Ven. Robina Courtin talked to Peter and Denise Griffin in October last year [1996] in London, England about their work as sculptors of Buddhist statues. A new FPMT project, The Enlightenment Project for Purification and Merit, based at Chenrezig Institute in Queensland, Australia (see below) will employ sculptors and artists such as Peter and Denise and will reproduce and distribute their work for students and centers worldwide. Peter and Denise will be in Queensland from March until June, leading workshops at Chenrezig Institute, on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane.

Robina: Tell us about your work.

Denise: I’m a trained sculptor. I studied in Camberwell School of Art in London. It was three years’ training.

And this is where you met Peter?

D: Yes, he and I studied the same thing.

When did you get involved with the Dharma?

D: When we left college we both got involved with the Dharma by going to a center of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in London. I went initially because of skin problems I was having. An alternative doctor who was doing hypnotherapy made me realize you have to look after the mind as well as the body. I started breathing meditation practice and my skin completely cleared. It was quite impressive.

When we left college we decided that we wanted to go traveling. Peter suggested India. We managed to get a scholarship from the Indian National Trust for Art and Architectural Cultural Heritage to study temple architecture in northern India, making drawings along the route. We went to Bodhgaya for the first time.

What year was that?

D: That would have been 1988-1989. And that’s when we met Lama Zopa Rinpoche, in Bodhgaya.

Did you like him straight away?

D: Peter did! At that point I didn’t have any straight connection. We had just done a 21 Vipassana retreat, and immediately after that we met Rinpoche, who was teaching The Heart Sutra in Bodhgaya. And then we carried on traveling, ending up in Dharamsala.

We went to Tushita, the center there, and started to make tsa-tsas – relief images of the Buddhas – through Trisha Donnelly, who worked at the center. Trisha said all we need are molds. And Peter said, “I can do that!” So that’s where it all began.

For me, though, still not much connection with Buddhist art. I didn’t relate to the images. We looked in museums everywhere we went, seeing statues and thangka paintings. I found them interesting but they really didn’t touch my heart.

Say more about how you thought as an artist before, and talk about your transition from Western art.

D: In Western art you could be making a political statement or a personal statement. Basically, I was trying to find out who I was and trying to integrate that into a visual language. My artwork was personal, and I had used to collect and collate things. From these resources it would grow and evolve, ending up as an abstract sculptural form. It would be an expression of the deeper feelings I had inside of me, but using, like I say, an architectural support for the form.

There was a connection between me and Peter in our artwork. By our final year at college both Peter and I were using churches as a source of reference for our artwork, in a very abstract way, in a more spatial context. We were interested in these images because of their spiritual nature, as a source of inspiration for modern sculpture. That’s where I was at before we started traveling. And the traveling was focused on looking at temples: Buddhist, Hindu and Jain.

We weren’t practicing Christians, but were interested in churches as a three-dimensional form. I had traveled around Europe the previous summer and had visited a lot of old churches in the various countries, looking at not only the way they were decorated with mosaics and frescoes but also the form/space of the church itself. It was this that excited me rather than the way it was decorated. I used this as source material to make my own abstract sculptures; I used the spiritual energy that I had experienced by looking at the churches. Looking back on it now, I guess this was the beginning of my exploration of the spiritual needs within myself.

I think I changed a lot from being in India. When I got back I did a course in Tibetan thangka painting and that really helped to connect me to that imagery. I really enjoyed it. To be an artist you’ve got to really want to do it. You’ve got to be 100 percent dedicated. Making Buddhist art was a way of linking my two main interests. I think that is why the Tibetan tradition appealed so much to me because it is so rich, the images are so rich and so powerful.

I imagine that Tibetan thangka painting techniques are the very opposite to those in Western art; that following someone else’s pattern would be like losing your individuality, stifling your creativity.

D: I always believed the structure was important. If you’ve got the structure, then you have something to push against. If you have no structure, you are wandering aimlessly – really. But if you have structure, you can, in fact, be more creative. The kind of Western art that appealed to me was medieval Christian art, and so you’re going back to the early tradition where there is an underlying geometry or structure. So it really didn’t contradict. And when I showed the thangkas that I was doing to artist friends who had known me for a long time, they said that they didn’t see any contradictions, although the visual form was very, very different. What they saw was the same attention to detail and method in both traditions.

