Vajrasattva and Consort :
Vajrasattva (Tib. Dorje Sempa), the �Indestructible or Vajra Being�, is an important bodhisattva and yidam deity whose meditation practice is employed in all schools of Tibetan Buddhism to purify the karmic defilements of body, speech and mind. His sadhana or visualization practice is particularly effective in overcoming the defilements of aversion and aggression; and a hundred thousand recitations of his hundred-syllable mantra are traditionally performed as one of the four �preliminary practices� (Tib. Ngondro) of Vajrayana Buddhism.
Vajrasattva is also recognized as the �Lord of the Sixth Buddha-Family�, the jnana or Wisdom-Family, who occupies the zenith, and as such he is closely identified with Vajradhara as the Adi-Buddha or the source of all mandalas. In the Tibetan Nyingma or �ancient tradition� he appears at the centre of the mandala of the forty-two peaceful deities, as described in the Guhyagarba Tantra. Vajrasattva is also recognized as the lineage-holder who first transmitted the Dzogchen or Atiyoga teachings into the human realm, and here he often appears in a trinity consisting of: Samantabhadra (dharmakaya), Vajrasattva (sambhogakaya), and Prahevajra or Garab Dorje (nirmanakaya).
Vajrasattva is represented here in sexual �father and mother� (yab-yum) union with his white consort Vajragarvi (Tib. Dorje Nyema), the �Lady of vajra-pride�, who sits upon Vajrasattva�s lap with her legs wrapped around his waist as she presses every part of her body against his. She is adorned with the five silk and eight jeweled sambhogakaya ornaments of a goddess, and her long black hair flows freely down her back. With her two arms she embraces her lord, whilst holding a vajra-handled curved knife and a skull-cup of nectar behind his neck with her right and left hands.
Vajrasattva is peaceful, youthful, and radiantly white in complexion like an autumn moon, with a sweetly smiling face, two eyes and two arms. He is endowed with the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks of an enlightened being, and he sits in vajra-posture upon a white moon disc and a multicoloured lotus. He is adorned with the five divine silk garments and eight jeweled ornaments of a sambhogakaya deity, and his black hair is bound up into two topknots, with loose strands hanging freely about his shoulders. With his right hand he holds a five-pointed golden vajra in front of his heart, and with his left hand resting upon his thigh he holds an upturned silver bell.
A ring of rainbow light encircles his radiant blue inner aura and golden outer aura, with lotus flowers, leaves and rainbows appearing behind. Seated above his halo and the entwined clouds and rainbows of the upper sky are the blue Primordial Buddha Samantabhadra (Tib. Kuntuzangpo), meaning the �all-auspicious�, and his white consort, Samantabhadri (Kuntuzangmo). Their naked and unadorned dharmakaya aspects represent the union of pure appearance and emptiness, as they sit together in sexual union upon a moon disc and lotus. In front of Vajrasattva�s lotus-seat are jewel offerings, the five objects that delight the senses (mirror, lute, fruit, perfume and silk), and the seven insignia of the �universal monarch� or chakravartin. Deer, fish and ducks appear amidst the water, rocks, flowers and foliage that adorn the beautiful lower landscape.
� text by Robert Beer
Robert Beer
I was born in 1947 and spent my formative years in Cardiff, South Wales. At the age of fourteen I received a vivid �after death communication� (ADC) from the spirit of my recently departed sister, an experience of such profound beauty which left me with an innate conviction that the soul is immortal, pure and incorruptible. This event marked the beginning of my spiritual search or journey. For I knew then what real love and bereavement meant, but not why they are visited upon us, and the world of my childhood was never the same again.
Shortly after this my family broke up and by the age of seventeen I was living on the road and encountering the first wave of the counter-culture of the early sixties. From an early age I had developed a keen interest in drawing, but was refused entry to art college because I was colourblind. It was at this point that I met John Miles (1944-97), a colourful character in every sense of the word, who was to become my main artistic mentor and lifelong friend, and whom I consider to be one of the finest visionary painters of our time. Over the course of the next five years I became deeply involved in the gnostic traditions of the East, the symbolism of which profoundly inspired my artistic and creative skills. But in late 1968 I entered a psychedelically induced psychosis or �kundalini-crisis� that was to last for many years and again change the course of my life. It was in this extremely volatile state of mental and perceptual distortion that I left for India and Nepal in 1970, where I was to live for the next six years.
