Prajnaparamita

A few years ago I asked my friend Tara DiGesu if I could commission her to make a thangka (traditional Tibetan scroll painting) of Prajnaparamita (the female deity who is the embodiment of transcendent wisdom). She agreed and we embarked on a collaboration that resulted in an image that is much loved by many of my friends and students. 

Prajñaparamita (Skt. prajñāpāramitā; Tib. ཤེར་ཕྱིན་, ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་, sherchin; Wyl. sher phyin, shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa) means 'Perfection of Wisdom', or more literally, ‘transcendent wisdom’. It refers to:

1. The sixth of the paramitas: perfect non-conceptual wisdom.

2. The class of Buddhist literature that was mainly discovered by Nagarjuna in the second century. Its central topic is emptiness.

3. The female deity who is the embodiment of transcendent wisdom.