I don’t see that Western and Tibetan art are so different, in the sense that in both you are trying to capture an essence. I mean, in abstract art you’re trying to capture the essence of an energy. In any good art that energy has got to be there.

However, many of my Western friends now see me doing a craft. They would no longer classify it as fine art; they no longer see what we’re doing as high art. I would disagree because you are trying to go beyond the basic image. You’re still trying to capture the energy in the same way you are in Western art. To me now it is the highest, the most valuable way to dedicate my time, because of the spiritual benefit to others and myself.

So, Peter, how was it for you when you first contacted Buddhist art?

Peter: Straight away, the Dharma really struck a chord. At the time I had just about given up the idea of making art altogether; I only wanted to study and meditate. It was Rinpoche who brought me back into making art again. As soon as I met Rinpoche that became my whole connection with the Dharma. Rinpoche was teaching me the Dharma through art.

Tell us about your first meeting with Rinpoche.

P: As Denise said, it was in 1988, in Bodhgaya. It was one of those strange karmic things. Somehow I had heard that Lama Zopa Rinpoche was arriving that day and at a certain time, so I went along to see what this lama, whom we had heard such a lot about, was like. I presumed there would be lots of people there but when I arrived there were maybe four people. I felt embarrassed, so I slunk into this little shadow that I found near the Japanese temple and hoped that no one would realize I was there. Rinpoche saw me and gave me one of those Paddington Bear stares that go right through you! I still remember the feeling. I thought, “Whoa, this is spooky!” He just kept staring at me and staring at me. I didn’t know what to do.

That was the first time, but my first real meeting with Rinpoche was in London a few months later. I had made my first statue and wanted to offer this to Rinpoche. Previously in India I had met people who were doing their tsa-tsa preliminary practice and learnt that it was really difficult to get hold of the metal molds that are used to form the clay tsa-tsas. I had begun trying to clean up some tsa-tsas for people and had promised I would try and make some bronze molds when I got back to England.

What do you mean make molds – actually carve the images?

P: No. A mold is a negative impression taken from a positive form, in this case a small clay relief image of Buddha. Once you have metal mold, one can stamp out as many impressions as one wishes of that Buddha into clay. To begin with I began making bronze molds of old Tibetan tsa-tsas, but quite often the image was not so clear and so I would try to work on those, to clean up the image. Spanish nun and artist Ven. Jampa Chökyi, who lives at Tushita, had a beautiful Tibetan Vajrasattva tsa-tsa, really beautiful. Some parts of the image were not so clear because it was very old, so to make another mold from that would’ve been very difficult. So I worked with her for a while in Dharamsala, trying to clean it up. When I got back in England I made a bronze mold for her and some molds of some other tsa-tsas. I really enjoyed what I was doing, so I tried to model a tsa-tsa from scratch, as Rinpoche had told one monk to make tsa-tsas of a particular deity and we couldn’t find an existing Tibetan image. When I look back the artwork was so clumsy. I offered it to Rinpoche when he came to London. Rinpoche was very kind and patient and offered a lot of advice, and from that moment on it was clear what I was going to do.

What was your interest in Western art?

P: I wasn’t really in it long enough; I was only at art school for four years. In college, I really wanted to just learn techniques – bronze casting, welding, woodwork, etc.

What did you think, then, when you studied?

P: It seemed to me the whole system was geared towards exploring emotions, but it always seemed to be negative emotions, because they’re the easiest to see, the most tangible. It was about exploring the negative side of the mind. And when you are a part of that you don’t see anything wrong with it. But that’s college life. It’s good fun! People around me would try to bring forth and perpetuate this angry state in order to express something.

And in England during the ’80s, art became very conceptual. People would use a material, like nails or like jelly, which triggers something off in a person’s mind. It wasn’t at all about carving in wood or stone in the traditional sense.

D: To get into the art you have to know something about the artist. You have to know their history and how they are using that material to express a certain story. It is sometimes very hard for an outside person to get in. And that was always a problem for me. The art always seemed to be talking to a small educated audience and not a wider audience. Artwork should be about communication. The Buddha image communicates with a lot more people and on many different and very profound levels.

In Western art there seem to be so many styles, so many views, so many concepts: the product of the deluded mind?

