Dependency on the Lama: Silk Protection and Honoring Buddhist Masters in Art and Text

Lewis Doney
BCDSS Investigator & Professorial Member 

Tibetans have long-standing practices of expressing one’s utter dependency on the guru, or lama: to reach enlightenment it is necessary to completely trust one who has gone there before you. This has led to rich and varied literary and artistic ways to honor one’s master. Yet, deeper study of associated uses of textiles, especially cotton and silk, reveals complex relations of both explicit and implicit dependency, and liberation from it, taking place in these contexts. 

The Buddha taught the way to awakening from the endless wheel of reincarnation, so Buddhism has always esteemed and revered the teachers of its traditions. In Tibet, there is a long-standing practice of expressing one’s utter dependency on the guru, or lama in Tibetan: to reach enlightenment it is necessary to completely trust one who has proved to have gone there before you. This has led to a rich diversity of unique Tibetan literary and artistic ways to honor one’s master through portraits, prayers, rituals, and retellings of their complete liberations as a guide to the awakening of their disciples. Just as offerings of silk scarves honor the teacher (fig. 1), protecting this precious art and text containing depictions of the lama is achieved by covering it in the most expensive cotton or silk one can afford. 

Fig. 1: Detail of a Tibetan traditional opaque-watercolor on cotton painting (tang-ka) depicting the first Panchen Lama, Khédrup-jé (1385–1438), housed at the University of Bonn (photo: B. Frommann, 2024). 

Tibet is a highly bibliophilic land, and spiritual biographies (nam-tar) of its religious masters make up a large proportion of that textual wealth. The life story of the ascetic saint Milarepa (1028/40–1111/23 CE) (fig. 2), famous for wearing only a simple cotton cloth (ré) while meditating in the mountains of Tibet, also became famous in the West during the 1960s due to the popular biography of the “crazy” Tsangnyön Heruka (1452–1507) contained in this manuscript (pé-cha) (fig. 3). It tells of how Milarepa was forced into dependency on his uncle and aunt as a child and took revenge by killing many of their relatives with black magic. Haunted by the bad karma he had created, he took refuge in a Buddhist master who made him perform back-breaking unpaid labor in order to burn off the bad karma, but who finally made Milarepa his closest disciple.

Fig. 2: Tang-ka painting of Milarepa (1040‒1123) Tibet or Nepal, 19th century. Mineral pigments and gold on cotton cloth; silk borders. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Phillips to LACMA/Los Angeles (M.82.165.2),  https://collections.lacma.org/node/243998 (photo: LACMA, n. d.). 

Fig. 3: Tibetan loose-leaf book format (pé-cha), showing silk cover over folio 1 verso of a prayer to the Buddhist master Milarepa (photo: B. Frommann, 2024). 

This Cinderella-esque narrative was spread far and wide in block-print copies and luxurious handwritten manuscripts like this one, written in gold and blue script on a black background (ting-shog) and accompanied by fine portraits (fig. 4), to express materially the devotion to Lama Milarepa contained textually in the biography and preceding praise-prayer to him that make up the manuscript. A costly silk cover is sewn onto the folio to protect this page (fig. 5), which is rare for Tibetan manuscripts. Further, following Tibetan tradition, the whole loose-leaf book format manuscript (pé-cha) is wrapped in cotton (a product also produced outside Tibet) with a silk “bookmark” at one end on which is written the name of the text (fig. 6). 

Fig. 4: Folio 2 recto of the spiritual biography (nam-tar) of Milarepa and folio 1 verso showing its silk cover (photo: B. Frommann, 2024). 

For traditional Tibetan rollable paintings (tang-ka), a gossamer-thin curtain of silk (shel-kheb) covering the image (fig. 7) and the rich and colorful silk brocade border (fig. 9) also show the high reverence afforded to the portrayal of lamas. Once uncovered, we see the painting depicts a lively scene in which the first Panchen Lama, Khédrup-jé (1385–1438, fig. 1) offers a mandala on a silk scarf (kha-tag) to his lama, Tsongkhapa (1357–1419, top left), in ritual supplication (fig. 8).

