VAJRADHARA – WITH REFUGE TREE

VAJRADHARA-WITH REFUGE TREE
Refuge Tree or Refuge Field paintings depict the important objects of “Refuge” for each sect or lineage in the form of a genealogical chart. Each lineage has its own distinctive form of composition, but they usually include the “Three Jewels” (Sanskrit: triratna): Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the “Refuges” common to all major schools of Buddhism. They may also include what is known in the Nyingma and Kagyu sects as the “Three Roots” (Tibetan: tsa sum) which include the numerous important Lamas and Lineage Holders, particular meditational deities (Tibetan: Yidam), the Dakinis (Tibetan: Khadroma) or the Protectors of the Lineage (Sanskrit: Dharmapāla, Tibetan: Chokyong). Many other figures such as Buddhist practitioners, animals, offering goddesses and other Buddhist symbols and imagery are also often included. A Refuge Tree painting may contain over a hundred figures, or only the key representative figures of each main grouping.
A key function of a Refuge Tree painting is to depict the transmission lineage of the particular sect or tradition. As David P. Jackson & Janice Jackson stated in Tibetan Thangka Painting, “For the religious practitioner these paintings embodied the whole lineage through which the tradition descended, from its ultimate origin down to the practitioner’s own teacher”. The Jacksons go on to explain that the practitioner imagines the main central figure of the Refuge Tree (the identity of which depends on the particular tradition) as the essence of one’s main teacher or Root Lama.
The structures of the compositions symbolize the interconnectedness of the various figures and groupings. The figures of “Refuge” are depicted within the form of a tree diagram usually supported by three main structures: the branches of a stylized tree, a palace, or lotus flower and lion throne. The support depends on the lineage and the liturgical text the painting is based on.
When the support is a tree, it is often referred to as a “wish-fulfilling tree” (Wylie: dpag bsam gyi shing). In A Shrine for Tibet, Marylin M. Rhie and Robert A. F. Thurman asserts that the depiction of the Refuge Assembly in the form of a tree “developed from the ancient tradition of the Buddha being born under an Ashoka tree, attaining enlightenment under a pipal or Bodhi Tree, and passing away from his coarse material body under two Sal trees”.