P: Yes, you’re exploring the deluded mind. For example, Camus and other French writers really understood and expressed well suffering, but they didn’t have any way out of it. To convey that suffering to other people is what the artist can do, but I don’t think there is a real method to cease that suffering.

D: I think that what you are doing is identifying with these emotions; you can express anger, say, and then identify with it, because that’s a very easy one. The brush marks on a painting, for example, or the combination of forms in a sculpture, its texture, the combination of certain hues juxtaposed: any of these visual tools can capture and evoke anger in the viewer.

But what do you do with this emotion? Artists become skilled at identifying emotions and regurgitating them, but then what do you do? What do you do with them once you recognize them? Where do you take them? How do you transform, get beyond, them? Maybe if we had stuck with making Western art, these questions would have been answered as we matured within ourselves – I don’t know. But I’m content with where I am now because the Dharma tells you where to take them and how to dissolve them. That’s the exciting part.

How would you describe the purpose of Tibetan art?

P: I think it’s a very profound tool to change the mind. I think the Buddha was an incredible psychologist. Visual imagery is a very immediate and profound way to convey a whole pantheon of conscious and subconscious information. It works on so many different levels. As well as having an immediate impact upon the mind, through the power of the holy beings there are many layers of experience conveyed to us through the visual form. The holy image does nothing other than convey the Buddha’s holy mind; it conveys to us, in two-dimensional form, or three in the case of a statue, the qualities of love and compassion, and as such it is unbelievably inspiring for us. It triggers within us that potential. Enlightened beings are all around us, but due to karma we can’t see them.

We identify very strongly with information that comes through our visual senses, and I think, on a very subtle level, it provides an excellent vehicle for the holy mind to communicate with us. The visual senses are very important to us, and I believe that as humans we identify more strongly, feel more comfortable with the figurative form. Like when people are looking at the sky watching the clouds. Perhaps they’ll see something that looks like a face. The mind becomes very happy because it sees something it can label. “Oh wow! There’s a nose and there are the eyes.” Somehow the mind makes some sense out of all this abstraction and it feels happy within that.

How can we express compassion to another person? Whilst compassion remains an abstract emotion for the ordinary being how would this be possible? The image of Chenrezig, Buddha of Compassion, does this. On a subconscious level, the image becomes a framework for us to be able to “see” and get closer to the holy mind of the Buddha. The sounds of the sacred mantras and the chanting of pujas must be working in the same way, but through the auditory sense.

The image of Tara, for example, gives us a glimpse of loving kindness. It works on so many different levels. It’s working on a very subconscious level through the blessings of the deity, an also within the image itself there is the whole aspect of sacred geometry working within the form – the way the lines within the form are directing the mind in a certain way. The color green, Tara’s color, is a very peaceful, loving color – already it pacifies the mind. All of this will have a strong impact on the mind of anyone who just even glances at the image – particularly because of the blessings of the holy object. On top of all this the practitioner will be able to add more and more layers as he or she does the meditations and retreats of Tara, say, and thereby form a stronger and stronger bond with her. All of the person’s experiences will get layered onto the image of Tara. The image becomes something like a coat hanger upon which the practitioners can hang all their additional experiences of Tara. As the bond becomes stronger and stronger, the image of Tara embodies more and more of a personal experience of Tara – loving kindness. You’ve got something very tangible in front of you in which exists Buddha’s holy mind.

D: By using the image and trying to identify with that, it helps you understand what you are aiming for within the meditations, I think.

What do you mean?

D: Well, when you look at the older paintings and statues, they evoke a feeling, an emotion. Like the little Lama Tsong Khapa statue Rinpoche gave me to work from. I just feel blissful when I look at that, and I’m not quite sure why.

Maybe it’s the realization of the person who made it.

P: Yes maybe, because you can’t stop being a part of what you are making. Your energy just goes into it. Somehow in trying to do the work, you have to try to get into the meditative state. And so it’s really helpful to look at the work of previous artists who have achieved that and learn from them.

It seems there are two things involved. There’s the technique, and then there are the inner realizations. You can look at something where the technique isn’t so good, but the person who made it had some inner qualities and that makes you happy. Then you can see something that was made well, but it lacks heart.

