Page 12 - Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols

Handbook of Tibetan Buddhis#128 9/1/10 11:23 AM Page xi

INTRODUCTION

n the summer of 1999 I completed the text been presented on the complex symbolism
Iof The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols of Vajrayana art.
and Motifs (Boston: Shambhala. & London: This Handbook is based on a synthesis
Serindia). This book took a long time in its from the original text of The Encyclopedia,
making. The brush drawings alone took al- and of the condensed version that appears in
most eight years to complete, and were cre- Deities of Tibetan Buddhism. Although only
ated in a prolonged period of semi-retreat in a limited selection of my original drawings
the remote Western Highlands of Scotland. appear in this book, and the scope of the
By comparison the writing of the text was subject matter has been reduced, I feel that
relatively quick and painless. When there is this material is now presented in a more ac-
much to say words are easy to come by, and cessible and user-friendly format.
perhaps my greatest difficulty was in know- I have tried to structure the contents of
ing when to stop. After writing nearly a this book into a logical progression, so that
quarter of a million words my publisher and the many lists of numerical concepts, which
editor ‘brought the chopper down’. The are so characteristic of the Buddhist teach-
book was way past its deadline, and there ings, are gradually introduced into the text.
wasn’t even time left to create an index. But The first five sections of this Handbook cov-
I felt it was a good and original work, al- ers the main groups of auspicious symbols,
though I also felt it was virtually being pre- offerings, and emblems, many of which ap-
sented in its first draft. peared as the first symbolic motifs of early
At the beginning of 2000 I wrote a con- Indian Buddhism. The sixth section deals
cise pictorial index for Deities of Tibetan with the origins of the main natural and
Buddhism (Willson, M. and Brauen, M. mythological animals that appear in Bud-
2000. Boston: Wisdom). Martin Willson dhist art. The seventh section deals with the
spent around fourteen years translating and cosmological symbols of the sun and moon,
annotating the Tibetan texts for this work, the five elements, Mount Meru, and the
which covers the abridged descriptions of mandala offering. The eighth section intro-
just over five hundred deities. With the al- duces the main ritual Vajrayana implements
most simultaneous publication of these two of the vajra and bell, crossed-vajra, and
works I felt that some original insight had ritual dagger, and the tantric kapalika