“In their treatment of other living beings, whether the beings are fierce animals like leopards and tigers or insignificant bugs like mosquitoes and flies, [Buddhists]
A year has now passed since the first of two devastating earthquakes struck Nepal, killing thousands of people, displacing a great many others, and damaging
Art for art’s sake has never been an overriding motivation in Tibetan culture or Tibetan Buddhism. For example, we can understand thangka painting, the sacred art of
The themes of the Silk Road, spirituality, and the environment rarely come together in contemporary art, so I feel fortunate to have recently met an
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has become renowned internationally for his colorful, smiling flowers, his anime-inspired paintings and sculptures that range in style from erotic to
Thangka paintings are Tibet’s most plentiful and portable form of sacred art. Less known and rarely seen are the highly prized appliqué thangkas. In fact, when I
The University of Pennsylvania and the National Library of Laos have jointly launched the Digital Library of Northern Thai Manuscripts (DLNTM), an ambitious project to
It is a choice to remember life in beautiful ways. Dance is an art made of life itself. The human body as medium contains within
The Medicine Buddha is a healing Buddha from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Many cultures have healing deities or rituals, and the Medicine Buddha is a
Who is dragging this corpse around? This huatou, similar to a koan, was popularized by Hsu Yun, a famous Chan Buddhist master of the late 19th/early
From 2006 to 2010, Vietnamese American artist Trang T. Lê undertook a monumental artistic and spiritual endeavor. On a series of seven horizontal canvases measuring
Visually, there are two forms of language: one that has to be learned and one that communicates directly with the other-than-conscious part of our mind.