P: yes, that’s very true. In the art texts it talks about how the Buddha comes through the artist and onto the canvas or into the statue; the artist becomes a medium. In the olden times in Tibet, the whole environment was so pure and everyone was practicing purely – no distractions. Everything, even technology, was geared towards the Dharma – the only wheel ever invented in Tibet was the prayer wheel. They didn’t have water wheels, they have water prayer wheels! So I think at that time this kind of artwork would have been much easier. The whole environment and lifestyle must have been so supportive of and conducive to this kind of artwork.

Tibetan art is practiced, is inseparable from practice.

P: Exactly!

Talk about your experience with artists in India, how that evolved.

P: We went back to India for a second time in 1991. I had been wanting to take proper teachings from a Tibetan sculptor, so I went in search of one. Later on I found out that there are hardly any statue makers left within the Tibetan tradition. There are a lot of Bhutanese statue makers, however, because the Bhutanese government has really encouraged the training of artists, but they follow a slightly different proportional measurement lineage to the Tibetans. Rinpoche recommended that I find a Tibetan teacher, and I was very fortunate to be accepted as a student by Kesang Dorje-la, my Gen-la (teacher). He has done a lot of work for His Holiness the Dalai Lama and is a very highly respected statue maker.

Do you know how the traditions evolved?

P: No, but the image evolved initially from tsa-tsas being carried back home from India, along the pilgrimage routes, by the pilgrims and early teachers of the Dharma. The style of the artwork naturally evolved as the Dharma grew within the various countries, but the roots were very strongly placed within the early Indian tradition of art. The main difference is in the features, not so much the proportions as these were all laid down by Lord Buddha in the scriptures. Within the Tibetan tradition there are differences in the style, according to the area within Tibet. For example, the closer to the Chinese border one goes, the rounder the faces become, like the face structure of the people of those areas.

Talk about learning to be a statue maker.

P: Traditionally it’s a nine year apprenticeship. You spend the first year making flowers and things just to get you used to working with the tools and the clay. Later you would start making faces, faces of Buddha, repeatedly, again and again; you’d just make faces all day long, all different sizes. They are made hollow, like a mask. Gen-la would say, “Make one three inches high, then make one a thumbnail high, then make one two feet high.” Again and again and again, all day long making faces and continually checking with your teacher. When you’ve finished, Gen-la would scrunch up the clay face and make you start again – I think so that you don’t get too attached! This is where you would really learn the proportions – many imprints on the mind. Slowly the teacher would introduce you to a different type of face. The art of the bodhisattva’s face, the main peaceful ones: Manjushri, Chenrezig, Vajrasattva; and the peaceful female bodhisattvas. Then he’d teach the wrathful deities.

According to tradition, generally you would do a nine-year apprenticeship, though sometimes students would go through more quickly. Throughout the whole time you’d also be working with your teacher on whatever job he’s doing, as his apprentice. If he was making a statue that required flames in the back, he’d get you to do the flames, he’d show you first and then you would do it and he’ll correct. Maybe you’d make the hands or the dorje or the robes, but not the main elements of the statue. He would always work on the faces and such, and then slowly you would progress in your learning.

Talk about the techniques, how you make statues.

P: There’s three main ways. The most common way is clay, and into the clay they would mash up Nepali paper. It’s a very fibrous paper, which is soaked in water overnight and then beaten into the clay, which gives it strength. The clay always contracts by about ten percent when the water evaporates, so the clay cracks, and this has to be filled again and again. The fibers inside the clay give it extra strength, and a clay statue can last for hundreds of years in a dry climate like Tibet.

Depending on how big the statue is they’ll either make the statue hollow, like you would with a coil pot, or for the bigger statues you put the prayers in first, and build the clay around them – you are kind of making a basic shape of Lord Buddha in prayers, encased in clay. Mixed into the clay, the statue maker will put relics from holy saints, earth from all the holy places in India and Tibet, water from the holy rivers, stone from places like Mount Kailash. It’s really a special process.

When the statue maker is working on a big statue, the whole community will come together. Some people will roll the mantras that will fill the statue, others will prepare the clay – and others will make the tea! It’s great because as well as all the sponsors, who are of course very important, there is a role for everyone in the community. This is something I would really like to see happening in our Western centers; it really brings the community together.

