Green Tara from whom the Twenty-One Tara emerge called “Instructions on How to Implement the Two Stages of Khadiravani Tara Yoga, the Heart Mind Mantra Garland.”42 These “two stages” refer to that of generation and completion, the two stages of Deity Yoga (Tib. lha’ rnal ’byor). A text such as Dechen Nyingpo’s provides details and explanations of the most full forms of the Sendeng Nagkyi Drolma sadhana. According to Alex Berzin, these fuller forms of sgrub thabs (Skt. sadhana) texts (upon which Dechen Nyingpo’s text elaborates even further) explain the inner and outer practices involved in the practice, which constitutes a scripturally sound practice of lha’i rnal ’byor or Deity Yoga. Outer practices such as those included in the basic formula known as the “Seven Limbs” precede this visualization and may call for engagement with the thangka as sku rten in the same sense as the Medicine Buddha Sutra Ritual of the Action Tantra class—acting as dwelling place for the Medicine Buddhas’ boundless bodies towards which propitiary acts, as prescribed by Tibetan Buddhist texts, should be directed. Common to all sgrub thabs texts, long and short, is the section that calls for use of the thangka as sku rten—the “opera of visualization” (in the words of Berzin) during which sgrub thabs texts animate the details one sees on the Thangka of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma. As Janet Gyatso says, “The 25 TibeT Journal sadhana proper commences when the practitioner imagines him or herself to be seated in meditation and surrounded by all beings in the universe.”43 This occurs at the outset of the “generation stage” during which the practitioner uses the painted imagery as foundation to visually approximate the perfect appearance of the deity (in this case Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma) in the mind’s eye. It is assumed that the practitioner has had experience in the lower Tantras and adequately familiarized him or herself with the painted image, which is a an attempt to mimic the divine reality, relecting that which was once realized and relayed by the spiritually victorious author of the sadhana. Frontgeneration or mdun skyeds begins with imagining Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma’s seed syllable, “TAM” rising to the sky and inally sitting on a white lotus atop a moon disc from which perfectly brilliant light shines forth and retracts. It is that seed syllable that transforms into Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma, who should be imagined just as pictured in the thangka. Therein the practitioner is mainly concerned here with achieving clarity of appearance of a divine body, mantra letters, and so forth…”44 This always precedes self-generation or mdag skyeds if it is part of the sgrub thabs, which begins with absorption of the deity in front into the conventional self (the body of the meditator) by entrance through the crown of the head. Her seed syllable rests at the meditators heart as he or she transforms into Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma in the mind’s eye. In the body of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma, the meditator then imagines performing her enlightened activities. Tsongkhapa refers to this process as “entry of the wisdom being.” In this process, “Imagination is used in order to replace limited and stultiied mind and body with superior forms of these, whereby a new sense of selfhood develops—compassionate, wise, and pure.”45 This is the beginning of the completion stage wherein the meditator embodies the “divine pride” of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma and begins to manipulate the energies, or rsta lung (“channels and winds”) within his or her own body so that he or she can gain access to direct cognition of emptiness which gives way to the experience of bliss. While these are the stages of generation and completion found in rnal ’byor rgyud (Skt. Yoga Tantra) and bla na med pa’i rgyud (Skt. Anuttarayoga Tantra), according to Tsongkhapa, the visualization practices of mdun skyeds and mdag skyeds done during the generation stage are also incorporated into Action and Performance Tantras. Rather than consisting in the stages of generation and completion, Deity Yoga of the lower classes of Tantra consist in “yoga with signs” and “yoga without signs.” They emphasize preliminary practices characteristic of Action Tantra rituals such as consecrating the place of practice, which involves the recitation of sngags (Skt. mantra), simultaneous display of phyag mtshan (Skt. mudra), and prostration during which one should 26 TibeT Journal “face in the direction where the painted igure or the like is.”46 As Jeffery Hopkins says in his supplement to the translation of Tsongkhapa’s treatise, “Whereas the generation of oneself as a deity is done from within meditation on emptiness, the generation in the front is a matter of inviting a deity to come. Therefore, the preliminaries of the four-branched repetition involve extensive preparation for the visit of a deity, who is treated like a guest.” The Action and Performance Tantra traditions emphasize internal practices of Deity Yoga as well which are particularly concerned with “achieving clarity of appearance of a divine body.”47 They do not simply “complete feats through the power of deities that are found in paintings and so forth [that is, they imagine a deity in front of themselves from whom they, as ordinary beings, receive feats].”48 Rather, Tibetan Buddhists visualize enlightened beings to invoke their true substance and may go even further to envision themselves as the deity itself to ultimately achieve the same substance. During self-generation one meditates on the “sign deity” during which “one is reviewing in stages the face, arms, and so forth, of a divine body and thus a series of minds is being generated.”49 Deity Yoga in the Action and Performance Tantras typically closes with the recitation of sngag combined with very concentrated visualization of the deity, in front or as oneself. It is not an analytical meditation, but a samadhi-like (Skt.) meditation referred to as “bestowing liberation at the end of sound” or “yoga without signs” because it is conjoined with meditation on the emptiness of the sign deity the practitioner has in his or her mind’s eye. So in either case, Action and Performance Tantra or the Highest Yoga Tantra, Tibetan Buddhists who practice Deity Yoga truly engage with the imagery seen on the Chazen’s “Thangka of Khadiravani Tara.” “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala”: An Apparition for the Advanced To demonstrate a third mode of engagement I will now use the “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala”(Plate VII). This thangka will assist me in exploring the vision of an ordained member of the Tibetan Buddhist dge ’dun (Skt. sangha)—an advanced practitioner who has been fully initiated to the Highest Yoga Tantra and takes on the responsibility of perpetuating the chos sku (Skt. dharma). For it is those Tibetan Buddhist practitioners who engage with a distinct genre of thangka that are typically kept in a dark restricted chamber called the ‘mgon khang’, to which only monks have access. In this thangka, horizontal layers of elongated clouds formed by ine lines, ill the deep black space just above the central igure’s giant aureole of dark red lames. In a distinct nimbus at the center are two standing igures in an embrace with their own aureole, painted delicately in gold. On either side are lineage holders supported by cushions and moon discs, with halos, 27 TibeT Journal and the garb of Tibetan Buddhist monks. What lies below this top portion of the composition is overwhelmingly intricate. Fire surrounds a dwarish and big-bellied, four-armed black deity who stands upon a lotus throne with astounding detail, so subtle, that it cannot be fully appreciated from afar. Fine, perpetually glowing, gold lines deine every igure on this thangka and the central igure is completely adorned with gold jewelry and gold-embellished hand implements. Atop his head sits a crown with ive jewels and ive skulls. A bit of his wild gold hair is tied together with a small serpent resembling the delicately-rendered one draped around his neck like the gold jewelry it accompanies. His upper left hand holds a blazing sword and his lower, a gri gug (curved knife). His lower right hand holds a skull cup illed with blood over which the curved knife in his left hovers. His upper right hand holds a threepronged staff adorned with a skull and two corpse heads, with a vajra base (Tib. kha twam ga). Animal skins of various species cover his shoulders and genitals. They are so many in number that the feet, still attached to the animal skins, rest on the downturned face and feet of the corpse upon which this giant igure sits. A garland of human heads hangs, similarly, below his waist. His heavy gold eyebrows and other deining facial features resemble his jewelry with their spirally designs. This ornamentation draws the viewer’s attention directly to the bright white teeth that protrude in a ierce manner from the open red mouth of the deity, matching his three bulging white eyes. His countenance, needless to say, is extremely wrathful as are those of the retinue that surrounds him. Five of those retinue igures are nearly identical, with faces like birds, three eyes, human hands and feet, skull crowns atop their heads, blood-illed skull cup in one hand, gold vajra in the other, standing upon a corpse resting whose body is strewn across a lotus throne. The other four retinue deities are distinguished by their varying physical forms, the things they wear, and the objects they wield. There is a sixth bird-faced igure that bares wings in addition to human arms and hands, but no visible feet. Something red, perhaps entrails, hang from its mouth. Second to the central igure in dominance is a goddess atop a horse in the bottom right corner of the thangka. “She is of a black colour and her body is lean as a skeleton. The goddess has one face, four hands and two feet…A human corpse lies in her mouth and she bares her teeth…and she laughs thunderously. She has dice hanging from straps… in the middle of a vast wild sea of blood and fat…whit a belt of severed heads and a layed skin as cover…holding reins consisting of poisonous snakes… An elephant-hide covers the upper portion of her body, and the skin of an ox serves as a loin-cloth.”50 Equally detailed, on the bottom left corner is a igure with an identical 28 TibeT Journal countenance to the central igure. He is similarly enveloped by ire, but in a more chaotic manner; the sashes that ly from the robe that covers his entire body like streamers, are lost in the lames. The red pattern resembling embroidery that dominates his black robe, make his body nearly indistinguishable among the ire from afar. He has two hands. The left holds a jewel-topped club and the right holds a small vessel with a lid. The last distinct igure is