Opening Celebration - Largest Tantric Buddhist Mural in North America! July 18, 2009

Opening Event Schedule
5:30 pm Presentation by the Artist
5:30-7:00 pm Indian Dinner
6:30 pm Tea Alchemy- find out more at teaalchemy.com
8:30 pm Tara Goddess Music

Click here to see photos of the mural project on our Flickr photostream

Tsogyelgar Dharma Center has undertaken the project of creating the largest cycle of Tantric Buddhist murals in America, a colorful depiction of Buddhas in Purelands painted over sixty feet of wall, twelve feet high. Not since the luminary Tibetan Lama Trungpa Rinpoche created the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in Colorado, has there been a work of Buddhist Art on this scale in America. When Trungpa Rinpoche came to America in the 1970s, Tantric Buddhism from Tibet was just beginning to take root in the West. A generation later, it is in full bloom as evidenced by this ambitious work of American Buddhist Art. The mural is housed in the Main Shrine Room at Tsogyelgar Dharma Center, which is hidden away in an unassuming mid-western barn, just outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Begun in 2007, this exquisite mural will be completed for an Opening Ceremony on July 18, 2009.

The use of art and symbolism plays a central role in Tantric Buddhism. While the mural is an impressive work of art in its own right, for Buddhist practitioners it also holds an even deeper significance. Buddhists consider the deities in the paintings to be actual presences in the room, displaying the qualities of Enlightened Awareness. The paintings also function as guides to meditation.

The artist, Mr. Rob Davis, an accomplished painter and former graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, apprenticed for the past several years with master Tibetan painter, Pema Rinzin, at the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art in New York City. Traktung Rinpoche, the center’s Director, Meditation Master, and scholar of Vajrayana Buddhism and Comparative Religion hired Mr. Davis to carry out his vision. Traktung Rinpoche conceived of the project, along with the Tsogyelgar’s meditation gardens and stupas to further the center’s aim of translating and transmitting the Buddha’s teachings in the West. With the help of twenty assistants, Mr. Davis plans to complete project on schedule.

Official Website: http://www.tsogyelgar.org