I was in south India working on a large Padmasambhava statue with my teacher, and the whole community came together and was just so devoted. They had gathered earth from Bodhgaya, Sarnath and the holy places in Tibet, and water from the holy Ganga River, and relics from lamas who had passed away from their monastery, and it all went into the clay.

How would you start?

P: Well, you start off with the lotus. You would make the ground plan of the lotus and work up from that, making the walls of the lotus as you go up. On a large statue you would fill the statue with prayers as you go along. Then you go to the next level, which might be up to the moon disk, working your way to the top of the statue like this.

So this is one of the three ways they make sculptures.

P: Yes, another way is beaten copper, used for the big statues. His Holiness established a school in Dharamsala that does a lot of this. With this method one can make huge statues from many pieces, from very thin sheets of copper that have been beaten to the shape, and then riveted together. The statue of Guru Shakyamuni Buddha in His Holiness’s temple in Dharamsala was made like this.

The other method would be to cast in bronze, which the Tibetans learned from Nepal. This method is still used widely in Nepal. A wax statue would be made, and then through a process called the lost wax process, the wax would be cast into bronze or copper. This method can only really be used on small-scale statues, although it’s possible to cast the statue in pieces and then assemble later. The huge statue of Lord Buddha on Lantau Island in Hong Kong was made this way, and I believe Rinpoche’s statue of Lord Maitreya in Bodhgaya will be constructed using the same process.

In the Tibetan tradition, by far the most common method is to use clay, and although I no longer use clay, I follow the same process.

What material do you use then?

P: I use a Western clay substitute, which can be modeled like clay but sets as hard as stone after a few hours. It is incredibly strong and it means that I can carve into the statue and continue to model until I’m happy – or rather until Rinpoche is happy.

How long did your apprenticeship last?

P: Oh, about eight months.

What happened?

P: I’d get the papal finger from Rinpoche to go off to do some work at Kopan. I really learned a heck of a lot from Gen-la and I really love him. It’s sad because statue-making does seem to be a dying tradition. It’s so sad! I mean Gen-la, he is not so young now, he is about sixty-eight and his eyesight is going. He can’t make anything smaller than two feet. When I show him my tsa-tsas, he just can’t see them. He’s got a very open mind, and I think he enjoyed having a Westerner around. I’d teach him a few little bits, like how to cast in silicon rubber, which he quite enjoyed. He didn’t want me to go, but he knows that Rinpoche is my guru. Rinpoche has become my main statue teacher by far. Same for Denise.

How did Rinpoche learn?

P: Well, Rinpoche knows everything! When Rinpoche is talking about making a deity, he’s taking about the qualities of the deity, not “how to make” a deity – he really is. You can see that he is seeing the deity there when he’s talking about making a statue. For a traditional artist, Vajrasattva’s face is within the same classification as Manjushri, same as Amitayus or Chenrezig. When Rinpoche is talking about it, he’s talking about the quality of Vajrasattva, he’s not talking about the quality of Manjushri. They’re very different. And he’s talking about that. So it’s a very, very different way of teaching. It’s so personal.

A few years ago I was staying in the same apartment as Rinpoche in Hong Kong and Rinpoche asked me to make an eight-foot statue for the center in Taiwan. Before I left Hong Kong, Rinpoche would come out of his room each day and describe to me how the deity should be made. Rinpoche explained everything, from the crown down to the toenails, describing how to make each part. Rinpoche would go into what looked like semi-meditation, and would push his cheeks around, trying to express how he wanted the cheeks to be, and he would make the most beautiful mudras (hand gestures) to explain how to make the art of the hands. Amazing! Of course, the art of the statue was nothing like what Rinpoche had wanted, but that just shows my limitations.

Denise, tell me about how Rinpoche taught you, how you finally got to start making statues.

D: I thought of making thangkas because I love color, but I’m a sculptor, not a painter. I did a thangka painting course with the German artist Andy Weber and really enjoyed it, and so continued in that vein. When we went to India the second time Peter took sculpture classes and I took thangka painting instruction. I had two wonderful Tibetan teachers while we lived in Dharamsala. And then the sculpting began when I was asked by Lama Zopa Rinpoche to work on a small portrait statue of Lama Yeshe. It was wonderful looking at photographs of Lama and watching videos of him. So that was the start. I never pushed from my side to made statues. I always used to really enjoy going to visit Peter and his teacher and just watching, then Rinpoche just requested me to do another statue.

