Speaking With the Ravens

NY Arts Magazine published an interview by Tchera Niyego with Ngak’chang Rinpoche titled “Speaking With the Ravens.”

The interview uses Rinpoche’s series of surreal paintings of nudes with ravens as a starting point for a discussion of the connections between Vajrayana Buddhism and the arts.

Excerpts:

I’ve always been interested in presenting Vajrayana to artists. There’s always been an idea about Buddhism in the West, that the most natural crossover is with philosophy, psychology, and science, but that really mainly concerns Sutric Buddhism rather than Tantric Buddhism, and I’ve always felt that maybe arts were a far better bridge in terms of Tantric Buddhism.

I would like people to feel empowered, not to feel like failures, also for people who don’t see themselves as artists to think that they could be artists because you never have to sell a painting to be an artist; you just have to keep working at it. And it has to be part of your own experience, part of your own appreciation.