ornamented in the same exact fashion as the ive raven-headed, humanbodied igures. Rather than a beak, however, this igure bears the face of a lion and rather than a curved knife, he holds a sword with a gold vajra-handle. He kneels on his right knee, modestly offering his blood-illed skull cup to the central igure with his left hand. His garland of human heads rests upon the corpse below him. The space between this wrathful retinue of igures is illed with gruesome offerings— skull cups full of not only blood, but eyes, noses, and other parts of dismembered human bodies. The less gruesome offerings such as the torma (sculptures made of lower and butter) have a iery design to match the terriic mood of the painting. The sheer number of elements packed into this painting and precision with which the mass of details within each and every one is executed makes this visual encounter an intentionally overwhelming one. The thangka’s black background makes the painting all the more striking, creating an all-pervasive dark space from which these amazing forms emerge and coalesce. The ierce countenances whose faces tear through the blackness are wrathful deities, who are most often the only deities for whom this technique is used.52 The origin of the black thangka, Robert Linrothe tells us, dates to the death of a revered teacher: “It is said in the ashes of a holy lama were applied to a canvas and later a deity was drawn upon it in gold.53 These igures identities are manifold and small details distinguish one ierce deity from another, especially when it comes to Enlightened Protectors (the wrathful emanations of fully enlightened buddhas). This thangka is representative of the most esoteric imagery Tibetan Buddhists use. While a casual viewer of thangka would likely be able to recognize the central igure as mGon po ngag po chen po (Skt. Mahakala) because of his basic attributes, identifying other particulars in the painting requires specialized knowledge or training. Nebesky-Wojkowitz’s Oracles and Demons of Tibet connects the igure of mGon po ngag po chen po phyag bzhi pa (Four-Armed Mahakala) on this painting with a description of the tradition by Ga Lotsawa, an early 12th century commentator. According to “The Treasury of Lives” biographical encyclopedia, he is known for having subjugated mGon po ngag po chen po, the “Ravenfaced Dharma Protector” (chos skyong bya rog can), during his 29 TibeT Journal practice in a cemetery near Bodhgaya.54 He is also credited with giving many instructions and initiations related to these spiritual achievements, which ultimately became quite fundamental to the Kagyu tradition. The lineage holders at the top of the painting wear hats distinctly characteristic of this sect. They may be lineage holders Shabdrung Ngagwang Namgyal and Je Jamgo, but there is no information to directly verify such identiications. No matter their identity, the two Tibetan Buddhist lineage igures symbolize the connection between human practitioners and the “blissfully departed”, nonhuman igure at the center of the canvas. In the bottom left corner of the composition is a particular rendering of the Mahakala known as yab drang srong legs ldan mgon po in silk robes. His opposite is ultimate protector of the land of Tibet itself, Palden Lhamo. The ive identical animal-headed deities are described as “raven-headed” by NebeskyWojkowitz and are called las kyi mgon po. As John C. Huntington points out, “Kakamukha in Sanskrit is “crow headed” and is used in the sadhana but the Tibetan “bya rog” is either crow or raven….Proper ornithology aside, in either case the reference is to a big, black, aggressive, carrion – eating bird common to the charnel ields of India, Nepal, and Tibet.”55 This retinue of raven-headed igures is essential to identifying this form of Mahakala as the protector of the Chakrasamvara cycle of Tantras (Tib. khor lo bde mchog), who is acknowledged as a principal protector by the Drukpa Kagyu sect speciically. The inclusion of two igures in embrace at the top center of the canvas aid viewers in making this identiication; the blue igure is Chakrasamvara (Tib. bde mchog) and the red is his consort Vajravarahi (Tib. rdo rje phag mo), a wrathful form of Vajrayogini. As a protector of such powerful teachings mGon po nag po chen po phyag bzhi pa’s role is to forcefully restrict the audience to those who have cultivated the proper intentions and base of practice. Though Tibetan Buddhists typically direct ritual activities towards Wrathful Protectors for worldly advantages, Enlightened Wrathful Protectors can also facilitate advancement toward supramundane goals related to and including the ultimate goal of enlightenment. Four-Armed Mahakala is one of very few wrathful protectors who shares a similar status to the bodhisattva from which he emanates. As protector of the Chakrasamvara Tantra, mGon po nag po chen po phyag bzhi pa is an integral part of the Chakrasamvara Tantra and mandala, through which the beneits of relating to him were initially discovered and his own meditation practices were elaborated upon. The Chakrasamvara Tantra is part of the bla na med pa’i rgyud (Skt. Anuttarayoga Tantra) class. The iconography here is not nearly as universal or archetypal as the ones presented thus far. Rather, the imagery included in this painting is meant for a more restricted audience with appropriate 30 TibeT Journal initiation. Non-initiates can still identify these iconographic formulas by drawing on now, ubiquitious sources such as Robert Beer’s manual on Tibetan Buddhist iconography. The ive-skull crown, for example, represents the ive transcendent wisdoms of the celestial buddhas, according to Beer. In another explanatory text regarding the sgrub thabs practices surrounding this particular Mahakala, the 4th Sharmapa says: “rnam bzhi ’phrin las mdzad pa phyag bzhi pa”, that the four arms are four forms of enlightened activity.56 However, this kind of iconographic analysis or “reading” of the painting is not meant to be suficient for producing an understanding of the greater substance within thangka painting like this one, which is “invariably kept in the locked temples of the guardian deities which are found in every monastery.”57 This nag thang of four-armed Mahakala can best be understood as a specialized tool for advanced practitioners. In fact, it is this very deity, mGon po nag po chen po, after which the mgon khang was originally named since each of the four Tibetan Buddhist sect regards one of his forms as a prominent protector.58 In the following excerpt from an English translation of his treatise on thangka paintings, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, Guiseppe Tucci shares his personal experience of the settings for which thangka like these are intended. These temples still exist within nearly every Tibetan Buddhist monastery today, where they are most often found hidden behind or below the main shrine hall. As Gelugpa Geshe, Tenzin Sherab, said “mgon po phyag bzhi ha lam bod pa’i chos pa tshang ma’i mgon khang nang la yod kyi red”: “Four-Armed Mahakala is in nearly every Tibetan Protector Temple.” “These thangka are usually kept covered by a piece of cloth, which is only removed when a ceremony takes place in the mgon khang.”59 Guiseppe Tucci’s account brings this setting to life, as he uses rich sensorial language to describe his own entrance into the sacred space, the various black thangka painting’s terrifying imagery therein, as well as the monk’s ritual performances in this temple (which is, again, scarcely accessed by lay persons): “We shall also dwell at length on the thangkas of the mGon khang, because although they too obey certain ixed schemes, they often attain the highest artistic expression Tibetan art is capable of. They are called tankas of the mGon khang because they are almost always arranged in the mGon khang and represent the deities venerated there. mGon khang, literally means “the mGon po’s house”; the mGon po is the “Lord”, i.e. the Yi dam, the protecting deity of the sect or convent; in fact each sect has its patron, its terrible defender, the terriic and warlike aspect of the merciful deity who protects the devotees from the dangers of evil powers. The sa skya pa [for instance] have Gur mgon and Phur pa, the dGe lugs pa have Ye shes mgon po. …Yi dam or mGon po, surrounded by the pageant of their terrible followers 31 TibeT Journal thus reside and receive their cult in the mGon khang, mysterious shrines into which it is very dificult to be admitted. The doors giving access to them are low and narrow. On the doors are painted monstrous faces. The visitor, even before entering, feels hesitating and lost in a half-light which the feeble light of a lantern seems to make gigantic, plumbing its doubtful depths. The monks too are restless and anxious. The locks creak, keys are turned, the doors open. One has the impression of plunging headlong into bottomless night, into solidiied darkness. Then the lamp, prevailing little by little over the gloom, sculpts and carves against the black background forms and aspects which do not belong to this world. you would think you were looking out over the primordial chaos, where the vital urge inds expression in uncertain and contradictory waverings or becomes incorporated into indistinct shapes, immediately abandoned as by a sudden repentance, but so suddenly that the two images overlap, melt one into the other and monsters are born out of them, igures which are neither beast nor man, but are nevertheless one and the other, without yet reaching a deinite aspect of their own: the beast has a human expression, the man grins and twists like a brute. …Meanwhile in that cave, which seems to sink into the abysses of the earth, deep thuds echo with a constant rhythm and are repeated by mysterious hollows. One advances in the anxious anticipation of being confronted at any moment by something mysterious; one is led on by a resigned and awed curiosity; it is no longer possible to turn back. Little by little the thuds become nearer, until the sancta sanctorum is reached, where a priest, squatting in the ritual pose, recites litanies and invocations in a monotonous voice, beating rhythmically on a large drum with a crooked drumstick. The dark and empty rooms multiply its echo. These priests pass their lives in the mGon khang, voluntary comrades of the deities incumbing on all sides with their monstrous igures; they are buried in darkness, as though plunged into primordial chaos to live the drama of creation over again in that silence. When one enters, they do not move nor look up; they remain with closed eyes, murmuring secret formulas, almost a lullaby soothing and putting to sleep forces hidden within the images; as if, were the crooning interrupted for an instant, they might wake up and break loose in all their fury. The place itself captivates by its mystery, its shadows, its silences; the faith, the pious awe of religious souls who have passed through the place or lived there for centuries, seem