When was that?

D: Two or three years ago. Previously I had asked Rinpoche, I said, “I’m trained as a sculptor but I’m thinking of doing thangka painting. Would it be more beneficial that I learn statue making?” He said both for me.

P: What did he say?

D: He said sculpt, paint, meditate and study.

P: Didn’t Rinpoche say to paint during the day and make statues at night?

D: Paint daytime, sculpt nighttime! I’ve never found the energy for that. Now I think it’s clear Rinpoche is requesting the statues. I’m very happy to be a sculptor.

The job in Taiwan, to make a big Thousand-armed Chenrezig statue, how did that happen?

D: Basically Rinpoche requested me to do it. Peter was already there, working for a year at Jinsui Farlin, the Taipei center. Peter helped give me the confidence to do the statue because it’s the biggest I had made – more than twenty feet high – and technically challenging. Peter has more experience so helps me a lot.

Tell us about it.

D: It was in a small nunnery in Puli town in central Taiwan.

P: It’s in a very, very beautiful location.

D: It’s where most of the Buddhist monasteries are clustered in Taiwan, very lovely, and I think the most peaceful place I’ve ever lived. Rinpoche says it’s a wonderful place for practicing Dharma. The statue was for a nunnery surrounded by other small nunneries, in the countryside, so all my neighbors were monks and nuns.

P: There are 500 monasteries and nunneries and it’s just a small local town. There are bamboo mountains, mist, the whole trip, just like a Chinese painting.

D: Yeah. There were two nuns organizing the building of the nunnery, and then there was me building the statue; the nunnery was being built around me. The building was there but the windows weren’t – these big empty spaces with the birds flying in and out of the windows.

How did Rinpoche want the statue?

D: I followed the traditional proportional drawings for a Chenrezig statue. Rinpoche gave me photographic examples of Tibetan statues and said use these for reference. I made a face and then I sent it to Rinpoche to check what I had done, to see whether it was correct or not, and then Rinpoche would send me details of the corrections to be made. The main thing Rinpoche was concerned with was the face. He also told me how he wanted the robes and other things.

How long did it take you?

D: I think it took eight months. I worked on the statue in situ, but where the form was repeated a lot, like the 1,000 hands, I worked with a factory and they made casts.

For the other 998.

D: Yes! Taiwan is very well set up. They have a good tradition of artists making Buddha statues; they’re very familiar with that kind of work. And so for the gilding and the painting of the eyes and small hands it was done in the factory, then brought back to us within 10 days. What’s so wonderful about Taiwan is that people are so generous and devote that they just wanted to offer to Chenrezig. Peter was there to help me in the beginning, with the armature and the basic structure. Because it’s big, it’s very heavy. We drilled structural supports into the wall and hung it from a metal armature.

P: An armature is a steel frame.

It’s not free-standing?

P: No. It looks like it is but it’s not.

D: The students from the center were fantastic: they rolled the abundance of prayers needed to fill the statue. And a small group of Kopan monks was in Taiwan at that time making sand mandalas; they also came and helped with rolling up prayers and did a blessing ceremony before we began putting the prayers around the armature. We got to the point where we had a basic form made from prayers, which I then built around, modeling and carving the clay-like material, but more strong, until I was happy with the final form.

What tools did you use?

D: The tools are the same as a Tibetan artist uses. You basically carve your own tools out of sandalwood. You make your own tools for each job.

P: It has to be sandalwood.

Why?

P: It says in a text that the tools should be sandalwood, because it’s sweet smelling. Actually it’s very practical. I’ve tried many different woods: it was my rebellious mind, “Oh pine smells nice.” I’ve tried lots of different hard woods but sandalwood glides across the clay so nicely. Other woods get kind of cold. I don’t know why it is – Buddha’s blessing? And the tools have to be blessed by the lama.

D: Along with that you use drills and grinders.

P: Make from sandalwood … I’m joking!

D: One thing about working on a big statue is that the community really has to get involved. Like assembling the 1,000 hands; that was a community project. And people came and helped me arrange the small hands and glue them onto the wood.

P: It’s good when the community gets involved.

