Take me to the cosmic vagina: inside Tibet's secret tantric temple |... https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/10/tibet-secr...

Take me to the cosmic vagina: inside Tibet's

secret tantric temple
Lukhang temple is the Buddhist Sistine Chapel, full of stunning murals of body-hopping
yogis and the vagina that gave birth to the world. Its meant for the Dalai Lamas eyes
only so how did a US photographer manage to share its secrets?

A detail of yogis from the murals in the Lukhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet. They were painted c1700 for the fth Dalai Lama. All
images courtesy of Thomas Laird

Emine Saner
Tuesday 10 November 2015 15.12GMT

I
n the spring of 1986, Thomas Laird stood before the secret tantric paintings in the
Lukhang temple of Lhasa, Tibet. The American photographer was one of the rst
westerners ever to enter, and the rst to shoot inside this secret space created by the
fth Dalai Lama in the 17th century and reserved for the private meditation of his
successors.

I was stunned by the colours: pink and gold and white and lapis, he says of the murals
that cover its walls. There were yogis demonstrating poses, 84 tantric masters, Buddhas,
waterfalls, forests, animals and a vast number of symbols he couldnt quite fathom. He
was dazzled: That afternoon had a huge impact on me.

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Take me to the cosmic vagina: inside Tibet's secret tantric temple |... https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/10/tibet-secr...

Twenty years later, Laird stood in a hotel in California showing his life-sized pictures of
the murals to the Dalai Lama himself. The 14th Dalai Lama was exiled in 1959, and he
was seeing them for the very rst time. Laird had photographed them, then
meticulously collated around 100 images into vast recreations that showed every last
detail. The Dalai Lama stood before them, then turned to Laird. OK, he said, now Ill
give you the commentary, proceeding to talk him through their meanings. At that
moment, says Laird, it was like he was right there in the Lukhang with me.

The Lukhang Temple, Lhasa, c.1936. Photograph: Frederick

Spencer Chapman/Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

This month, Laird will bring his images from inside the temple to London, where they
will form the centrepiece of a new show at Wellcome Collection called Tibets Secret
Temple. This is the Tibetan Sistine Chapel, explains Laird: The Sistine Chapel was
painted by a great artist, commissioned by a pope and it tells us everything from God
creating man to the resurrection. The whole world, as Christians viewed it, are there in
images and thats whats happening in the Lukhang.

The pictures show some of the most secret practices in tantric Buddhism: in one image, a
yogi who has died transfers his spirit into a naked couple who are having sex; hidden in
another corner, a tiny crystal surrounded by a rainbow represents enlightenment. Its
like a map of the universe, says Laird.

Laird has been capturing Tibetan murals for decades and has the largest photography
archive of them in the world. He fell in love with Nepal while travelling as a 19-year-old
and lived there for more than 30 years, becoming a photographer, journalist and
Himalayan trek guide. When Tibet rst opened to tourists in the mid-80s, Laird went
immediately to the Potala Palace (the vast complex that served as winter residence of the
Dalai Lamas) and found the Lukhang temple on a small island on a lake.

You go through a sort of trapdoor to the third oor, says Laird, and step into this room
with murals covering three of the walls. I went in the late afternoon and the light was
reecting o the pond and coming through the small windows as little glittering shafts.

In 2001, inspired by the large-scale, multi-image work of Je Wall and Andreas Gursky,
Laird moved back to the US to learn how technology could let him make huge,
high-resolution recreations of the murals. To create them, he had to piece together
hundreds of frames from dierent exposures, then print them on transparencies.

The co-curator of the Tibet exhibition, Ruth Garde, hopes the murals will challenge
western preconceptions about Buddhism. You come to it thinking its quite serene,

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tranquil: deep breathing and that kind of

thing, she says. Tantric Buddhism is very
dierent the more radical and advanced
yoga techniques are quite dangerous. She
points out skulls, aying knives and
disembodied body parts. And some of the
iconography is quite terrifying, almost
grotesque.

ing obeisance from the

Yogis in 23 yoga positions, from the Lukhang Temple murals.

The murals are accompanied by 100 artefacts, including masks and costumes used in
rituals, manuscripts and sculptures of yogis and deities. Still, anyone who has dabbled in
yoga or meditation will spot things they recognise. There has been a great change in the
west since the 1960s, says Laird, the slow opening up to these ideas.

When they met, Dalai Lama reminded Laird that these murals werent just art they
were motivational tools. One of the arguments I have always had with him about art is
that he doesnt care about the aesthetic, says Laird. For him, the purpose of art is to
inspire you to achieve enlightenment. If a work of art gives you the motivation to do
your practice overcome greed, anger, ignorance, lust and pride then it is a great
success.

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The Dalai Lama also admitted there were many aspects of the murals Laird didnt know
about, and pointed him in the direction of the great Dzogchen master Namkhai Norbu.
So I rolled up my canvas and ew down to Venezuela and Namkhai Norbu came out
with 100 of his students. He was the one who introduced me to the cosmic vagina,
laughs Laird. Its something visitors to the exhibition should look out for, he says: a tiny
detail that represents the beginning of the universe.

Tibets Secret Temple is at Wellcome Collection, London, from 19 November to 28

February 2016
Topics
Photography
Dalai Lama/Buddhism/Tibet/Art/Religion/interviews

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