In India I studied thangka painting with several of the finest Tibetan artists living at that time: including Jampa from Lhasa, the �state artist of Tibet�, who lived in Dharmasala; and Khamtrul Rinpoche, a great lama and artist who established the Tibetan Craft Community at Tashijong. In Kathmandu I first became fascinated with the art and architecture of the Newar tradition, and was particularly inspired by the visionary style and painting techniques of the famous Newar artist, Siddhimuni Shakya (1932-2001). During these years I also deeply immersed myself in all aspects of Indian spirituality and culture, studying classical music (sarod) in Varanasi, and learning much from the countless sadhus, gurus, scholars, beggars and magicians that it was my destiny to meet.
In 1976 I returned to the UK and began to eke out a living in London as an artist and illustrator, creating oriental fabric designs, the first silk-screened thangkas, and my first cover illustrations and line drawings for books. At this time there was very little understanding, appreciation or demand for Buddhist deity images, and what little there was tended to be charitable work for newly established dharma centers. But I persisted, continuing to draw and study with a devotion that bordered on obsession, until an understanding began to develop through the direct intuition of the imagery that I was working upon. The essence of the Vajrayana tradition is encapsulated within its deity symbolism, and the deeper that one penetrates into this visionary realm the more expansive is the panorama that is revealed. I have never ceased to be amazed by the incredible sophistication of the �Mind�, which conceived of this vast pantheon of visualized deities with their highly esoteric meditational practices. And although I would describe myself as being self-taught and living by a dharma that has no credentials, intuition has always been my greatest teacher. For ultimately the dharma exists nowhere except within our own mind, and it is mainly through direct revelation that I have really been able to comprehend and process it.
I spent twenty-five years at the drawing board, often working around the clock, and the many drawings and paintings that I made during this time have appeared in hundreds of books, and now adorn countless websites and spiritual artifacts, from Tibetan prayer flags, jewelry and offering scarves, to incense packets, t-shirts and computer mats. The most ambitious projects that I have so far undertaken are a series of lineage holder drawings, which are still unpublished; and The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs, with its more concise offspring, The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols. Shambhala Publications and Serindia Publications respectively published these two books in 1999 and 2003.
Much of my finest work was done in the remoteness of the Scottish highlands, where I lived with my wife and our two daughters for ten years. In 1988 I went back to Nepal for the first time in over twenty years, and was surprised to see how much my published paintings and drawings had influenced the modern Tibetan and Newar art world there. In 1997 I went back to Kathmandu again and with the assistance of my dear friend Phunsok Tsering (1957-2008), reconnected with Siddhimuni Shakya and began to research the Newar paubha painting tradition of the Kathmandu Valley, with its unique pantheon of Hindu and Buddhist deities. Since then I have spent one month of each year in the Valley, gaining the trust, allegiance and respect of these artists as their main patron and mentor, and assembling the largest and most exquisite collection of their work. Some of these paintings I have exhibited at the October Gallery in London, the Oriental Museums of Bath and Durham, Tibet House in New York, and the Mahadevi Gallery in California.
I now live in Oxford with my partner Gill Farrer-Halls, where I continue to work on my long-term project of writing upon the iconography and symbolism of the deities of both the Indo-Tibetan and Newar traditions. Yet even though I have been involved in this seemingly obscure and academic research for the past forty years, I have always tended to view it as a vehicle for my own self-realization, a by-product of the same spiritual process of introspection and analysis that began for me at the age of fourteen. It defines what I do, but not who I am.
Throughout my life I have had many different mystical and spiritual experiences, some prolonged and blissful, others spontaneous and image shattering. They are part of the imaginative and spiritual landscape that I have chosen to explore and inhabit, with its vast population of peaceful and wrathful deities. All of these experiences are transitory, they come and go, they have a beginning, middle and end, and they no longer serve to condition my understanding.
In 2006 my eldest daughter, Carrina, died in a diving accident at the age of 23, and from this tragedy I realized that although the Tibetan tradition is rich in its theoretical teachings on death and dying, it is actually quite impoverished when it comes to dealing with an intense grief of this nature. For the death of a child can often take one far beyond any belief system or doctrine, and it certainly has in my case.
So for the past four years I have been researching the �afterlife� outside of the conceptual doctrines of any religious system, and guided purely by my own intuition I have come to understand all things �spiritual� in an entirely different light. And this understanding is not based upon any doctrine or dogma, but on my own direct insight and experiences of the �spirit world�, which I now realize is the source of the supreme intelligence, compassion, awareness and energy that permeates our multidimensional universe. And in the benevolent light of our timeless and formless existence as pure �spiritual beings� the biography of anyone�s life upon this planet is ultimately as insubstantial as a dream. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, and I am only now just beginning to awaken.
Robert Beer.
Oxford, England. Spring 2010.
