Outline Pages from HAR

I have many Outline Pages for the Sakya Tradition on the HAR (Himalayan Art Resources) website. I have always tried to keep these two resources separate because one (SRG) is faith based and the other (HAR) is a general art education site. The problem for me now is that HAR has become quite rich with Sakya material and I don't always have the time to copy or re-create the same pages for the SRG site even though that is my initial feeling of what should happen. There is no intention or plan to blend the sites but I feel I must be more blatant in making Sakya practitioners aware of what is on HAR.

We all have to remember that the HAR site is dealing with all of the religious imagery, art styles, and aesthetics coming out of Himalayan Style Art and it is funded by the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. I alone (no bosses) support the SRG website. It would be completely unfair to be partial to one tradition over another on the HAR site, as everybody has to be treated equally.

Now, I believe, if you were to do a survey of the art objects that I have written about in depth, over the past 11 years, on the HAR site you will find that I have actually devoted far more time and energy into the non-Sakya traditions, iconography, and painting sets. It has taken me years to finally begin to document all of the Lamdre Lineage paintings. The sculpture has still not been done. Early on I worked on the subjects people seemed to be most interested in and subjects supported by large numbers of artworks such as the Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, Karmapa, Shamar, Situ, Padmasambhava, etc. And I can tell you, just dealing with all of the different representations of Padmasambhava and all the Terma 'Revealed Treasure' Traditions and their different forms is a daunting task. Jamgon Kongtrul had to write the Rinchen Terdzo in one hundred and twenty volumes to try and keep it all straight.

So, to try and deal with all of that, from now on what I will be doing is keeping the SRG site more up to date on all the Sakya additions to the HAR website:
1. Sakya Outline Page
2. Lamdre Painting Sets Page
3. Thirteen Golden Dharmas
4. Panjarnata Mahakala
5. Sakya Monasteries
6. Lamdre Lineage
7. Sakya Lineages
8. Sakya Protectors
9. Sakya Hats

Other Important Sakya Resources

I need to say that one reason that the SRG has been neglected, which I feel bad about, is because I spend so much of my time working in New York on the Himalayan Art Resources website (HAR) of the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. This and the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) have been my primary job for the last nearly 11 years. However, I am now the former Senior Curator of the RMA and this has freed up enormous amounts of my time. My main focus currently is directed towards the HAR website, research, consulting, translating, writing and publishing.

With that out of the way, let's now talk about the enormous wealth of Sakya resources on the HAR website. Aside from using the general Index, found on the home page, when searching on specific subjects like a deity name or person, for example Hevajra, or Sakya Pandita, look to the Sakya Tradition in the Outline Pages, found at the bottom of the HAR home page. In Outlines find Religious Traditions and click on Sakya. From here you can access many Thematic Sets (our technical word for groupings of related art objects) that take you to specific Sakya subjects.

Not all art images have write-ups or explanations. You have to be a little adventurous and explore by clicking on the different thumbnail images until you find a painting or sculpture that interests you or has a write-up that is on a subject you are looking for. Don't be afraid to explore.

The current Sakya Outline page is actually out dated and I will be correcting that soon with updated images, information, links, etc. Last summer I spent five weeks teaching in Tibet and was fortunate to have a full week in Sakya and was able to take thousands of pictures of art and architecture. These images will be going up onto the HAR website soon. For important Sakya subjects also look at the Outline Page titled Iconography: Deities & Subjects. Here you will find many important subjects that relate directly to Sakya and the various branch schools. For those of you that are actual practitioners look to the Thirteen Golden Dharmas page for images that correspond to those practices.

As a supplement to the Sakya Glossary (SRG) and those of you that have the Vajrayogini glossary on the SRG site please look to the Caution Words glossary and others on the HAR site under Links, Subject, and finally Glossary Resources. The first entries that are preceded by an * asterisks I have written especially for the HAR website. The others are links to mostly academic institutions with useful glossaries. The *Mahasiddha Glossary especially should be of interest to Sakya practitioners.

As I re-do the main Sakya Outline page on HAR I will try to keep in mind the needs of Sakya followers and re-shape the information so as to present the HAR information in a more practitioner/follower framework on the SRG website. (The image on the left is a picture of me in a Manjushri Chapel in Sakya, June 2007).

Sakya Outline Page
Iconography: Deities & Subjects
Glossary Resources