Rev. Danny Fisher

Yesterday I went to an exhibition at the New Haven Lawn Club entitled “Sacred Art of Tibet.” It was a show of thangka paintings by Lama Tsondru Sangpo (the gentleman pictured to the right). Lama Tsondru-la is the founder of the Tibetan Thangka Painting School at Gonjang Monastery in Rangbull, India. He is also the lama at the Thupten Ling Dharma Center in New Haven.

The show was absolutely extraordinary. The level of precision and detail in Lama Tsondru-la’s paintings was truly incredible. I’ve seen a lot of thangka paintings, but rarely ones as beautiful as these. (I really regret not bringing my camera. I had wrongly presumed that photography would be discouraged.)

I attended the show with Ravenna Michalsen, whom I am profiling for an upcoming issue of Tricycle. When Ravenna complimented Lama Tsondru-la’s visual acuity, he remarked that he was only able to work for about fifteen minutes at a time before his eyes would water and strain. Then he would rest, he said, and start again.

Lama Tsondru-la was quite a presence–very joyful and warmhearted. (He was delighted when Ravenna and I greeted him in Tibetan, and he treated us like old friends even though we were just meeting him for the first time.) As we left, he reminded us to “always be kind” and to work hard to “change the mind” or else there was little point to our study of Buddhism.

Below is an image of one of Lama Tsondru-la’s thangkas. It depicts Hayagriva, a wrathful emanation of Avalokiteśvara (the Bodhisattva of Compassion). According to Chaya Chandrasekhar (who draws from the work of Robert Thurman and Marylin Rhie), Avalokiteśvara transforms into Hayagriva in order to compel sentient beings to “overcome internal obstacles and subdue outer hindrances.”