Celestial gallery

72 Pages·2000·27.7 MB·English

by  Shrestha, Romio

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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2020
https://archive.org/details/celestialgalleryOOOOshre
WeE LCOME, MY FRIENDS,
TO THE CELESTIAL ("JALLERY —
A REALM THAT EXISTS WITHIN EACH OF US . .
— I^OMK) 5HRESTHA

J^OMIO gHRESTHA
A. BAKER
YEXT BY JAN
CALLAWAl
[\('W Oi k • 2000
J)EEPAK
CHOPpA
popjEWORD
Great art is a doorway to the Divine. The paintings in this celestial
gallery draw from the ancient wisdom of Buddhist and Hindu traditions
which, for centuries, have expressed some of humankind’s deepest spiritual
insights. At the same time, these sumptuous images totally transcend their
place of origin. As archetypal expressions of liberated vision, the paintings
ultimately mirror our innermost potential: the possibility of total spiritual
freedom, or enlightenment.
Romio Shrestha comes from a long line of Himalayan visionaries who
see art as the revelation of transpersonal truths, not of the individual ego.
Romio’s Celestial Gallery invites the viewer into a world where dormant
spiritual qualities are fully manifest. As we gaze upon these extraordinary
paintings, we are transported into the innermost reaches of the psyche—a
place in which anything is possible. This visionary realm of peaceful and
wrathful deities is known to Buddhists as Sambhogakaya, the “body of
perfect enjoyment.” Contemplating these divine and diabolical forms
prepares us for a richer life, as well as for the period after death when
the states of consciousness these deities represent manifest spontaneously
in an intermediary realm, which Tibetans call the Bardo. It is in this
visionary dimension that the soul transits before talcing a quantum leap into
a new creative expression, in another body, in another time and place.
The paintings in Celestial Gallery depict Buddhist deities and bodhisattvas.
These are not gods remote from our experience, but reflections of different
states of awareness. The Buddhas, Taras, and other peaceful divinities
represent sublime states of consciousness, while the wrathful or diabolical
forms represent our inner tendencies for resentment, jealousy, greed,
and guilt. When we are not in touch with our own “shadow” energies, they
express themselves pathologically. But when we consciously address these
powerful forces, we become more accepting of ourselves and others and
can turn these energies into creative expression. Similarly, the ecstatic
deities, shown in sexual union, represent the transmutation of passion
into a force of spiritual awakening, the harmonious reintegration of the
male and female energies which shape the entire universe. Ultimately,
the spiritual journey leads to the blissful exultation of the spirit, and to the
original ecstasy embodied in these symbolic forms.
Many of the paintings in Celestial Gallery are mandalas—visual
representations of mantras, or sacred sounds. According to ancient Vedic
literature, the whole universe is an expression of pure consciousness,
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which vibrates first as sound and then, ultimately, as form. This view of
reality is consistent with what we are learning from physics: even subatomic
particles and the structure of space-time, gravity, and electromagnetic
forces are nothing but the vibration of superstrings, unidimensional vibra¬
tions of nothingness. These vibrations are what Buddhists call shunyata,
the multidimensional vibrations of the void. Mandalas are visual expressions
of vibratory patterns that structure the material world. When you meditate
on a mandala, you journey inward from the material world into the quantum
domain and, finally, into the virtual world of pure potentiality. By identifying
with the intricately rendered worlds within a mandala and the primal
source at its center, we can enlarge our experience of the universe in which
we dwell.
In the meditation practices of Tantric Buddhism, practitioners invoke man¬
dalas within their own consciousness, the painted forms serving as supports
for an inner process of mental and spiritual transformation. I have often
used such mandalas in my own meditations, in which I encounter the
realm of divine beings and summon these energies into my daily life. The
mandalas and the visionary realms that they invoke are invitations into a
world bounded only by the limits of our imagination. Art, in this context—
both its creation and its contemplation—is a vehicle for discovering our full
potential, the divinity within us.
As you gaze upon the paintings in Celestial Gallery, put behind you the
concerns of your everyday life: schedules, appointments, dreams, and
aspirations. In a darkened room, allow your gaze to move gently from
the periphery to the center of the mandala, to the inner sanctum, and ulti¬
mately to the bindu, the point in the absolute center that represents the
