☸️ Tutelary Goddess of Tawang

The most arresting building on the premises of Tawang Monastery is the assembly hall known as Dukhang. It is a three-storied building that houses the Labrang or the establishment of the Abbot. The inner walls of the Dukhang are painted with murals of various deities with the altar occupying the entire northern wall of the room. The silver casket wrapped in silk on the left side of the altar contains the Thangka of Goddess Palden Lhamo or Sri Devi, the tutelary deity of the community, which was passed on to Merak Lama by the fifth Dalai Lama. The said painting came to be known as Ja-Droi-Ma, which means that it had the warmth of a bird throbbing with a living spirit.

The painting depicts the goddess as raging divinity, deep blue in colour, three-eyed, and with red hair symbolizing her wrathful demeanour, crossing a sea of blood on a white mule. The mule has a cavity on its rump where her fuming husband's arrow hit it after she killed her son and used his skin as a saddle blanket. She is shown drinking blood from a human skull and is quite the antithesis of the Green Tara, the benevolent mother goddess of the Tantric Buddhist tradition.

The fanged mouth, skull ornaments & the garland of decapitated heads position this figure as the Buddhist equivalent of Hindu Kali. She is the most incensed of the Rakshasas who were disciplined & blessed to act as the Dharmapalas of the ancient manuscripts. This frightful concept forms the essence of Tantric Buddhist art, which explores extremes of transgressive human experiences in the search for Thunderbolt or Vajrayana enlightenment.