Parinirvana of The Buddha (Large Thangka)

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It is very difficult to identify all the monks by name, those who are wearing crown are Arahats and Siddhas and remaining includes the senior and newly converted monks. Here grieved monks, Arahats, animals and birds are assembled to have a last glimpse of Gautama Buddha. All painted figures including the animals have Chinese features

According to early Buddhist tradition nirvana is a state of total negation of desire, which is achieved, in this very life after total negation of desire with other polluting factors, while parinirvan is the state of merger of individual mundane consciousness into the supramundane universal consciousness and experiencing the eternal bliss after the expiry of life-process.

The Buddha Shakyamuni was born in human realm around 563 B.C. in Lumbini grove, Nepalese Tarai. His personal name was Siddhartha, but he was better known by his gotra name Gautama. He was also called Shakyasimha,’ the Lion of Shakyas’ and Sakyamuni’, ‘the Sakyan sage’. His father, Shuddhodana, was the ruler of the Shakyas, a small republic with its capital at Kapilavastu, in southern Nepal. Gautama had little interest in worldly life from his childhood. However he married Yasodhara and had a son Rahul. After encountering suffering in the form of an old man, a sick man, and a corpse and thereafter a mendicant who renounced the world with all its luxuries and was looking for truth and peace. Gautama decided to leave the worldly life and he secretly left his royal palace and finally went to the forest, sat under a tree and meditated as a hermit for six years. He had five mendicant companions in the forest. He seeks one teacher after another, but as his thirst for truth, remained unquenched he moved on and ultimately reached near modern Bodhgaya. He practiced rigid austerities and resorted to different kinds of self-torture. For six years he lived in this manner and reduced to a skeleton. Yet real knowledge eluded him. At the end of six years he realized that physical torture was not the way to achieve enlightenment and decided to partake of food again. Sujata, a local village lady, offered him a bowl of milk rice. Siddhartha then sat in meditation and resolved thus, “skin sinew and bone may dry up as it will; my flesh and blood may dry in my body; but without attaining complete enlightenment shall I not leave this seat.” Mara tried to prevent Siddhartha from coming to the ultimate understanding, but in vain. After Mara-vijaya event Siddhartha attained enlightenment. He discovered the Law of Causation, a cycle of twelve causes and effects conditioning the universe. This Law had not been thought of before by any philosopher. It’s authorship raised Siddhartha from His status of Bodhisattva to that of a Buddha. The Buddha then decided to deliver his teachings to the five ascetic companions whom he finds in the deer park of Sarnath. It is the first sermon or Turning the Wheel of Dharma.

Then the Shakyamunu Buddha was on constant move for forty-five years to preach his teachings. He had many followers, irrespective of birth or caste, and established monasteries and centers for the Sangha. When Master was at Pava, Chunda, a blacksmith of town, invited him to a meal thereafter he moved to Kushinagar along with his disciples. Although Shakyamuni had a perfect form of a Tathagata who had thoroughly defeated Mara and gone beyond the birth and death, at the age of eighty, the Buddha decided to manifest the passing away of his physical body into parinirvana in order to stir the majority of his followers, who still clung to the illusions of permanence and the inherent existence of phenomena, out of their complacency. He handed over responsibility for protecting the teachings and four communities of disciples to Mahakashypa, and guided his last disciples, the Gandharva Pramoda and the mendicant Subhadra, to liberation. He travelled towards Kushinagar, and came to rest in a grove of sala trees outside the city where he announced his impending departure from the world. He thereafter gently consoled Ananda, who was lamenting bitterly. “Do not weep, do not despair, Ananda. How could it be that what is born, what is subject to instability, should not pass? May be, you were thinking, ‘we have no longer a master.’ That must not be, O Ananda. The doctrine I have preached to you is your master.” He replied : “handa dani bhikkhave amantayami vo;

vayadhamma sankhara, appamadena sampadetta’ ti (“Verily, I say unto you now, O monks: All things are perishable; work out your deliverance with earnest.”). ‘Be a lamp for yourself, be a refugee for yourself, seek no refuge outside yourself.’ These were the last words of Shakyamuni.

The Buddha then asked Ananda, his personal attendant, to spread a cloth on ground (here he is lying on a couch) between two sala trees. He lay down like a lion and passed into Parinirvana.

This description is by Dr. Shailendra K. Verma, whose Doctorate thesis is on “Emergence and Evolution of the Buddha Image (From its inception to 8th century A.D.)”.

Click Here to View the Thangka Painting along with its Brocade

Unveiling the Divine Art: Journey into the Making of Thangkas

A Thangka is a traditional Tibetan Buddhist painting that usually depicts a Buddhist Deity (Buddha or Bodhisattva), a scene, or a mandala. These paintings are considered important paraphernalia in Buddhist rituals. They are used to teach the life of the Buddha, various lamas, and Bodhisattvas to the monastic students, and are also useful in visualizing the deity while meditating. One of the most important subjects of thangkas is the Bhavacakra (the wheel of life) which depicts the Art of Enlightenment. It is believed that Thangka paintings were developed over the centuries from the murals, of which only a few can be seen in the Ajanta caves in India and the Mogao caves in Gansu Province, Tibet. Thangkas are painted on cotton or silk applique and are usually small in size. The artist of these paintings is highly trained and has a proper understanding of Buddhist philosophy, knowledge, and background to create a realistic and bona fide painting.

The process of making a thangka begins with stitching a loosely woven cotton fabric onto a wooden frame. Traditionally, the canvas was prepared by coating it with gesso, chalk, and base pigment.

After this, the outline of the form of the deity is sketched with a pencil or charcoal onto the canvas using iconographic grids. The drawing process is followed in accordance with strict guidelines laid out in Buddhist scriptures. The systematic grid helps the artist to make a geometrical and professional painting. When the drawing of the figures is finalized and adjusted, it is then outlined with black ink.

Earlier, a special paint of different colors was made by mixing powdered forms of organic (vegetable) and mineral pigments in a water-soluble adhesive. Nowadays, artists use acrylic paints instead. The colors are now applied to the sketch using the wet and dry brush techniques. One of the characteristic features of a thangka is the use of vibrant colors such as red, blue, black, green, yellow, etc.

In the final step, pure gold is coated over some parts of the thangka to increase its beauty. Due to this beautification, thangkas are much more expensive and also stand out from other ordinary paintings.

Thangka paintings are generally kept unrolled when not on display on the wall. They also come with a frame, a silken cover in front, and a textile backing to protect the painting from getting damaged. Because Thangkas are delicate in nature, they are recommended to be kept in places with no excess moisture and where there is not much exposure to sunlight. This makes them last a long time without their colors fading away. Painting a thangka is an elaborate and complex process and requires excellent skills. A skilled artist can take up to 6 months to complete a detailed thangka painting. In earlier times, thangka painters were lamas that spent many years on Buddhist studies before they painted.