Black Coat in union with Radiant Goddess
This 19th Century thangka from Eastern Tibet is in the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art. Today’s update to the Himalayan Art Resource website states:
Archive for the ‘Buddhist Iconography’ Category
Radiant Goddess and Black Coat
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011Karma Kagyu Meditation Forms
Saturday, July 23rd, 2011The pictures below show some of the most common forms used in the meditation practices of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Buddhism. They are from the website www.thanka.buddhizmusma.hu.
Click on any of the thumbnails to enlarge the image.
Top row, left to right: 16th Karmapa, 2nd Karmapa, Black Coat in union with Radiant Goddess. Middle row left to right: Black Coat, the Karma Kagyu Refuge Tree, Diamond Mind. Bottom row left to right: Loving Eyes, Red Wisdom, Buddha of Highest Bliss in union with Red Wisdom.
Painting of the 10th Shamarpa Mipham Chodrup Gyamtso
Sunday, June 19th, 2011
10th Shamarpa Mipham Chodrup Gyamtso
This beautiful thangka painting of the 10th Shamarpa Mipham Chodrup Gyamtso (1742-1792), in the Karma Gardri style of Eastern Tibet, was painted in the middle of the 18th Century, and is currently on display at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Painting of Gyalwa Gyamtso “Almighty Ocean”
Thursday, May 12th, 2011
Gyalwa Gyamtso
This exceptional 19th Century thangka, from the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, was painted in Eastern Tibet according to the Karma Gardri tradition. It depicts the single form of “Almighty Ocean”, in Tibetan “Gyalwa Gyamtso” or in Sanskrit “Jinasagara”. Almighty Ocean is a red form of Loving Eyes (Tib. Chenresig, Skt. Avalokiteshvara), the buddha of compassion.
10th Karmapa Choying Dorje – painting by Pema Rinzin
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011
10th Karmapa by Pema Rinzin
This impressive thangka painting of the 10th Karmapa, Choying Dorje was recently uploaded to the New York Tibetan Art Studio blog. It was painted by world-renowned master Tibetan thangka painter and contemporary artist Pema Rinzin. Rinzin’s depth of knowledge and personal mastery of Himalayan art – with its rarely practiced preparation and application of traditional stone ground pigments – is widely recognized by institutions and individual scholars as rare and exceptional.
Happy Year of the Iron Hare!
Friday, March 4th, 2011
Mahakala statue in Rumtek Monastery (photo: Peter Mannox)
Tomorrow, 5 March 2011, marks “Losar” – Tibetan New Year 2138. We wish a happy and auspicious Year of the Female Iron Hare to all our readers.
According to Karma Kagyu tradition, on the last day of the Tibetan year, a day-long practice of Black Coat (Tib. Mahakala Bernagchen) is performed to clear away obstacles and negativity of the old year to foster positive circumstances and progress in Dharma practice in the year ahead. The picture above shows statues of the Karma Kagyu protectors – Black Coat is the central form, flanked by Radiant Goddess (Tib. Palden Lhamo) on the left and Good Diamond (Tib. Dorje Legpa) on the right.
Karma Kagyu Great Seal Lineage in Three Paintings
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
This set of three stunning 19th Century Tibetan thangka paintings (click on each to enlarge) was just posted to the Himalayan Art Resource website. The three composition painting set depicts the Karma Kagyu Great Seal (Skt. Mahamudra) Lineage ending with the 14th Gyalwa Karmapa, Thegchog Dorje (1798-1868).
Painting of the 6th Shamarpa, Mipam Chokyi Wangchuk
Saturday, February 5th, 2011
6th Shamarpa Mipham Chokyi Wangchuk
The Himalayan Art Resource website recently posted a picture of this marvellous 18th century thangka painting (click to enlarge) of Mipam Chokyi Wangchuk, The 6th Shamarpa (1584-1629). The 6th Shamarpa is an exceptionally important figure in the Karma Kagyu school, holding the lineage between the 9th and 10th Karmapas. His debating skills were so extraordinary that he was known as the “Pandita of the North, the Omniscient Shamarpa in whom Manjushri delights”. Famed for his deep insight, he had memorised fifty volumes of sutras and tantras by the age of seventeen, and was later to write ten texts explaining both the sutra and tantra traditions. He was the teacher of Desi Tsangpa, who ruled central Tibet, and it was while he was travelling in east Tibet – successfully playing the mediator in a regional disturbance – that he recognised and became the teacher of the 10th Karmapa, Choying Dorje. Subsequent travels took him to Nepal, where he taught Buddhism in the original Sanskrit to the king, Laxman Naran Singh, and to other devotees, and where he eventually died in the Helambu mountains, near a cave in which Milarepa, Tibet’s great yogi, had once meditated.
