Rigsum Gonpo- Tibetan GroupCollective"Three Bodhisattva Protectors"

Three Colors Above the Doorway

Across Tibet, three stripes of earth pigment mark the threshold of the sacred: white for Chenrezig, gold for Manjushri, dark blue for Vajrapani. They appear above doorways and on mani walls, at high passes and isolated shrines where no other image stands. No figurative form is needed. The three colors are enough.

Stupas dedicated to the Rigsum Gonpo are painted in the same three bands. The abstraction is the point. Where a thangka painting might show the three bodhisattvas seated together in careful iconographic detail, the painted stripes reduce the triad to its essence: compassion, wisdom, power, laid down in pigment by any hand that knows which color goes where.

The Guardians of the Jokhang

King Songtsen Gampo, the dharma king who first established Buddhism in Tibet around the seventh century, built four Rigsum Gonpo temples at the cardinal directions around the Jokhang in Lhasa, Tibet's most sacred shrine. The temples formed a protective mandala, the combined guardianship of three bodhisattvas encircling the place where the dharma had taken root. In the eighth century, four more temples were built at the intermediate directions, completing a full octagonal ring of protection.

Two of the original cardinal temples survive today. They were restored after the devastation of the Cultural Revolution, their three-colored stripes repainted above the doors.