The painting often sold in Nepal as the "Way to Heaven" shows the path of calm abiding (Sanskrit shamatha, Tibetan shiné), the meditation that trains the mind to rest steadily on a single object. Its Tibetan name, shiné peri, simply means "picture of calm abiding". A monk leads an elephant and a monkey up a winding road, and as the road climbs the wild animals are tamed: despite the name it is sold under, it is a picture of meditation rather than of a heaven.
How it is shown
- The monk is the meditator. He carries a rope, mindfulness, which keeps the mind on its object, and a hook, alertness, which notices when it starts to drift.
- The elephant is the mind. At first it is black, the colour of dullness; stage by stage it turns white, starting from the head.
- The monkey is distraction, the mind running after other things. At first it leads the elephant; later it follows, falls behind and finally disappears.
- A small hare, in many versions, rides on the elephant's back for a few stages: a subtler dullness that is harder to notice.
- Flames beside the path stand for effort. They grow smaller as less effort is needed, and finally vanish.
- Objects of the senses, such as silk, fruit, a conch, cymbals and a mirror, lie along the road: the things that pull attention away.
- At the top, the monk rides the white elephant, flies, or crosses a rainbow: the ease and bliss of body and mind that come with calm abiding. In many versions he holds a flaming sword, the insight that cuts through the root of suffering.
The nine stages
The road follows the nine stages of settling the mind described in Indian texts attributed to the master Asanga and widely taught in Tibetan Buddhism: placing the mind, continuous placement, repeated placement, close placement, taming, pacifying, thorough pacifying, single-pointedness and balanced placement. The painting climbs through them from the bottom to the top. Calm abiding is not the final goal: it is the steady ground for insight (vipashyana), which is why the path ends where the sword of insight appears. Little is known about the history of the picture itself; scholars have compared it with the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures of Zen Buddhism.
In a painting
Read it from the bottom up. A good example makes the change gradual and easy to follow: the white spreading evenly over the elephant and the monkey, the flames shrinking bend by bend, the hare appearing and then disappearing. The monk should be recognisably the same figure all the way up, and the small sense objects should be clear. Some of our paintings begin at a temple at the foot of the mountain and end with the monk riding the white elephant along a rainbow towards the Buddha. Like the Wheel of Life, it is a teaching painted as a picture, and it suits a meditation room or a study.