Infinite. Adopt a nonfocused, nonconcentrated attention that spontaneously
invites you into the mandala’s inner sanctum, and then finally, through
the sanctum sanctorum, into the infinite void. Meditate on these paintings,
and a new world will open up for you. At first you will encounter an
inner realm previously hidden from sight. Ultimately, you will be able to
experience this same miraculous world in your everyday life.
When you close the book, close your eyes and let the images continue
to dwell within your mind. Discover that the celestial gallery has neither
walls nor covers: it extends into the farthest reaches of the mind and
universe. We are the artists of our own destiny, and the paintings presented
here are only way markers on a journey without beginning or end. As the
artist merges with his art, so too does the one who contemplates it deeply.
Recognize at the core of your being the light of pure consciousness, which
is pure potentiality, pure creativity. Manifesting within oneself the myriad
forms of Celestial Gallery, one gradually recognizes that infinite worlds
come and go within the vast expanse of our own being. Ultimately, as the
Bhagavad Gita says, as I curve back within myself and manifest different
forms, I realize that I am not in the universe but the universe is in me; I
am not in this body, this body is in me; I am not in this mind, this mind is
in me. And as I curve back within myself, I create the experience of mind,
of body, of the universe and all these infinite realms. That’s enlightenment:
to know that the entire universe is a projection of my own being and that
I create within myself the texture and fabric of all that exists. May these
paintings lead all who enter them to the celestial gallery of their deepest
consciousness—a realm in which all things are already fully present and
contained in pure form.
5
'J’HE (]OSMOS OF
ENLIGHTENED yTSION
The WORD Buddha IN Sanskrit means “to be awakened” to a primordial
reality of radiant compassion and self-existing wisdom. Expressed in art, Buddhas are
not objects of worship, but mirrors of our innermost being, icons of the journey from
ignorance to illumination.
Although the paintings in Celestial Gallery draw from traditional Buddhist iconography,
the practitioner or Buddhist scholar who searches through the Sadhanamala and
other scriptures for the textual sources of these paintings will be disappointed. These
paintings represent a school of contemporary Nepalese art that could almost be called
postmodern: they adopt the visual components of an ancient iconographical tradition
and present them in new contexts unconstrained by religious and artistic conventions.
Mandalas and other forms of Buddhist art have always been used as supports for
religious contemplation, redirecting the mind from the world of conventional
appearances to celestial realms veiled from ordinary awareness. Through their rich
colors, symmetry, and proportions, Buddhist mandalas harness the discordant
energies of mind and universe and reveal an underlying if unseen reality.
At the center of this “cosmos of enlightened vision" is a representation of the
Buddha—the awakened consciousness of our innermost being. The gilded walls and
roofs of a celestial palace radiate outward from this sacred center, expressing the
fully realized nature of the human mind and body—the arena of enlightenment.
The petals of an unfolding lotus support further Buddha emanations, each adopting
different hand gestures, or mudras, indicating states of enlightened intention.
These thirty-six celestial forms recall the renowned assembly of thirty-five Buddhas
of repentance and purification. The outer rings of stylized clouds and fire are,
in turn, inscribed by vignettes of the eight charnel grounds renowned in Tantric
tradition as optimal environments for awakening from life's illusions. They are
rarely illustrated in mandalas of peaceful Buddhist deities.
This mandala of liberated vision contains in seed form all elements of the
celestial gallery. Whether wrathful, ecstatic, or blissfully serene, the Buddhas and
bodhisattvas that inhabit this book of visions draw on traditional iconographical
sources, but ultimately transcend them. These postmodern thangkas, or scroll
paintings, boldly express the spirit of a tradition growing beyond its conventional
forms. The paintings originate in the creative spirit of contemporary Himalayan
artists who draw from the past to enrich the present. Incongruent colors and
compositions take on new meaning (or break free of meaning) in an exuberant
world of meticulous detail. This is the celestial gallery: paintings which introduce
us to a world beyond that which we have seen or commonly imagine.
Remaining free from the entrapments of the material
world, enlightenment can be more quickly attained.
— ROMIO 5HRESTHA
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