Tibetan Buddhist Paintings 2012 Calendar

Tibetan Buddhist Paintings 2012 Calendar

Some 2,500 years ago, Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment while meditating beneath a fig tree in Bodhgaya, India, and became the Buddha or "awakened one".  The Buddha's teachings about the path to attaining wisdom and compassion spread within his homeland and then to many other Asian countries, each of which imbued the practice of Buddhism with its own culture.  Buddhist devotional art - sculptures and paintings used as aids for various liturgies and meditative practices - was created wherever the religion was adopted.  The twelve images reproduced in this calendar are examples of the Tibetan style of devotional painting, called thangka.  All are from the collection of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, one of the largest museums in the Western world devoted exclusively to Asian art.