Tibetan Art of the Afterlife Ramon N. Prats
On the high [Tibetan] tableland a person can be seen from a great distance, like a meaningless black dot on the background of barren, lifeless rocks. Huge, overbearing cliffs crowd the landscape in the boundless waste, with the crashing majesty of nature. Man does not count: he is a tiny being moving along and disappearing without trace. 1
Few know of the tragic beauty of those paths and the inspired prayer of the earth, the dangerous course and the heavenly storms. They are so closely entwined that man walks through them as if in a dream, caught between the admiration of a prodigy and the prospect of death.2 Fig. 1
terton karma lingpa
These lines written by Giuseppe Tucci, the Italian
From a set of ritual cards Tibet; 17th century Natural pigments on paper; 4 x 3 in. Rubin Museum Of Art C2004.1 (Har 289)
Tibetologist who made eight scientific expedi-
Portraits of Karma Lingpa are rare. In this small image he is seen wearing the garments of a Tibetan layman, swathed in the folds of his cape and cloak. On his head is seen the ritual hat of Padmasambhava, known as the Lotus Hat. From his sash emerges the hilt of a tantric dagger, a ritual object characteristic of treasure revealers, and he cradles another important Buddhist symbol, the Vase of Life, in his left hand. The inscription below the painting reads “Salute to Treasure Revealer Karma Lingpa.” The card is marked with the number seven of the series.
tions to Tibet between 1929 and 1948 , point at one of the primordial characteristics of Tibetan civilization: the awesome majesty of its natural habitat and the rigorous living conditions it imposes on its creatures. Those vast, high, and silent spaces, which appear as a projection of the eternal and the infinite, must have been one of the determining factors that induced in the Tibetan soul an intimate conviction of the fragility and impermanence of life. “What comes earlier, tomorrow or death?” asks a popular Tibetan saying. This menacing presence of death moved the Tibetans to investigate its mystery more than other peoples seem to have done. The Bardo Thodrol, known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, is the result of those insights and reflections.