Avalokiteshvara, bodhisattva of compassion, watches over all living beings, helping them toward spiritual liberation. Holding a lotus and prayer beads with his upper hands and joining his lower hands in the gesture of respectful greeting, he is accompanied at left by the yellow-skinned bodhisattva Manidhara, who holds two blue lotuses, and at right by the goddess Shadakshari, whose white color and attributes match those of Avalokiteshvara. In the Buddhist tradition, thangkas are portable icon paintings whose complex, highly detailed images enable those who contemplate them to understand the divine nature of Buddhas. The ceremony that prepared this painting as a sacred receptacle for Avalokiteshvara included the ritual of opening the eye, which animated the inert painting into the enlightened deity, capable of “seeing” and bestowing blessings on the devotee.
