Padmasambhav, Guru Rimpoche is a figure, an enlightened being, that I have had the great good fortune to be connected too for nearly 30 years. Traditionally he has 8 main forms, the form that I have painted him in is his Guru, teacher form. And for me, it’s been an important part of my creative practice to have a human dimension to his appearance.
Ultimately the dharma says that all forms arise out of sunyata or all forms arise coemergent with sunyata.
All forms are the magical display of awakened energy, empty of inherent existence and originally because of this understanding there were no visual representations of the Buddha. What we normally see today are more symbolic pictures of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and indeed how can you depict awakened beings? I struggled to paint any Buddhas for a number of years after becoming a Buddhist, knowing it was impossible to some degree. Now I try to connect with how the energy of a being such as Padmasambhava feels to me, through meditation and chanting mantras through out the painting process and when I’m not working on the actual image. This means there can be many months of practice including the painting, which I hope then also conveys some this energy of Padmasambhava. The more human aspects to his figure or surroundings are also my way of connecting his being to ours. As the deep meaning of sunyata means we are not two. We have the capacity to connect to the enlightened beings through our own awakened heart mind.
