The transformative power of sacred art creation

When I started teaching Western women the sacred art of Tibetan appliqué in 2008, I thought I was just teaching sewing techniques. My students quickly cleared me up. It turns out that he had seriously underestimated the power of tradition and transmission. Through teaching, I discovered the transformative effect of the sacred textile art that I had been doing for 20 years.

I had lived in North India for nine years and learned how to make silk thangkas as an apprentice to master Tibetan artisans.

A thangka is a roll-up tapestry, a scroll, that represents a sacred image or a spiritual teacher. Most thangkas are painted on canvas and framed in brocade, but I studied a rarer type of thangka in which the images are constructed of hundreds of pieces of silk, outlined with hand-wrapped horsehair, assembled into an intricate mosaic. .

Six days a week for four years, I sat with young Tibetans in a sewing workshop outside the Dalai Lama’s temple. The atmosphere was permeated with dharma. The sounds of teaching and practice echoed from every window and courtyard. I attended Buddhist philosophy classes in the morning with Tibetan scholars (geshe) and then walked up the steep hill to the workshop where I sewed thangkas all afternoon.

I had absorbed the dharma that this community breathed, and it flowed out through my fingers into the thangkas that I sewed together. But I was not a Dharma teacher, and just an inconsistent meditator. I told future students that I would teach them sewing techniques, sacred only by association. You should not expect spiritual enlightenment from me. They must look for that elsewhere, I thought.

Little did I know, every line and stitch of this artwork carries the light of the Buddhas and of generations of artists and practitioners. You cannot escape the deeper lessons woven into the fabric of this lineage.

I was living in Italy, married and making custom thangkas, when an American woman in France contacted me and sparked the creation of the Stitching Buddhas Virtual Learner Program. Louise had returned to France after many years of following her husband’s work from one country to another while raising small children. She now she was looking for an occupation, something meaningful to do with her energies.

Louise had trained as a costume designer and was a practicing Buddhist. When she saw her first silk thangka online, she found it a natural combination of her creative experience with her spiritual practice. I had the same feeling sixteen years earlier when I walked into a Tibetan sconce studio in India. Could you now offer this gift to others?

Working with a needle and thread awakens our tactile intelligence. The eyes and ears are not our only receptors for learning. The rational mind is not our only mode of understanding. And surely the voice is not our only communication tool. We also perceive, learn and communicate through our fingers. But in the 21st century, our range of manual engagement has been reduced to tapping soft keys and swiping touch screens.

People who knit or quilt or work on a potter’s wheel have experienced the mindful quality that can come from slow, deliberate movement and tactile sensation. Making something by hand slows down the busyness of life, if only momentarily.

Not only that, but the thread becomes a metaphor for your life. You see how things get tangled up when you don’t pay attention. You see where perfectionism stumbles you, where you’re afraid to move on, and how sometimes the harder you try, the worse things get. Sometimes gentleness and a relaxed approach are needed. These patterns become evident in the sewing, and awareness seeps into other activities.

The applied Tibetan tradition flows from an ancient spiritual lineage of artists, teachers and practitioners who have created and used its images in their practice. When we sew, we receive its transmission through our fingers.

People often ask me if I meditate while sewing. I say that this sewing IS meditation.

Literally, the Tibetan word for meditation (gom) means to become acquainted. Through meditation, we become familiar with desirable states of mind (expansive, loving, giving, and unruffled states of mind) in an effort to make them habitual.

When we sew a thangka or even a lotus flower, we are in the presence of enlightenment. We become familiar with enlightened beings and thus with the higher qualities of our own nature. The images in our hands symbolize the clearest, highest and best parts of ourselves and humanity. Stitch by stitch, we allow these qualities to fill us.

Most of my students, the Stitching Buddhas, are women in their 50s and 60s. They are well educated. Many have worked in healing professions such as nursing, medicine, social work, and psychotherapy. Many are mothers of adult children. They come to practice with a limited time awareness. Some face decreased eyesight or challenges with their manual dexterity. Some have no sewing experience at all. They are not preparing for a career in thangka making. They are looking to live their life meaningfully and happily, and leave something beautiful in their wake.

Buddhism encourages us to recognize our good fortune and make good use of this precious human life. Human rebirth is rare and hard to come by. With gratitude in her heart, each Buddha-woman sews her answer to Mary Oliver’s sumptuous question: “Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”