The art of Thangka Painting is very old and has been practived from the 3rd century BC in Tibet. The word "Thangka" is estimated to have derived from the Tibetan word "thang yig" meaning a written record. Thangkas are fine paintings that are made with great care and concentration all by hands. The tradition was not only inside Tibet and the Tibetan community it soon spread to those who adopted Tibetan Buddhism learned this wonderful art so Thakali, Sherpas, Tamangs, Yolmos, Manangeys and Newars started creating the beauty. According to religious culture, Thangka can be stored at room sanctifies worship with holy water mumbling mantras to animate Thangkas mystical power and puts kada or khata(two feet long silk cloth) on it. Since then, the devout use to divest its head before it at the time of worship especially in the morning. These paintings are generally colored part Buddhist and Hindu Gods, Goddess, meditating Buddha and its life cycle, Wheel of Life, Mandala, Bhairab, Tara, Exotic photos, etc.
As Thangka ritual paintings are most people have never considered the Thangkas as decorative object. But nowadays Thangkas are gaining popularity as a decorative element throughout the world. Usually painted on cotton cloth, more rarely on silk, colors are traditionally made from mineral and vegetable dyes, but now a day Tibetan artists also use modern synthetic dyes, silver and gold for better presentation.
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Atisha is the teacher who brought the Mind Training teaching from Sumatra to India and then transmitted it to Tibet. Atisha was born in India in A.D 982. Atisha was first initiated into, and became an adept in, the esoteric and magical practices of Tantra, which were very popular in India at the time, and in fact were too soon to absorb and extinguish Indian Buddhism.
However, when already a well – established practitioner of Tantra, Atisha underwent a change of heart and made a decision to renounce the search for magical power. Wishing to develop compassion and selflessness, at the age of thirty he took Buddhist vows. Wishing to study with the master of compassion Dharmakirti (Tibetan: Serlingpa), he traveled to the faraway land of Suvarnadvipa (present – day Sumatra). Atisha stayed there for twelve years, learning, among many other things, the Mind Training practice. Such was Atisha's gratitude to Dharmakirti that he was unable even to hear his name without bursting into tears.
On his return to India, Atisha taught for fifteen years at different monasteries and was recognized as both the most learned and the most personally realized teacher in all India. Atisha started to receive invitations to teach in Tibet, which Atisha initally refused. (Tibet at that time had an enormous hunger for true Buddhist teaching but an almost total lack of reliable teachers, due to the brief but severe persecution of Buddhism by the insane King Langdarma.)
Once, in his role as head of discipline at the Vikramsila monastery, he concurred in the expulsion of a monk for drinking alcohol as part of a tantric ceremony. The goddess Tara, his vidam, then came to him in a dream and said that he was responsible for the expulsion of a sincere practitioner, and that as penance he should go to Tibet and teach. The next time the Tibetans invited him, he accepted. The story is told that he had heard that the Tibetans were very open and friendly, so that he would have no-one to challenge him in his compassion practice. So he took along his sulky, bad-mannered Bengali tea boy so that he would have someone to stimulate him in his Mind Training.
Atisha had difficulty getting permission to go from the head of Vikramsila, since his prestige in India was so great. Eventually was allowed to go to Tibet only on condition that he returns in three years. However, the need for him and his teaching in Tibet was so great that he never returned, but died there twelve years later.
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