to create a sacred atmosphere in which the manifestation of the god’s divine spirit is felt to be imminent. As if to show materially that these mGon khang sink back into the origin of all things, they are often underground.”60 Geshe Tenzin Sherab says that these rituals, during which the many drums (damaru, chos rnga, and rnga chen or hand drum, “religious drum”, and “great drum”)61 are sounded repeatedly and mantras are recited, are 32 TibeT Journal mainly performed for the overcoming of obstacles (Wylie. bar chad). They are known as ’phrin bcol (“supplication for help”) rituals. Therein the monks invite the wisdom being of Four-Armed Mahakala into the dam tshig pa (“pledge image”), which may be the thangka itself or may be formed by way of visualization in the absence of a proper image. Entry of the wisdom being and the fruit of the practice which supplicates mgon po nag po chen po phyag bzhi pa thus depends on the accurate appearance of the Enlightened Protector just as that of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma Deity Yoga practice. In order to invoke Four-Armed Mahakala bskong rdzas or offerings for entreaty are made. There are typically three kinds: nang mchod or inner offerings, phy mchod or outer offerings, and gsang mchod or secret offerings.62 These include a consecrated liquid that becomes bdud rtsi (Skt. amrta) or a nectar of immortality, objects pleasing the senses such as butter lamps, a drink, or incense, and lastly a symbolic offering consisting of innervisualization of presenting the deity of invocation with his female consort. With support of a nag thang such as the “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala”, the proper offerings, and mantras for invocation, a Tibetan Buddhist monk has the means to summon and beseech the deity for protection. In this way, the thangka has the potential to facilitate a transformative process: ‘phrin bcol’ or supplication for help and the overcoming of obstacles. Engaging with Vajrayana Imagery At this point I hope to have accomplished two things: (1) to have provided a concise explanation of the predominant visual content of each thangka, using Tibetan Buddhist categories, histories, beliefs, and ritual texts, and (2) to have deined the context for ritual engagement with each of these thangka. I have laid out the predominant iconography, pertinent Vajrayana views, ritual context, and circumstances for ritual engagement, but have not yet elaborated on the substance of engagement—in other words, what precise role the object plays in each ritual context and what inherent compositional or religiously imbued qualities (whether by belief or ritual) enable that functionality. Making these connections is my primary goal in order to better convey the Tibetan Buddhist “vision” that unites practitioners across seemingly disparate approaches to practice with images. As I suggested in my introduction, Tibetan Buddhists rely on what is translated as “support(s)”, ‘rten’ in Tibetan, to facilitate connections to the enlightened body, speech, and mind of Vajrayana deities. There are three classes of such sacred supports: body supports (‘sku rten’), verbal supports (’gsung rten’), and mental supports (‘thugs rten’). Scroll paintings, or thangkas, are one form of sku rten. They may be 33 TibeT Journal classiied as such, according to Geshe Tenzin Sherab only when they are properly consecrated—the most common form of which is the inscription of seed syllables corresponding to the body, speech, and mind of the buddha, OM AH HUM (pictured on Plate VI, in Lantsa script). When I use the word ‘engagement’, I do so to refer to the use of a thangka as body support (‘sku rten’). There are various ways of doing so within each class of Tantra. One way of engaging in this manner is through use of carefully designed Tibetan Buddhist ritual manuals, in their various forms (mdo mchog, sgrub thabs, etc.), within which painted images are incorporated explicitly as ritual tools. Hence the need to privilege these texts and to actively imagine those Tibetan Buddhist rituals prescribed within them the way I have. The English category describing the ritual role of thangka, “body support”, is the so-called ‘calque’ translation of ‘sku rten’ and thereby lends itself to multiple interpretations. I came to my own understanding of ‘sku rten’ by observing Tibetan Buddhists’ usage of the word ‘kus,’ the majority of which designate it as an honoriic term for ‘body’ and in many cases, in direct reference to Vajrayana deities and the images representing them. My interpretation upon irst encounter with this category was that the honoriic ‘body” to which the term refers was that of the practitioner. In other words, I imagined sku rten as support for the body of a Tibetan Buddhist in performing the physical practices that facilitate merit making and advance one on the spiritual path, rather than support by the body, or “bodily support.” In other words, thangka take on the same role as the physical human body by virtue of their potential as instruments for spiritual advancement and thereby support religious practice in a “bodily” fashion. This is why the majority of scholars, both Euro-American Buddhist scholars and Tibetan Buddhists, explain the meaning of term ‘sku rten’ as ‘bodily support.’ However, the English category ‘bodily support,’ is equally as truncated as ‘sku rten’ and potentially misleading. Further, each class of Tantra offers its own formula for engaging thangka as bodily support (Tib. sku rten). I have chosen these three particular thangka to demonstrate three of these formulas for engagement with Vajrayana imagery. I have chosen these thangka and corresponding rituals by virtue of their associations with different classes of Tantra in an effort to fully unpack the multi-faceted meaning of sku rten according to Tibetan Buddhists’ varied means for engagement. With the “Thangka of Eight Medicine Buddhas” I demonstrate how to do so according to Action Tantra rituals (which resembles that of the Performance Tantra class as well); with the “Thangka of Khadiravani Tara” I demonstrate how to do so according to the internal practices of the Highest Yoga Tantra (which resembles that of the Yoga Tantra class as well); with the “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala” I demonstrate 34 TibeT Journal how wrathful deities, unique to the Vajrayana Buddhism, call for a particular forms of engagement across the lower and higher classes of Tantra. Each incorporates a kind of Deity Yoga (according to Tsongkhapa and the Dalai Lama’s Gelugpa perspective), but those forms differ based on the body of practitioners to which they cater, deined predominantly by karmic standing and spiritual aspirations. In this spirit, Tsongkhapa says, “If it were true that everyone should be a Buddhist, that everyone should be a Tantrist, and that everyone should follow Highest Yoga Tantra because it is the best, then Vajradhara would have taught only Highest Yoga Tantra.”63 While conveying the potential of thangka as sku rten according to prescriptions for engaging with images in Action Tantra, Performance Tantra, Yoga Tantra, and Highest Yoga Tantra, I hope to assist my readers in understanding the unity of vision that binds various levels of Tibetan Buddhist engagement with images. It is only the depth of this vision that varies among Tibetan Buddhist practitioners of disparate positions along the liturgical path and the images to which they are privy to and engage with agree with those positions. In each of the forthcoming sections I attempt to synthesize what the thangka does on that level of engagement, how, and why. Thangka as Bodily Support The inscription found on the backside of the “Thangka of Eight Medicine Buddhas” provides accessible language to aid understanding of the Tibetan category ‘sku rten’, which encapsulates (in indigenous terms) the transformative role of thangka in all Tibetan Buddhist forms of engagement. It does so in relating the depicted forms, which fall under this very category, to the ontological nature of the eight Medicine Buddhas: the nature of their long sku (Skt. sambhogakaya) form. The irst line of the composition reveals their ultimate numinous nature in the most explicit words possible: “Although all victors are of one taste with the expanse of great bliss, eight exalted, blissfully-departed companions arise out of marvelous compassion for degenerate sentient beings.” The author’s plain acknowledgement of a conceptual contrast between the formless existence of these eight Medicine Buddhas with the “expanse of great bliss” and the distinct visual forms of Medicine Buddhas painted upon this canvas, intelligibly captures the relationship between these visual representations and their ultimate meanings. Hence, the word rkyang, I have translated as “although”, which lies directly between the two phrases describing these seemingly dualistic and deining qualities. The short composition also points to the Tibetan Buddhist logic behind these forms that arise out of formlessness, which is that they are motivated to take conventional shape 35 TibeT Journal (which lends itself to twodimensional depictions) out of their “marvelous compassion for degenerate sentient beings.” The depicted igures are forms of “bodily support” in that they provide the same support as the Supreme Emanation Body, or mchog gi sprul sku—the body of sangs rgyas sha kya thub pa, the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. In Pema Namdol Thaye’s Concise Tibetan Art Book, (Tibetan title is lha sky’i thig dpe mi pham dgongs rgyan) he shares a quote from Shakyamuni, in his own English translation, from the drang srong rgyas pas zhus pa’i mdo, or “The Sutra Requested by Rishi Vyasa” expressing the same sentiment. Therein, Shakyamuni says to the great Indian adept, Rishi Vyasa, “when my physical body leaves this world, praying and worshipping my images will yield same virtues as now.”64 Belief in this prophecy is an integral aspect of the Tibetan Buddhist “vision” (in David Morgan’s sense of the word) of these sacred painted images. Among the forms of spiritual support provided by sku rten, Geshe Tenzin Sherab places the greatest emphasis on the facet of its instrumental role that is a basis for merit making. Like Pema Namdol Thaye, Geshe repeatedly referred to foundations of this principle in sutra literature as the utmost authoritative source and one that is suficient to have deined the sacred nature of Tibetan Buddhist imagery for Tibetan Buddhists of the present and future. Based on this consensus among Tibetan Buddhists in designating the chief function of sku rten as a source of merit in the same sense as the historical Shakyamuni Buddha, it seems that this Medicine Buddha thangka embodies the category most explicitly. The circumstances behind the creation of this thangka are conirmed by the inscription, recorded by “the highest of the yellow hat’s supreme luminary of teachings Achi Tunomonhan in response to the faithful, devoted, and