Fig. 9: Detail of the tang-ka of the first Panchen Lama showing the silk surrounding the painting and the Tibetan inscription identifying the main figures, found in every block print copy (par-ma) of the original tang-ka blocks (photo: B. Frommann, 2024). 

Tsongkhapa was the founder of the Dalai Lamas’ Gelug tradition, and the Panchen Lamas often acted as their teachers and so highly revered in early modern Tibet. Like the Dalai Lamas, the Panchen Lamas are a lineage of successive reincarnations, emanated from Buddhist deities to teach each generation the path to awakening. Thus, the silk offered by Khédrup-jé in dependency on his master is reflected in the silk surrounding and protecting the painting that expresses later generations’ dependency on Khédrup-jé as the first reincarnation showing them the way to escape future rebirths. 

Within the logic of Tibetan Buddhism, the dependency on lamas should be strong, as a devotee to their master, but is not asymmetrical since the lama is offering teachings on liberation in return – and even doing inconceivably more for the student as the emanation of a deity working out of compassion for all beings. However, religious masters, though like Milarepa they may come from humble beginnings, became revered elites in Tibetan society, and famous lamas were the object of offerings from disciples both rich and poor. In contrast, artisans such as those making the paper for manuscripts, weaving the cotton or silk for protecting covers, and even those painting the images themselves (fig. 10) often remained anonymous and in dependent relations to religious elites as patrons or landowners.  

Fig. 10: Tang-ka painter at the Dalai Lamas’ Potala Palace, Lhasa, 1938–1939. Bundesarchiv, Bild 135-KA-07-095 (photo: Ernst Krause, n. d.). 

Furthermore, asymmetric top-down power dynamics are evident in the fact that both the spiritual biography of Milarepa and the portraits of the Panchen Lamas (of which this example is one of a set) were spread by harnessing block-printing technology to flood the market and ensure certain views of these religious masters were accepted against other portrayals. This block-printed painting even contains a written inscription at the bottom (fig. 9) identifying the figures and dictating how viewers should interpret the scene and set themselves up in a devoted attitude to those members of the ruling Gelug religious tradition depicted in it. Thus, behind these Buddhist artistic and textual traditions of Tibet, as with so many other places and religions, deeper study through the lens of associated textiles reveals complex relations of both explicit and implicit dependency, and liberation from it, taking place.  

---

Further Reading

Berger, Patricia, 2008. “Reincarnation in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction: The Career of the Narthang Panchen Lama Portraits.” In Images of Tibet in the 19th and 20th Centuries, edited by Monica Esposito, vol. 2, 727–45. Études thématiques 22. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient.

Doney, Lewis, 2024. “Creating Dependency by Means of its Overcoming: A Case Study from the Rise of Tibetan Buddhism.” In Control, Coercion, and Constraint. The Role of Religion in Overcoming and Creating Structures of Dependency, edited by Wolfram Kinzig and Barbara Loose, 89–108. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Evans-Wentz, Walter Y., 1978. Milarepa, Tibets Grosser Yogi. München: Barth.

Kapstein, Matthew T. (ed.), 2024. Tibetan Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. 2 vols. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Quintman, Andrew, 2014. The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa. South Asia Across the Disciplines. New York: Columbia University Press.

Schwieger, Peter, 2000. “Geschichte als Mythos: zur Aneignung von Vergangenheit in der tibetischen Kultur. Ein kulturwissenschaftlicher Essay.” Asiatische Studien: Zeitschrift der Schweizerischen Asiengesellschaft 54 (4): 945–73.

Tsangnyön Heruka, 2010. The Life of Milarepa. Translated by Andrew Quintman. New York:  Penguin Classics.