D: And then the carpenters helped me lift these big panels with the thousand arms on them. It’s good when the builders get involved as well, people who aren’t part of the local Buddhist community.

P: They always feel connected afterwards, always.

How did you manage with languages?

D: Well, I’d been at Khachoe Ghakyil, the Kopan nunnery, the year before so I was used to listening to people speaking English around me, but in Puli no one speaks fluent English at all, so it was very simple: lots of hand movements. Sometimes it’s pleasant to be free from so much chit-chat. It’s good for the work – to be a bit quieter.

What did you do in Kopan?

D: I made my first life-size statue, out of clay and using traditional Tibetan techniques. I was really nervous to go to a Tibetan community and to make a Tibetan-style statue.

P: In front of Tibetan statue-makers. Men.

D: As a female with no traditional Tibetan statue training, that was quite a challenge.

How were you accepted?

D: With the lamas there was no problem, they’re always very accepting. I think everyone else was a bit amused that a woman had art skills. The women just don’t get trained. I mean they get trained as thangka painters and then they get married and have children and that becomes a full-time occupation, so they stop. But I don’t think there are any Tibetan women trained as sculptors. That was quite a novelty for them. And I enjoyed being in the nunnery, doing something like that as an example for them. I think life in the nunnery is about women becoming strong and independent. It felt good.

How long were you there?

D: Almost a year. I learned a lot from the experience of being at the nunnery and I felt very privileged. I’d never been in female energy like that before. There were 90 nuns there at that time (there are 140 now), and the energy felt so different. I always loved going up the hill to Kopan, but the energy felt so different. I would have never imagined that before. It was wonderful being with a community of women. Just being able to relax and be yourself without the relationship between men and women, which is very subtle and very strong all our lives. To not have that male influence, for the most part, was wonderful, I really enjoyed it. It’s very harmonious at Khachoe Ghakyil. And living with Tibetans like that – I’d lived in Asia but I’d always been with Western people. It was really fantastic because their way of thinking is so different. And there was a lot of warmth, a lot of love within the community. It was wonderful.

You have some future plans, I hear.

P: Yes. This is a new phase, I think, for both of us. It’s really difficult, moving around. The logistics of carting around 180 kilos of tools and artwork from place to place – I don’t have the right mantras to get on planes without paying excess baggage! And a lot of the original pieces were getting broken. Also, the visa restrictions make the work difficult sometimes. The idea of a base for the workshop has become quite important, which is what we’re trying to do here at Jamyang in London.

What have you got at the moment?

P: We’re renting a room at Jamyang for our studio, a very nice space. It’s important for this kind of work to be based in a Dharma community. We’re very fortunate to have sponsorship this year from a number of sponsors, very, very kind sponsors.

D: And it’s good to be in a center where the teachings are available to us, because often we were living in Dharma centers but not being able to participate because of the language barriers.

P: Now, a new FPMT project has recently been established in Australia, which will be reproducing and distributing our work, making it more available to the centers and to individuals. It is Rinpoche’s idea and he has named it The Enlightenment Project for Purification and Merit. It’s all quite exciting!

The idea came up when Roger Kunsang, Rinpoche’s attendant, suggested that FPMT organize a business, mainly to reproduce and distribute artwork. Rinpoche wants lots of new artwork made by Denise and me, and hopefully the Enlightenment Project will be able to support us both to make this possible.

What does Rinpoche want you to make? Tsa-tsas?

P: Well yes, but there are many statues to be made also. Tsa-tsas are my favorites; I feel happiest when I can help people to do their preliminary practices, by making a tsa-tsa of which, perhaps, there is no Tibetan example. I really feel strongly about the tsa-tsas; that’s how I got so involved in the Dharma in the first place. I guess it’s karma. As far as I am aware, there’s no one really making original tsa-tsas nowadays. Now people write to me and say, “Rinpoche has asked me to do Vajrasattva tsa-tsa practice, I need the Medicine Buddha at the top, at the bottom….” They are amazing combinations of deities that are specifically to help that one person. Rinpoche is like a doctor prescribing medications. There’s no way that one would ever find such specific tsa-tsas, so I try to do. That’s what I really enjoy doing, what gives me the most satisfaction. I feel that I can help people, even if I can’t do the formal practices myself.

What are you making now?