discerning Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma’s request.” Perhaps Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma did nothing more than fulill an oracle or astrologer’s suggestion, simply commissioning the work and seeking consecration for the means of overcoming a personal obstacle. Nevertheless, in such a scenario, the thangka has already fulilled the role of sku rten in facilitating her accumulation of merit. Her action creates the potential for other sentient beings to encounter the worldly-approximation of ultimate reality, an action along the chain of las ’bras (“cause and effect”, Skt. karma) that is virtuous and therefore meritorious. As stated previously, however, Achi Tunomonhan’s inscription calls for blessings of the supramundane variety, which provide grounds for connecting related Medicine Buddha rituals that have the potential to ultimately lead Tibetan Buddhist practitioners to those spiritual accomplishments.65 The mdo mchog or “Sutra Ritual”, which despite its name, is of the Action Tantra class, 36 TibeT Journal calls for very speciic modes of engagement with the imagery found on this very thangka. The Wish Fulilling Jewel does not explicitly entail any kind of inner-visualization of the Medicine Buddhas or Lineage Gurus; according to the instructions themselves, it is a strictly external Action Tantra ritual and requires no empowerment. The propitiatory Sutra Ritual, nevertheless, integrates the thangka’s imagery by offering instructions for non-cerebral engagement. A Tibetan Buddhist practitioner such as one with a devotional thangka like this, might perform the practice in their home directly before the image itself. Therein they would orient all actions entailed in the ritual towards the thangka, just as if the Medicine Buddha, King of Lapis Light appeared in his sprul pa’i sku (Skt. Nirmanakaya) form in that very place. These performative acts, such as prostration and the seven limbs of practice attached “engage” the image in that the eficacy of their transformative potential for the Tibetan Buddhist actor, depends greatly on the holy status of the image towards which the practitioner directs his or her intentions. This “holy” status and potential for such ritual engagement depends on whether or not it has been consecrated according to Vajrayana ritual texts or traditions. When I asked Geshe Tenzin Sherab whether or not a thangka that has not been consecrated can act as sku rten. He responded as follows: རབས་ུ་གནས་ཟེར་ུས་དཔེར་ན་དངོས་པོ་ྟག་ུ་གནས་པ་ྦད་དེ་མེ་དང་ུས་འྲོ་བླག་མ་ འྲོ་བ་གཏོར་བཞིག་མ་འྲོ་བ་དེ་འྲ་གནས་ཡག་གི་ཆེད་ུ་གཙོ་བོ་རབས་གནས་ཟེར་ཨ་ནི་ དེ་ཡང་ག་རེ་རེད་ཟེར་ན་རབས་གནས་ཟེར་ཡག་གི་དོན་དག་གཙོ་བོ་ག་རེ་རེད་ཟེར་ན་ུ་དེ་ བཞེངས་ནས་ུ་དེ་ལ་སངས་ྱས་ྱི་ཡེ་ཥེས་ཟེར་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད་ད་སངས་ྱས་ྱི་ུ་དེ་བཞེངས་ནས་ སངས་ྱས་དེ་ལ་དཔེར་ན་ྟོན་པའི་ུ་གཅིག་བཞེངས་ཡོད་ན་ཐང་ག་གཅིག་བཞེངས་ཡོད་ན་ ཐང་ག་དེ་ལ་རབས་གནས་ྱས་མཁན་དེས་དམིགས་པ་གང་འྲ་བཏང་དགོས་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད་ཟེར་ན་ སངས་ྱས་བཅོམ་ྡན་འདས་དངོས་ུ་ཨ་ནི་ཐང་ག་དེ་ལ་བུགས་པ་འྲ་པོ་ཐིམ་པ་འྲ་པོ་ཅིག དེ་འྲས་ྱི་བསམ་ློ་གཏོང་དགོས་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད་སངས་ྱ་བཅོམ་ྡན་འདས་ྱི་ྱིན་བླབས་ཡང་ ན་སངས་ྱས་བཅོམ་ྡན་འདས་ྱི་ཡེ་ཥེས་ཟེར་དགོས་རེད་བ་དེའི་དངོས་ུ་གང་ྟར་ཡང་སངས་ ྱས་བཅོམ་ྡན་འདས་ལ་ཞེ་ས་མ་ྱས་ན་སངས་ྱས་བཅོམ་ྡན་འདས་ྱི་སེམས་དེ་ཐང་ག་དེ་ལ་ བུགས་སོང་ྙམ་པའི་བསམ་ློ་ཅིག་དེ་ྱས་པ་ཡིན་ུས་ཐང་ག་དེ་ྩ་ཆེན་པོ་ཅིག་ཆགས་ྱི་ཡོད་ རེད་ཟེ་རབས་གནས་ཟེར་དོན་དག་དེ་རེད་དེ་འྲ་ཅིག་གིས་རབས་གནས་ྱས་མཁན་ྱི་བསམ་ ློ་དེ་འྲ་ྨོན་ལམ་བྱབ་ཡོང་ུས་ཙམ་པ་ལ་ཨ་ནི་ཐང་ག་དེ་ྩ་ཆེན་པོ་ཆགས་རེད་ཐང་ག་དེ་ལ་ ྱིན་ླབས་འུག་གི་རེད་ཨ་ནི་ཐང་ག་ུན་རིང་པོ་འུང་བ་ཆེན་པོ་བཞིས་གནོད་པ་ག་ཚོད་ཡོད་ ན་ཡང་ཐང་ག་དེ་གནས་ུབ་ཡག་ཅིག་ལ་དེ་འྲས་ཟེར་ྱི་ཡོད་རེད། 37 TibeT Journal My English translation of Geshe’s oral response goes as follows: To consecrate something is mainly done so that the thing always dwells in it and so it remains completely through ire and water, until it is destroyed. Then, moreover, if you ask the reason for that, if you ask what is the chief purpose of what is called consecration…by creating an image…what is called the exalted wisdom of a Buddha…By creating that image of a buddha, for instance—if you have created a statue, if you have created a thangka—the person who does the consecration to that image should visualize like the actual Buddha, the Supramundane Victor, enters and dissolves into the thangka. The blessings of the buddha or the wisdom of the buddha (however you call it), if I speak informally “the buddha’s mind”, actually enters the image. If one has that thought, the thangka becomes a very holy thing. This is the chief purpose of consecration. If the person who does the consecration contemplates in that way, when one prays in that way, then that thangka becomes very holy. The blessings will be infused into the thangka. It is said that like that, the image can remain no matter how much harm [is done] by the great four elements. Though Geshe Tenzin Sherab’s answer is not direct, he does offer the pertinent facts in the words of a Tibetan Buddhist. He expresses the fact that that the person who consecrates the thangka, in contemplating the invocation and infusion of the “actual” (Tib. dngos su) enlightened being into the painting, is capable of making such happen. With this information, we can surmise that an un-consecrated thangka cannot act as sku rten. Over and above that inference, however, Geshe Tenzin Sherab lends insight into the sacred status of consecrated Tibetan Buddhist images which fall under the category sku rten with which even an outsider has the potential to better understand a painting of Eight Medicine Buddhas as a ritual tool. I have chosen to relay this ritual in particular, in order to elucidate the Tibetan Buddhist vision of the thangka as divine presence, a beyond somatic manner of “seeing” Tibetan Buddhist thangka that this particular mode of engagement epitomizes. Such an understanding cannot be contained within a single discipline approach and that ritual, in its living form, is best brought to light in such a discursive manner. This external form of ritual engagement with the “Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas” reveals the practical and metaphysical equivalence between a painted image and the numinous form it denotes from a Tibetan Buddhist’s perspective. Whether or not Jetsunma Lobsang Drolma herself even practiced a Sutra Ritual such as that described in The Wish Fulilling 38 TibeT Journal Jewel, the consecrated thangka exudes this presence in the eyes of a faithful Tibetan Buddhist. It is by virtue of that fact that her mere patronage is a meritmaking act. This devotional “Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas” is, for this very reason, what Robert Thurman refers to as a one of three sprul pa’i sku (Skt. Nirmanakaya) forms. It is “The Artistic Emanation Body”66, a term that encapsulates the essence of sku rten. In this section I hope to have conveyed the liturgically-bound qualities of thangka for which Tibetan Buddhists assign them indigenous label ‘sku rten’ and the origin of the category for sacred images itself in the Sutra Vehicle. These foundations reveal the irst and most fundamental facet of all images classiied as sku rten: the equivalence in ontological, practice-related, and social terms between the deities of properly-consecrated thangka and an enlightened being in its corporeal or ultimate form. The foundations of the category also reveal how thangka act as bodily support in providing a ield of merit for Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, the accessibility of which makes the labor of creating objects of sku rten (thangka, but also statues) merit making acts themselves. Imagery as Antidote At the outset of this thesis, I called Deity Yoga the “foremost signiicant” ritualized Tibetan Buddhist practice supported by painted imagery. I did so because the thangka plays a structured role in the systematized soteriology of Tibetan Buddhism. The practice of Deity Yoga reaches far beyond proximal spiritual objectives such as merit making, as described above. Among the Gelugpa and Kagyu schools, Deity Yoga is the most essential practice differentiating the Sutra of Perfection Vehicle from the Tantra Vehicle. As Tsongkhapa urges in The Great Exposition of the Secret Mantra (the treatise I have referred to continuously, per Jeffery Hopkin’s translation): “you must gain conviction that cultivation of deity yoga is indispensible.”67 Here is why: At the time of the fruit, the base—a body adorned with the major and minor marks—and the mind of non-apprehension [of inherent existence] which depends on it abide at one time as an undifferentiable entity. In the same way at the time of the path, the method is that the yogi’s body appears to this own mind in the aspect of a Tathagata’s body, and at the same time his mind becomes the wisdom apprehending suchness—the non-inherent existence of all phenomena….This should be understood as [the meaning of] undifferentiable method and wisdom [in the Mantra Vehicle]. Through cultivating the yoga of joining these two at the same time one attains the state in which non-dualistic wisdom itself appears as Form Bodies to trainees.68 39 TibeT Journal The thangka acts as a ritual tool of the “sku rten” classiication, in this context in that it is the enlightened body itself, in its third sprul pa’i sku (Skt. Nirmanakaya) forms, “The Artistic Emanation Body”, upon which the practitioner relies most in their pursuit of uprooting the deilement of dualistic vision through Deity Yoga. In the words of Tarthang Tulku, “For most men, appearance is obscured and laden with ego-projections. In such a state, our world, our body, and our perceptions cannot provide ego-transcending objects for our meditation, and must temporarily be replaced by an “expanded vision” of the worlds, deities and qualities of awareness depicted in thanka art.”69 So it is upon the thangka that the Tibetan Buddhist relies for these “ego-transcending objects.” Moreover, it is through the “force”70 of continued familiarization with these enlightened forms that the practitioner begins to work towards truly embodying “divine pride” in the manner that enables the Highest Yoga Tantra style of Deity Yoga (that which involves generation, completion, and direct meditation on emptiness). Concomitantly, with this force, the practitioner begins to realize the hidden realities within the painting. Most Tibetan Buddhists would not refer to any part of the Medicine Buddha Sutra Ritual as lha’i rnal byor or “Deity Yoga” because it does not call for bdag mskyed or mdun bskyed (self-generation or front-generation) of the deity’s form within one’s mind. However, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher may very well encourage their students to incorporate such. Though The Wish Fulilling Jewel, is an example of an Action Tantra that does not explicitly direct the practitioner in any visualization, according Tsongkhapa (pictured at the top of this thangka) and the Dalai Lama, one may certainly apply the techniques of higher classes of Tantra to the lower ones. In the case of the Medicine Buddha Sutra Ritual, there are concise yet vivid descriptions of each Medicine Buddha contained within the “Prayers to the Individual Medicine Buddhas” along with which one visualizes the form in their mind. Many Action Tantras do provide descriptions such as that provided in a sgrub thabs text and are often embedded in the sentences of invocation. Again, it is during that time the practitioner recites those lines of invocation that he or she has the opportunity to incorporate mdun bskyed, or front-generation. Jeffery Hopkin’s translation and preface together are actually called ‘Deity Yoga in the Action and Performance Tantra’. For according to Tsongkhapa, “many texts of the Action Tantra class do not clearly explain meditation on oneself as a deity; rather, they describe a process of imagining a deity in front of oneself and receiving a feat, or capacity for a special activity, from that deity.”71 For the purpose of my thesis, however, I will use the “Thangka of Khadiravani Tara” as a vehicle to exploring this deeper form of engagement with the painted imagery. 