The Buddhist deity Vajrapani

Vajrapani, deep blue and grasping a stylized thunderbolt, emerges from emptiness on a glowing disk of light. In Tibet, Vajrapani is called a yidam: a special kind of deity-image built up in the mind's eye during meditation. By precisely envisioning the body of Vajrapani, meditators learn an important Buddhist lesson: how mental images shape our experience of being in a body.

The back of this painting reveals how Tibetan religious teachers called "lamas" projected Vajrapani into a picture such as this. First, they visualized the deity entering the painted image. Then they inscribed the syllables om ah hum on its reverse, at the deity's brow, throat, and heart. Together, these three syllables represent the Body-Speech-Mind of Vajrapani and serve to seal the artistic creation and the deity together. This procedure transforms an ordinary, material picture of Vajrapani into the deity's virtual body.