Tricycle | Awake in the World

I’ve heard it said that there are many doorways into the dharma: some students enter through reading texts, some through listening to teachings, and some through art. A number of teachers, including the mystic G. I. Gurdjieff and the meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, have spoken of artworks that embody higher consciousness and have the ability to transmit this awareness just by their visual presence. Robert Beer’s own paintings and drawings, and the work by contemporary Newar [indigenous people of the Kathmandu Valley] masters he discusses here, may be such art. I first encountered Beer’s work when in the late 1980s I came across a copy of Masters of Enchantment: The Lives and Legends of the Mahasiddhas, translated by Keith Dowman and illustrated by Beer.