40 TibeT Journal Exploring how a speciic “Artistic Emanation Body”, namely this thangka of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma, facilitates that process of relating to the sambhogakaya realm has the potential to yields insights to the progressively advancing Tibetan Buddhist vision of Vajrayana “art” within the path itself, as well as the role that inherent compositional qualities (the “art” itself) of the painting play in the transformative process. For the paintings themselves “are rather calculated representations of a symbolic system which has speciic reference to human psychology and Tantric Buddhist religion and philosophy.”72 Their aesthetic details, as previously stated, “correspond to psychic realities.”73 Since I have already elaborated on the liturgical rituals involving Deity Yoga in which a Tibetan Buddhist might use Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma as the yidam or tutelary deity, I will now explore how, therein, these calculated representations might operate. This is the kind of insight that art historians seek: how the aesthetic qualities of a work of art transform those who view art and how the creator consciously or unconsciously produced those visual qualities. This insight into soteriological mechanisms is also a kind of insight that religious scholars seek. Some visual components of the thangka operate as skillfull means on the utmost conventional level. Many iconographic elements, for example, relate to the historical realities of Tibetan Buddhist ritual practices during the time they were formulated. Some of the offerings you see in this Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma thangka, for example, resemble those that would be given to a houseguest in Ancient India. Since they are familiar ones to the practitioner, the visual representations of them in paintings assist in the innercontemplation of making offerings and in this way, this type of iconography relates generally to the human mind. When it comes to Jetsun Drolma, what are the psychic realities that correspond to the various symbols Tibetan Buddhists capture in their mind’s eye while practicing Deity Yoga? To answer this question, I feel that it is necessary to revert back to the ultimate identity of the being represented on the thangka. Drolma is a fully enlightened buddha who achieved liberation in female form many eons ago and vowed, upon her own liberation, to remain within the cycle of samsara in female form until all sentient beings are liberated. She is, thus, a chos sku (Skt. dharmakaya) manifestation in the long sku (Skt. Sambhogakaya) form—a goddess reborn from the Void, or noumenal reality that encompasses both nirvana and samsara, and according to legend, from the preexisting male bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara’s (Tib. Chenrezig) tear. “Long sku” refers to the luminous form of clear light the Buddhist practitioner attains upon reaching the highest dimensions of practice. All bodhisattvas 41 TibeT Journal are included in this category and all beings therein are above the category of merely human. This is considered one of the primary means through which the chos sku is made manifest. According to tradition, those skilled in meditation, as well as other highly realized Tibetan Buddhists, may gain access to the long sku and receive direct transmission of doctrine. It is upon these kinds of experiences by Tibetan Buddhists with long sku emanations that the practices and associated texts of Deity Yoga are based and the complete appearances of deities, including iconographic details, are founded. “As such the symbolism and imagery of Tantric iconography is calculated to produce a direct intuition of the Tantric vision through evoking fundamental psychological forces which accelerate the process of spiritual maturation in the aspirant (sadhaka).”74 This is why, according to Tibetan Buddhists, the deities manifest themselves in this way. Whether a Tibetan Buddhist is making offerings, a mental commitment, or manipulating energies within their body; visualizing the deity above his or her head, visualizing oneself having transformed into the deity, or visualizing the deity in the space in front of him or her, during the practice of Deity Yoga, he or she relies on these appearances. He or she attempts to exact the image on the painting within the minds eye in order to reproduce the same vision realized by a highly achieved Tibetan Buddhist practitioner—the author of the sgrub thabs who might have received direct transmission from that deity. The adept, having cultivated bodhicitta, lends the formula for realization to others. In fact, the etymology of the word thangka itself relects that transmission— it comes from the word “thang yig” which refers to a written record, and a thangka is a sort of record of the otherworldly appearance of deities recorded by those adepts who have encountered them in ultimate reality within which they “exist.” Therefore, the lineage holders, just like retinue igures, connote “[expressions of] the irradiation of truth and the spiritual link uniting those who have been initiated into the same mystery.”75 With an understanding of the ontological nature of the deity represented, access to the imagery, and knowledge of its scripturally assigned purpose, one can connect the aesthetic qualities of a deity’s appearance such as Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma to the most widely shared philosophical concept across Theravada and Mahayana Buddhist traditions— Upaya (Skt.) (Tib. thabs), or the doctrine of skillful means, is enabled by a greater doctrine of epistemology concerning the relativity of truth for which I will provide a concise interpretation: Tibetan Buddhists believe that all we perceive is necessarily framed by the “conventional truth” and by subjective qualities of the human mind. The conventional and ultimate truths are simply two distinct levels of perception or understanding, the latter more reined than the former. “Truth (sat-ya) does not describe a particular kind of knowledge, but a state 42 TibeT Journal of being….”76 Samvritisatya refers to the idea of “conventional truth.” That which is conventional is our perception of things as irst existing separately from us (subject-object dualism), or the idea of the independence of those things that one is able to see and name. Paramarthasatya refers to the “ultimate truth” or the doctrine of emptiness (Skt. sunyata, Tib. stong pa nyid). The ultimate truth is the interdependently arising nature of all phenomena including oneself. Thus Tibetan Buddhist logic essentially renders the positivist notion of absolute truth illusive. As our understanding of the world is limited to our perception, even the strongest fact is not absolute, but relative. So while Buddhist doctrine illustrates two truths, it does not attribute “existence” to either. Impermanence, interdependence, and emptiness are “truths” in that they characterize all that we perceive. They may seem “absolute” in that they are enduring qualities, but are actually contingent on the human capacity of perception and reason. Tibetan Buddhists rely on tested methods (recorded in Tibetan Buddhist scriptures) to improve the human capacity of perception and reason to begin to perceive the ultimate reality. As my discussion has implicitly indicated, Tibetan Buddhist epistemology advocates both sensory and extra-sensory perception as legitimate modes of knowledge. Tibetan Buddhist adepts who have achieved direct perception of the ultimate reality thereby have the power to produce visual upaya. Every “Artistic Emanation Body” is just that. The appearances of Tantric deities are perceived by meditative extrasensory perception and canonized to assist others along the path. In the words of Tharthang Tulku Rinpoche, “The Sambhogakaya, of which this art is one aspect, bridges the distance between many apparently contradictory statements, between different levels of awareness and forms of existence, between the ultimate and the conventional. A very unique ridge, it links but does not separate. It manifests an essential connection without thereby individuating things or asserting that there exist things whose differences stand in need of reconciliation. The Sambhogakaya is not some subtle medium in which all entities are suspended. Rather it is the entities themselves standing open and fully revealing themselves to an awareness that is aware of its and their “sunya” character.”77 Having described the primary objective of Deity Yoga, the multidimensional ontological nature of the goddess Tara, and the philosophical foundation of her appearance, I can return to the question, “In what ways are these “psychic realities” relected in the imagery at hand? Both Tarthang Tulku and Guiseppe Tucci place great emphasis on the importance of beauty, as a relection of the ultimate bliss in which enlightened beings abide in. In the words of Tucci, “The main object of these paintings is to facilitate for their beholders a revulsion 43 TibeT Journal from the plane of samsaric existence to those immaculate spheres.”78 And in the words of Tarthang Tulku, “Man has at his disposal two ambassadors who help him negotiate the subtle entrance through Tibetan art into the Sambhogakaya realm. One is beauty, and the other is a cultivated mindfulness of sunyata….Beauty is only that particular aspect of appearance that we readily accept as a manifestation of the ultimate in our world.”79 The beauty found in the overall atmosphere of the thangka (the bright colors, the harmony of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma’s form and color with her environment, her tranquil gaze, and so forth), however, cannot operate as a tool for destroying dualistic vision without the doctrine of emptiness. When we learn to “extend our awe” with the