The nine purposes

Before anything is asked for, somewhere to stand.

Every tradition has a first move, and in this one it is not a request. Refuge is a statement of where you are standing: in the Buddha, in what he taught, and in the community that has carried it since. Nothing on the rest of this page makes much sense without it. The figures gathered here are the ones a household keeps at the centre of a shrine rather than the ones it turns to for a particular trouble.

Shakyamuni is painted golden or saffron in plain monastic robes, without ornament, one hand reaching down over the knee to touch the earth — the gesture of the night he was challenged and called the ground itself as witness. Padmasambhava sits differently, in royal ease, in three layered robes and a red hat with upturned flaps, a vajra held at the heart. One is the teacher as he was; the other is the teacher as Tibet received him.

Traditionally the first painting a family commissions, and the one that stays when the others have been given away.

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The vow is not to be free alone.

Compassion in this tradition is a direction rather than a mood. The vow that defines it is not to be free alone, and the iconography keeps saying so: figures caught in the act of turning toward something, or already halfway to standing.

Green Tara sits with the left leg folded and the right extended onto a small lotus, as though about to rise — she is the one who does not wait. Avalokiteshvara appears in several forms here, from the four-armed figure with a wish-fulfilling jewel held between his palms to the thousand-armed form, which is what the tradition does when it needs to say that attention has no natural limit. Tara is said to have risen from his tear, which makes the two of them one gesture told twice.

Customarily given rather than kept — for a mother, for someone under strain, for a friend setting out on something difficult.

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The sword is raised against confusion, and against nothing else.

This is the smallest of the nine purposes and the most specific. It is about thinking: study, memory, the moment something stops being confusing. The tradition is careful about the metaphor it uses, and it is worth being careful in turn.

Manjushri is shown as a youth, orange or white, with a flaming sword raised in the right hand and the stem of a blue utpala in the left, a text resting on the flower at his shoulder. The sword is read as cutting confusion, not people — it is the attribute most often asked about and the one most often misread. The pairing carries the whole idea: the blade removes what is unclear, the book is what is left once it has. Sarasvati belongs here too, with the vina rather than the sword, for the same faculty approached through sound.

Given before examinations, at the start of a course of study, and to anyone whose work is thinking.

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The vase is full because it was filled.

The wealth figures are the ones most likely to be misunderstood as a transaction, so the tradition builds the answer into the image. Yellow Jambhala holds a mongoose in his left hand, and the mongoose gives up its jewels only when it is pressed. The vase at his feet is full because someone filled it.

He is yellow-bodied and short-limbed, crowned, dressed in silks, a citron in the right hand, seated with one leg drawn in and the other resting down — a posture of readiness rather than repose. Kurukulla and Tsakli Lhamo sit alongside him in this purpose, both associated with prosperity of a more forceful kind. What they are traditionally associated with is sustenance and support for work already under way; none of them is described as a shortcut.

Customarily hung at the opening of a business, and given to people starting work of their own.

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Lapis-coloured, holding the myrobalan.

One figure carries this purpose on his own. The Medicine Buddha is painted the deep blue of lapis lazuli — not a decorative choice but the identifying one, the colour by which he is recognised before anything else in the painting is read.

He wears monastic robes rather than jewellery, sits cross-legged on a lotus throne, and holds a sprig of myrobalan in the right hand and a bowl of nectar in the left. Myrobalan is a real medicinal fruit, still used, which is characteristic of how this purpose works: the imagery stays close to actual practice. He is the painting a sick room is given, and his mantra is the one most often recited on someone else's behalf.

For a recovery, for a long hospital stay, and — as often — for the person doing the caring.

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Not more time. Time held.

Longevity in this tradition is not a wish for more time. It is closer to a wish for time that holds — that is not spent badly, or spent frightened.

Amitabha is Boundless Light; in his long-life aspect he is Amitayus, Boundless Life, and the two are one buddha under two names. He is red, in monastic robes, both hands in the lap in the gesture of meditation, often supporting a vase of deathless nectar. White Tara sits beside him in this purpose, white-bodied on a lotus and moon disc, her right hand over the knee in the gesture of giving. She is counted with the long-life figures and is customarily painted with seven eyes — in the palms, the soles, the forehead — which is the tradition's way of saying that attention is what long life is for.

The customary gift at a sixtieth birthday and at every decade after; also given once a serious illness has passed.

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The wrathful face is turned outward.

The wrathful figures are the ones that stop people in a gallery, and the tradition is unusually direct about them. The anger is borrowed rather than owned, and it is aimed at obstacles rather than at people. The face is fierce because it is turned outward.

Mahakala is black or deep blue, squat and heavy, standing in a mass of flame on a prone figure, a crown of five skulls above three eyes. The six-armed form holds a curved flaying knife and a skullcup at the heart. Palden Lhamo, Garuda and the lion belong here as well, each guarding a different edge. These are the images hung at an entrance, carried on a journey, and closed into a gau when the person wearing it is a long way from home.

Hung at an entrance, carried on a journey, and worn in a gau when the wearer is far from home.

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Begin again, with the year still young.

This purpose is about clearing rather than acquiring, and its central object is not a figure at all. The vajra is a short metal sceptre, symmetrical end to end, with a sphere at the centre standing for emptiness and prongs issuing from lotus petals and the heads of makaras. The word means both diamond and thunderbolt: indestructible, and sudden.

Vajrasattva holds one at the heart with a bell at the hip, white-bodied and youthful, seated on a lotus and moon disc. His is the practice done to clear what has accumulated, and the timing is what gives the purpose its character — it belongs to beginnings. A new year, a move into a new house, the first day of a retreat.

For the new year, for a move into a new house, and for the beginning of a retreat.

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The wheel turns, and someone is holding it.

The last purpose is the one people arrive at without wanting to. It covers birth, death, and what the tradition holds happens between them, and it contains the only image here that is not a deity.

Kshitigarbha vowed not to pass on while a single being remained below. He is painted as a monk rather than a jewelled bodhisattva — shaven head, plain robes — holding a staff to force the gates and a jewel for light to see by. The Wheel of Life beside him is a teaching diagram: a wheel held in the jaws of Yama, a pig, a snake and a cockerel circling nose to tail at the hub. It is not a comforting picture, and it is not meant to be. It is the one commissioned for a funeral, and for the forty-nine days that follow it.

Commissioned for a funeral, for the forty-nine days that follow one, and for the anniversary.

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