Mandala of Mahakala Panjaranatha (Primary Title)
Tsherin Sherpa, born 1968 (Artist)
This scroll painting (thangka) is one of two in the exhibition made by Sherpa before he departed from the traditional artistic practice of his early training. Like many thangkas he produced at the time, it was made for a Buddhist adherent in his adopted home of Northern California. It depicts the mandala of the wrathful Tibetan Buddhist deity Mahakala, who appears at its center. A mandala—which is used as a visual support for meditation—is both a cosmological map of the universe and a diagram of the particular teachings of its central deity. It is also a schematic bird’s-eye view of that deity’s celestial palace. Its structure—square in plan, with gateways in the four directions, sited on a cosmic lotus surrounded by a circle of multicolored flames—is elucidated by comparison with the painting by Sherpa’s father to the right.
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