artistic renderings of the Sambhogakaya forms to all aspects of our world we begin to awaken to the reality of bliss and emptiness. Another sgrub thabs text I found prompts the practitioner after self-generation to ask him or herself directly with regard to form and color, “nang na ’dug gam, phyir ’dug gam”80—is it inside, is it outside? The meditator must examine the form you see in this thangka within their mind’s eye in this way in order to grasp the bcas med or unfabricated quality of the appearances. These “Artistic Emanation Bodies”, of course, conform to the sambhogakaya as closely as possible. Those rapturous bodhisattvas manifest, out of compassion, into forms whose marks of perfection were relayed to Thogs med (Skt. Asanga) by the future buddha Byams mgon (Skt. Maitreya) in the mngon rtogs rgyan (Skt. Abhisamayalamkara Sastra), classiied as a commentary on the shes rab phar phyin mdo (Skt. Prajñaparamita Sutras). So these particular aesthetic qualities, of course associated with “beauty”, are not only explicitly embedded in Vajrayana philosophy, but common to all of Mahayana Buddhism. Those of the thirty-two marks visible in this painting of Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma, include the bump atop her head, which is the result of continually visualizing her yidam there, long limbs which are the result of never refusing the needy, and smooth skin as the result of nourishing others. Buddhas also achieve bodies of very particular proportions, which are generally conveyed in texts like this and elaborated upon in technical treatises for the creators of sku rten. In fact, “Ancient texts on Buddhist art declare that the deities never enter forms other than those of the prescribed proportions, with their numerous designating marks. We may understand this to mean that religious depictions cannot introduce us to the Sambhogakaya action unless they are executed so as to correspond exactly to both ultimate reality and to the speciic way in which human beings much approach and grasp it.”81 Wrathful Appearance as Protection Wrathful appearances are no different from peaceful ones in this way. Nag po chen po is an enlightened being 44 TibeT Journal who, similarly, will only inhabit his intended “Artistic Emanation Body” (Robert Thurman’s term for thangka which conveys its status as one of three sprul pa’i sku or nirmanakaya forms) if his deliberate form is exacted and consecrated in the manner described by Geshe Tenzin Sherab. In the words Pema Namdol Thaye, “ if the forms and images of the Divine bodies are not in proportion and erroneously done then, a great vice has been committed and if all the measurements are accurate it is a virtue.”82 In that sense, any religious engagement like that I alluded to in the mgong khang, such as those ’phrin bcol rituals to remove obstacles, both depend on and activate the thangka’s imagery. To preserve the virtue of creating or commissioning the “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala”, however, the beholder must control who views and engages with it. Geshe Tenzin Sherab himself said that this thangka should not be displayed in a main shrine hall because many simply won’t understand it. Since the main shrine hall is a place for learning, a nag thang or black thangka of a wrathful deity such as this one might act as a hindrance. Restricted access to the mgon khang and the rituals that are performed therein conveys this danger. In this way, the imagery of the “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala” is quite different than that of the Medicine Buddha or Green Tara. When Geshe Tenzin Sherab said that details such as the proper identiication of Green Tara among the nuanced twenty-one are not important to the average Tibetan Buddhist lay practitioner, he intimated the inalienable power of that imagery. Those who do not embody the liturgically concordant vision of Tibetan Buddhist images of buddhas and bodhisattvas, are nevertheless, privy to its transformative power merely by seeing (in the somatic sense). This is not the case when it comes to a nag thang or black thangka such as this one. For these images are created for the penetrating vision of an advanced practitioner. Having demonstrated the ritual context in which Tibetan Buddhist monks engage with images of the divine and the relationship between two dimensional images and the sambhogakaya forms (by way of my elaboration on the irst two thangka), the vision of this thangka of Nag po chen po phyag bzhi pa or Four-Armed Mahakala through the eyes of an accomplished tantric practitioner can better be understood—even despite the little information I had access to about the goings-on of the mgon khang. So how can we describe a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner’s vision of this thangka of mGon po nag po chen po phyag bzhi pa? This thangka is one that embodies all three facets of sku rten when engaged with according to tantric mandates. This image is bodily support in the primary sense: it is a ield of merit that is, according to liturgy, equivalent to the body of the historical Buddha himself. The nature of engagement with this image in its natural setting, the mgon khang, is propitiatory and the image evidently acts as divine presence in that manner 45 TibeT Journal of engagement. Moreover, as evidenced by seed syllable inscriptions on the back, the thangka has been ritually imbued with the true ro (“taste”, meaning essence) of the wrathful deities. Further, the imagery on this “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala” itself is an antidote. As Four-Armed Mahakala shares the same fully enlightened status as Sengdeng Nagkyi Drolma he may also act as a tutelary deity. In that role the details of his form and surroundings—the appearances conveyed as one doctrine with the original transmission of the deity—are the transformative tools of direct ritual engagement. Their details “correspond to psychic realities” in the same way as those of the Medicine Buddha and Green Tara images. Upon his encounter with a similar image in the mgon khang or Protector Temple, Guiseppe Tucci recorded his own impression of those details: “There is no cruelty or malice in their eyes, but the fury of monsters, exploding with the violence of a storm; you expect them not to speak but to howl like the wind, not to move with a wild animal’s agility but to hurl themselves about with a hurricane’s uncontrollable vehemence.”83 Four-Armed Mahakala’s appearance is perhaps the most dynamic in that it is meant to demonstrate the aspect of enlightened activity that is forcefully purifying and capable of dominance over anything. Enlightened Protectors such as Four-Armed Mahakala differ in their methods from the Medicine Buddhas and Bodhisattva Tara, but not in their wisdom. Their terrifying appearances are interpreted by the human eye, and are therefore, adapted to the human eye. So given human Tibetan Buddhist practitioner’s conventional context, a garland of human heads is a functional symbol, which exempliies the Enlightened Protectors alternate method of obliterating human ego; he wields control over conventional deilements and then uses them as weapons for virtuous means. Various details like this demonstrate the violent destruction of ignorance, attachment, and desire with symbols that are familiar to those of the desire realm practitioners who are still plagued with these deilements. Such imagery facilitates transformation in that its inherent qualities (for those with the proper foundational training) enable the process of subverting conventionally “polluting” substances and beginning to direct those seemingly negative things towards virtuous ends along the path to enlightenment for the beneit of all. The ritual context I have provided reveals the third instrumental role of thangka as sku rten—“the temple is a projection of the universe, indeed cosmos in its essential paradigm, they also defend all men from all sorts of perils and evils.”84 As Guiseppe Tucci intimates here, the “Thangka of FourArmed Mahakala” offers protection. Both initiates and neophytes must grasp the irst two facets of the Tibetan Buddhist vision of thangka as sku rten 46 TibeT Journal (as demonstrated in the sections “Thangka as Bodily Support” and “Image as Antidote”), however, in order to grasp this one. It is these insights into the power and substance of thangka as sku rten that ground my potentially bewildering claim that thangka, for all theoretical intents and purposes, have agency. It is by virtue of its sanctioned status as sku rten (evidenced by consecrating inscriptions on the backside), its oneness with the numinous deity it depicts, and the divine nature of the visual qualities themselves that give the thangka the potential to act as protection. The fact that the “Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala” is to be kept in the mgon khang where practitioners who are not prepared to practice the most advanced Vajrayana teachings cannot see it, indicates the conventionally confounding nature of the relationship between this terrifying imagery and its pacifying purpose. Tibetan Buddhist prescriptions for wrathful images also lend evidence to my claim that one must grasp the more basic qualities of thangka as sku rten and the foundational layers of the complete Tibetan Buddhist vision (those expressed in the preceding classes of Tantra) before attempting to fully understand the instrumentality of wrathful images, whether spiritually or theoretically. mThong-grol or Liberation Through Sight: Conclusion “It is said that, even if one measurement is accurate it will give peace to all sentient beings.”85 After familiarization with the ritual context for which these three sku rten were created one can begin to understand how exactly “they produce the liberation of the beholder, if he looks on them with pure eyes and penetrating mind.”86 Thangka paintings are ritual objects and when treated as such can be understood on a deeper level than merely through an art historical “reading” of a thangka, especially by those without direct experience. “For these paintings operate like the texts of the Great Vehicle or of the Adamantine Vehicle. It is necessary, in order to read their symbols and their forms, to understand their mysterious language, it is necessary to live their meaning.”87 I ultimately arrived at this state of inquiry into thangka by virtue of my own captivation with this “mysterious language.” After doing research utilizing museum catalogues and general treatises by both Tibetan Buddhists and EuroAmerican Buddhist scholars, into the production process, artists, technical treatises, styles, iconography, and so forth, I found myself searching again and again for a piece of writing that made direct and explicit connections between these lat images, the boundless beings they represent, and the transformative soteriological power they behold. Tharthang Tulku’s Sacred Art of Tibet, an introduction to Tibetan Buddhist Art, was the only source