P: Well, I’ve just finished making a statue of the 21 Taras and a statue of 1000-armed Chenrezig. Rinpoche has just checked them both and we have already started reproducing both of them – The Enlightenment Project is doing it.

What’s next?

P: When I saw Rinpoche at Kopan in 1995, he wrote out on the back of a postcard of Boudhanath stupa a list of work he wants made. The next on that list is a larger tsa-tsa of the 35 Buddhas. But it looks like first I will be making a nine-foot statue of Buddha Shakyamuni for Jamyang here in London. I guess I will get back to my postcard list after that. I think that that postcard will keep me busy for at least 15 years!

At the bottom of the list, in big capitals, Rinpoche wrote, “…and last but not least, the Lama Chöpa Merit Field.” This probably the most complicated image one could possibly make, encompassing, as it does, the whole pantheon of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, lineage lamas and protectors: in all there are about 350 deities. They all sit in a particular order upon a huge throne, which is supported by a huge tree. I thought that I would make each deity about three inches high, making the whole structure about seven feet tall. The way I made the 21 Taras statue was really an experiment to see whether the same method would work for the Merit Field statue. Each Tara is cast in a separate mold, and then painted separately. She has her own seat on the supporting tree. It works.

The idea is for each center to have one of these Merit Field statues in their gompa, and it can be made by lots of students. It’s a perfect way to learn about and visualize the Merit Field. The basic background, the empty Merit Tree and all the offerings, will be cast in a huge seven-foot rubber mold. Then students can cast each Buddha separately from individual rubber molds, just like making ordinary tsa-tsas, then paint or gild them and place them onto the correct part of the tree according to the scriptures. I hope that Rinpoche doesn’t ask anyone to make 100,000! (May be I shouldn’t say that: it’d be quite good karma!)

I was so happy when Rinpoche asked me to make this statue. I had been praying so hard to be asked. For me, this is the crème de la crème of all possible jobs. It will take at least 12  years to make the original Merit Field; that’s allowing for an average working time of twelve days per deity – and this is probably a bit optimistic. But I can’t think of a more beneficial or joyful way to spend 12 years. Now I should pray that it can happen.

What about other artists getting involved in projects?

P: I’m sure more artists will get involved, I hope so. It’s not an easy vocation. You have to spend a lot of time, you have to be very concentrated. There’s a lot of technical stuff to know. I think that for a Westerner, even if you don’t use clay, it’s invaluable if you can learn how the Tibetans work with the clay, how they build statues. This is so important. It is the most important thing.

Apparently the first thing that the statue maker checks when somebody wants to learn to make statues is whether the person is really into the Dharma. It is the first thing. It is not whether or not they are a good artist. It has nothing to do with that. Actually the nine-year training program could train anybody. If you’ve got the Dharma, then you have the confidence, the path, everything is there. It doesn’t matter if someone is an amazing artist. It’s definitely not easy. You’ve got to have faith. The work is a holy object. It doesn’t matter what material or how the art looks. The Tibetans have total belief that once it’s been consecrate, it is the deity. I think if a Westerner hasn’t seen that, it would be difficult. I think in general, Westerners don’t see it, they still see the statue as art work and not a holy object. Tibetan art is not about having your name signed at the bottom.

 

The Enlightenment Project for Purification and Merit

With the growth of the Buddhadharma in the West and beyond, there is an increasing demand for holy images such as statues and stupas to grace the meditation halls and grounds of new centers and monasteries. And more and more individuals are taking on the practice of making tsa-tsas, small relief images of the Buddhas.

The Enlightenment Project for Purification and Merit, a new FPMT activity named recently by Lama Zopa Rinpoche, will sponsor sculptors and artists such as Peter Griffin and Denise Griffin to make such holy images.

“Holy objects have incredible power to enable sentient beings to purify negative karma and to accumulate merit,” says Lama Zopa Rinpoche.

The Enlightenment Project is making such powerful images available to many people by sponsoring sculptors and artists such as Peter and Denise Griffin to make statues, stupas and tsa-tsas, and by making them accessible through an international distribution system, including mail order.

All income generated by the project will be use to expand and enhance the services offered by the project and to support the artists.

Contact information for The Enlightenment Project for Purification and Merit can be found at the Chenrezig Institute listing in the FPMT Center Directory.