The Buddha Shakyamuni at Mount Meru

Himalayan Buddhist painters use a variety of strategies to depict multiple worlds coexisting on several planes. Here, the artist depicts the ordinary world as a naturalistic realm of earth and sky, bounded by a chain of mountains in the distance. The extraordinary worlds interpenetrating and transcending this scene, however, appear in geometric configurations that challenge our ordinary habits of perception.

The central figure, the Buddha Shakyamuni, sits in front of a strangely shaped massif. This is Mount Meru, the central axis of the universe in traditional Buddhist cosmology. Its four symbolic colors mark the four cardinal directions. The palaces comprising the great gods occupy its summit. Then, fanning out above and behind Shakyamuni, we can see still more extraordinary worlds: the heavenly realms of Form and Formlessness.

Below the Buddha, worshippers present offerings (mchod pa) to generate the merit (bsod nams) that can create rebirth in these heavenly realms.