among all that I read that raises direct ontological questions about Vajrayana deities and these “artworks” within which they dwell.88 While some authors do allude to the 47 TibeT Journal indigenous category sku rten to describe thangka, what thangka do in that role as a ritual object is completely glossed over. Some scholars provide the basic deinition of sku rten (though few actually use the Tibetan term) that is substantiated by the Sutra Vehicle (as exempliied in the section “Thangka as Bodily Support).89 Yet, the Tibetan Buddhist thangka operates within the Tantra Vehicle, which assigns much greater potential to sacred images (sku rten). That is why I advocate the pertinence of substantiating Tantric beliefs and ritualized practices that rely on sacred imagery to enhance my own (and hopefully others’) understanding of the ill-deined role of the thangka as sku rten in Euro-American Tibetan Buddhist scholarship thus far. Robert Linrothe represented most closely the style of analysis I was seeking in his article “Mirror Image: Deity and Donor as Vajrasattva” in which he uses two particular images as avenues to gaining insight into practice and belief. By contrast, in two back-to-back chapters centered on Mahakala within Demonic Divine: Himalayan Art and Beyond, Robert Linrothe and Marilyn M. Rhie (in that order) discuss the goings-on in the mgon khang and the elaborate iconography of a deity whose thangka would be found in the mgon khang. However, the two scholars make no connection between the images at the center of the discussion and the Tibetan Buddhist monks who commission those works, integrate them into their environments, and use them for transformative purposes. These connections are either taken for granted or considered unimportant. Art historical analyses of thangka paintings are almost exclusively found in museum catalogues and typically take a very straightforward approach to “reading” the works wherein symbols are equated with their “meanings.” Given that tendency, it is no surprise that many Euro-Americans understand Hindu and Buddhist artworks depicting deities are representations or embodiments of the whole of religious doctrine. Without being exposed to the role these “representations” play in the eradication of dualistic thinking, one cannot know that these are not merely reiied symbols with lat iconographic formulas intended for reverent display. Many historians positively reinforce this trend, particularly when it comes to Vajrayana art. More than one element of a painting is often said to connote the same theme in this kind of “reading” in an effort to convey a whole cosmology while actually leading readers even further from the intended Tibetan Buddhist vision. Using iconography as designation is contrary to its liturgically deined purpose. In the words of the insightful Tarthang Tulku, “Visualization does not involve a relation between things at all. We are accustomed to think in terms of a ixed picture according to which some “things exist.” The Vajrayana is not interested in adding some new things to the list of existences; rather it urges us 48 TibeT Journal to give up our preoccupation with “things” altogether…”90 Shouldn’t the way we talk about thangka paintings, then, avoid equating each “symbol” with its “meaning”? As Robert Orsi emphasizes in Between Heaven and Earth, contemporary religious studies scholars in general are all too preoccupied with assigning meanings rather than exploring the web of relationships that constitutes religion itself. After all, with insight into the functional meaning of objects classiied as ‘sku rten’ we can see that these are not mere representations. The aesthetics themselves are of divine origin and share divine status with the long sku (Skt. Sambhogakaya) forms they represent. Tibetan thangka paintings can now be found in many Euro-American museums and personal collections where they are most often treated as art objects or ethnographic artifacts. In my own research on Tibetan scroll painting I have found that Euro-American Buddhist scholars, Tibetologists, and art historians tend to restrict their exposition and analysis to the historical identities, issues of provenance, regional patterns, symbolic and narrative content, or the craft itself.91 Tibetan sources, of course, offer a great number of didactic texts that lend insight to the substances of such works, but by virtue of their assimilated audience, need not discuss the nature of their iconographic representations or the philosophical underpinnings to their status as eficacious ritual objects. Viewers who are not conditioned to apprehend the numinous essence of an art object, must draw these connections on an analytical level to access the many levels of understanding of Vajrayana art to which an initiate has access. With the inlux of extraordinary Tibetan artifacts into Euro-American museums, the increasing sensitivity to the treatment of sacred objects in profane spaces by institutions and scholars, the exploration of meditative techniques by psychologists, and the unabated expansion of Buddhist Studies in academia, a treatise on the subject that makes these connections has become all the more relevant. A Tibetan thangka is best considered in the soteriological framework from which it originated. For Tibetan Buddhists, the cultural proprietors of this sacred art, “Its existence predominates over the subjectivity of a painter or a spectator.”92 The painter is not an originator, but a “reproducer of divine reality.”93 The typical Euro-American rubric for art historical analysis, which stereotypically emphasizes the artists’ and works’ subjectivity, is therefore limiting for a study of Tibetan Buddhist depictions of the divine. Rather, the Vajrayana notion of divine reality according to its texts and prescriptions for ritual practices, which gave birth to the thangka should serve as the basis for aesthetic and theoretical analysis. Such an object is only eficacious by virtue of and within the context of faith in in Vajrayana Buddhist philosophy. Without exploring these philosophical underpinnings, we cannot even approximate the 49 TibeT Journal visual encounter of a faithful Tibetan Buddhist with the thangka nor begin to grasp the instrumental authority of such an artifact in social or spiritual terms. I have intentionally emphasized the texts associated with these schemes of imagery (inscriptions and sgrub thabs) as well as those historical sources that address their origins. As Della Santina conveniently afirms in The Tibetan Tantric Vision, “ …with Tibetan Buddhist art in general the appearances of the deities portrayed in images is determined by relevant sacred scriptures. The number of faces, arms, and legs as well as postures and adornments of various deities are all prescribed by the sadhanas…”94 The privileged position I give various Tibetan Buddhists canonical texts with regard to these visual images is by virtue of this fact and that those sadhanas (Tib. sgrub thabs), like texts, and commentaries, also act as ritual manuals for Tibetan Buddhist practitioners that call for engagement with those images. Tibetan Buddhist texts such as sgrub thabs provide more material to theorize about the sensorial religious encounter of a devotee with sacred images, but the act of spiritual engagement with a thangka by a devotee cannot literally be examined like the painting or associated texts themselves. The material expression, related religious practices, and substantiating beliefs enable this particular mode of vision, but cannot be substituted for it. The insights my inquiry has yielded with regard to the functional aspects of thangka paintings by way of employing a matrix of Tibetan categories (especially sku rten, the category by which Tibetan Buddhists differentiate thangka from sgyu rtsal or “art”) and ritual forms of engagement—that the traditional Tibetan thangka paintings take the place of the physical body of Shakyamuni, that their ontological status is essentially one in the same with the deities they appear to denote, and that those deities can exercise agency through those “Artistic Emanation” bodies—can be succinctly synthesized: Thangka paintings have metaphysical potential as sku rten. Such is prescribed by Tibetan Buddhist doctrine from the time of the Buddha Shakyamuni (per Geshe Tenzin Sherab and Pema Namdol Thaye’s references to the origins of sku rten in sutra literature) and elaborated upon in Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. Moreover, such cannot be contained within iconographic formulas and requires an interdisciplinary and somewhat discursive approach. This form of interpretation has potentially strong implications for the world of Himalayan art theory and museums’ approaches to ethical modes of display. The perfectly executed system of iconometry that is found in thangka paintings, for example—which we now know not only mirrors the perfect qualities of the deities depicted and those which the practitioner hopes to embody, but provides a dwelling place for those deities—are visible to all. Since the visual qualities of Tibetan Buddhist images of the divine are 50 TibeT Journal inextricable from their ritual eficacy (as meditation aids) an important aspect of their sacredness is made immediately accessible in exhibiting them; “the secularization of sacred Tibetan objects was part of the process that propelled them into the Western canon of art…”95 Ipso facto, rendering the exhibition of sacred Tibetan objects a compromise from the outset. So why attempt to explain the sacred qualities of a Tibetan Buddhist thangka at all? In the words of Tsongkhapa, “at this time and in this situation there is greater fault in not clearing away wrong ideas than there is in distributing translations.”96 What I hope to have provided is a comprehensive translation of the Tibetan Buddhist “thangka”, which in the words of Geshe Tenzin Sherab is not simply “art.” Notes 1. Kelsang Namgyal. “Interview with The Shechen Institute of Traditional Tibetan Art, Tsering Art School’s Principal.” Personal interview. 5 Aug. 2014. 2. David Paul Jackson and Janice A. Jackson. Tibetan Thangka Painting: Methods & Materials (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1984), 9-10. 3. Giuseppe Tucci. Tibetan Painted Scrolls. Vol. 1 (Roma: Libreria Dello Stato, 1949). 271. 4. Robert A. Orsi. Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2005), 167. 5. Tucci, 287. 6. Della Santina Krishna Ghosh. The Tibetan Tantric Vision (New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2003), 251. 7. Catherine M. Bell. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford UP, 1992), 4. 8. Ibid, 70. 9. Jonathan Landlaw and Andy Weber. Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art in Practice (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1993), 7. 10. Pratapaditya Pal and Hugh Richardson. Art of Tibet: A Catalogue of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection (Los Angeles, CA: Museum, 1983), 238. 11. Ibid, 99. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid, 10. 14. Kenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche. “Teaching on the Medicine Buddha.” (Padmasambhava Buddhist Center: Buddhist Meditation and Study Center in the Nyingma Tradition. Ed. Ed Contaldi. N.p., May 2003), 3. 15. Robert Beer. The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols (Boston: 51 TibeT Journal 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. Shambhala, 2003), 206. Tucci, 287. The Tibetan expression used here is “ro gcig” which literally translates as “one taste.” The word taste can better be understood in English as nature or essence. The Tibetan word used here is “’gro” which literally translates as “migrator” or “goer”, but refers in this context (as Tibetan Buddhists very commonly use it) to the sentient beings migrating through the realms of samsara. The attributes of the body of perfect rapture, namely, those of excellent teacher or ston pa, teaching or bstan pa, retinue or ’gor, place or gnas, and time or dus. Thubten Zopa and Ailsa Cameron. Teachings from the Medicine Buddha Retreat: Land of Medicine Buddha, October-November 2001 (Boston, MA: Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, 2009), 110. Ibid, 190. Ibid, 45. Panchen Losang Chokyi Gyaltsen. Medicine Buddha: The WishFulilling Jewel. Trans. David Molk (“Revised edition” ed. New Mexico: FPMT, 2005), 7. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, and Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffrey Hopkins. Deity Yoga: In Action and Performance Tantra (Ithaca, NY, USA: Snow Lion Publications, 1987) Ibid, 118. Ibid, 19. Geshe Tenzin Sherab. “Interview with Abbot of Deer Park Buddhist Center (Madison,WI).” Personal interview. 25 Feb. 2015. Landlaw and Weber, 83. L. A. Waddell. “The Indian Buddhist Cult of Avalokita and His Consort Tara ‘The Saviouress,’ Illustrated from the Remains in Magadha.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (1894): 64. Beyer, Stephan. The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet (Berkeley, CA: U of California, 1973), 6. Susan S. Landesman. Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (24.1: 2008), 46. [She has her own footnote which says, “10. Emphasis added. TMK, 502b-2 to503a-4, Hayagriva’s Oral Mantra”] (though likely the work of someone else later in history) The difference in appearance between the Amitabha depicted in Green Tara’s crown and the one that sits atop the palace is that it is the sambhogakaya representation rather than the nirmanakaya- the top 52 TibeT Journal 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. (ornamented igure) is Amitabha as depicted in the Performance and Yoga Tantras. Marylin M. Rhie, Robert A. F. Thurman, and John Bigelow Taylor. Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet (New York: Tibet House New York in Association with Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 130. Steven Kossak, Jane Casey. Singer, and Robert Bruce-Gardner. Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998), ___. Miranda Eberle Shaw. Buddhist Goddesses of India. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006), 328. In The Origin of the Tara Tantra, the esteemed Tibetan historian Taranatha’s makes the note that this “Nagarjuna” is the second historical Nagarjuna, not the 2nd century founder of the Madhyamaka school of Mahayana Buddhism, but the mahasiddha who lived around the early-mid sixth century 37 (though some scholars such as Benoytosh Bhattacharyya claim that he lived around the mid-seventh century).37 Ghosh, 2. bstan ’dzin chos kyi nyi ma, bsod nams rab ’phel. “seng ldeng nags kyi sgrol ma’i sgrub thabs.” khams sprul bstan ’dzin chos kyi nyi ma’i gsung skor dang zhal slob thu bo bsod nams rab ’phel gyi gsung. TBRC. W1KG12655 (Tashijong, Palampur, H.P.: sungrab nyamso gyunphel parkhang, 1978), 444. Zopa and Cameron, 45. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffrey Hopkins, 19. This exempliies the Gelugpa tendency to conlate Cittamani Tara (one of the twenty-one forms) with Green Tara, who is most often conceived in the form Khadiravani Tara. Janet Gyatso. “Image as Presence: The Place of Art in Tibetan Religious Thinking.” Catalogue of The Newark Museum Tibetan Collection (By Valrae Reynolds and Amy Heller. Vol. III. Newark: Newark Museum, 1986), 32. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, and Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffrey Hopkins, 15. Jeffrey Hopkins and Kevin Vose. Tantric Techniques (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2009), 104. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffery Hopkins, 118. Ibid, 15. Ibid, 49. (quote from Shrihdhara) 53 TibeT Journal 49. Ibid, 26. (quote from Shrihdhara) 50. Robert E. Fisher. Art of Tibet (London: Thames & Hudson, 1997), 54. [excerpt of translation by Nebesky-Wojkowitz, source unidentiied] 51. Robert N. Linrothe, Marylin M. Rhie, Jeff Watt, and Carly Busta. Demonic Divine: Himalayan Art and Beyond (New York: Rubin Museum of Art, 2004), 28. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid, 30. 54. Alexander Gardner. “Ga Lotsawa Zhonnu Pel.” The Treasury of Lives (Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Mar. 2013) 55. John C. Huntington, Dina Bangdel, and Robert A. F. Thurman. The Circle of Bliss: Buddhist Meditational Art (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2003), 302. 56. chos grags ye shes.“sgrub thabs rgya mtshor ’jug pa dngos grub rin po che’i gru chen.” gsung ’bum chos grags ye shes. TBRC W1KG4876 (pe cin: krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 249. 57. Detlef Ingo Lauf. Tibetan Sacred Art: The Heritage of Tantra (Berkeley, CA: Shambhala, 1976), 176. 58. Donald J. LaRocca “The Gonkhang, Temple of The Guardian Deities.” Warriors of the Himalayas: Rediscovering the Arms and Armor of Tibet (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006), 47. 59. René Von Nebesky-Wojkowitz. Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities. (‘S-Gravenhage: Mouten, 1956), 402. 60. Tucci, 320-323. 61. Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 398. 62. Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 400. 63. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, and Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho Dalai Lama XIV. Tantra in Tibet: The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra. (Trans. Jeffrey Hopkins. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1980), 20. 64. Pema N. Thaye. Concise Tibetan Art Book (Kalimpong: Pema Namdol Thaye, 1987), 23. 65. Each level of Tantra contains the means for liberation, the level of practice depends on the attributes of the practitioner. Seeking liberation through the Sutra Vehichle supposedly takes 60 million lifetimes. 66. Rhie, Thurman, and Taylor, 35. 67. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, and Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho Dalai Lama XIV, 137. 68. Ibid, 126. 69. Tulku, Tarthang. Sacred Art of Tibet (Berkeley, CA: Dharma Pub., 1974), 54 TibeT Journal 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. “Introduction to Tibetan Sacred Art.” [pages are not numbered] Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, and Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffrey Hopkins, 10 and 226. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffrey Hopkins, 10. Ghosh, 111. John Blofeld. “Kuan Yin and Tara: Embodiments of Wisdom-Compassion Void.” The Tibet Journal, Autumn IV.3 (1979): 33. Ghosh, 105. Tucci, 287. Edward Conze. “Spurious Parallels to Buddhist Philosophy.” Philosophy East and West 13.2 (1963): 108. Tulku, “Introduction to Tibetan Sacred Art.” (book’s pages not numbered). Tucci, 287-88. Tulku, “Introduction to Tibetan Sacred Art.” bzhad pa’i rdo rje. “seng ldeng ngag sgrol gyi sgrub thabs.” gsung ’bum bzhad pa’i rdo rje. TBRC W22130 (leh: t. sonam & d.l. tashigang, 19831985), 318. Tulku, “Introduction.” Pema Namdol Thaye, 23. Tucci, 320-323 Tucci, 320-323. Thaye, 23. Tucci, 287. Ibid, 288. Tulku, “Introduction to Tibetan Sacred Art.” i.e.: David and Janice Jackson. Tibetan Thangka Painting: Methods and Materials, 6; Janet Gyatso. “Image as Presence: The Place of Art in Tibetan Religious Thinking”; Jonathan Landlaw and Andy Weber. “Introduction.” Images of Enlightenment: Tibetan Art in Practice; Della Santina Krishna Ghosh. “Tibetan Buddhist Art and Iconography.” The Tibetan Tantric Vision. Tulku, “Introduction to Tibetan Sacred Art.” i.e.; Steven Kossak, Jane Casey. Singer, and Robert Bruce-Gardner. Sacred Visions: Early Paintings from Central Tibet; Robert N. Linrothe, Marylin M. Rhie, Jeff Watt, and Carly Busta. Demonic Divine: Himalayan Art and Beyond; Marylin M. Rhie, Robert A. F. Thurman, and John Bigelow Taylor. Wisdom and Compassion: The Sacred Art of Tibet; Pratapaditya Pal and Hugh Richardson. Art of Tibet: A Catalogue of the 55 TibeT Journal 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. Los Angeles County Museum of Art Collection; Joanna Tokarska-Bakir. “Naive Sensualism, Docta Ignorantia. Tibetan Liberation through the Senses.” Numen 47.1 (2000): 108. Ibid. Ghosh, 83. Clare E. Harris “The Tibet Museum in the West.” The Museum on the Roof of the World: Art, Politics, and the Representation of Tibet (Chicago, IL: U of Chicago, 2012), 25. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tsong-kha-pa, and Bstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho Dalai Lama XIV, 17. 56 TibeT Journal Plate I Chinn, Paul. Thepo Tulku Prays in Front of a Buddhist Shrine. N.d. SF Gate. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Olympictorch-symbol-ofoppression-to-Tibetans-3218963.php>. Plate II Photos taken (by me) at Sechen Monastery’s Tsering Art School, Kathmandu. 57 TibeT Journal Plate III Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas. 18th Century. Thangka painting. Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI. 65.5.30. Plate IV (back side) Thangka of the Eight Medicine Buddhas. 18th Century. Thangka painting. Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI. 65.5.30. 58 TibeT Journal Plate V Thangka of Khadiravani Tara. 19th Century. Thangka painting. Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI. 64.12.5 Plate VI Thangka of Khadiravani Tara. 19th Century. Thangka painting. Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI. 64.12.5 Mahakala-Face.jpg 59 TibeT Journal Plate VII Thangka of Four-Armed Mahakala. 18thth- early 19th Century. Thang-ka painting. Chazen Museum of Art, Madison, WI. 65.5.29. Bibliography Beer, Robert. The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols. Boston: Shambhala, 2003. Print. 60 TibeT Journal Bell, Catherine M. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford UP, 1992. Print. Beyer, Stephan. The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet. Berkeley, CA: U of California, 1973. Print. Blo-bzang-grags-pa, Tson-kha-pa, and Gstan-’dzin-rgya-mtsho, and Jeffrey Hopkins. 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