Thangkas – Sacred Tibetan Paintings as a Path to Inner Clarity and Stillness

Sometimes I stand before a thangka and notice my breath slowing down, without consciously controlling it. It’s not a big event, nothing loud or striking. Rather, it’s something that changes very quietly within me.

My name is Kunsang S. and I originally come from Tibet. I have lived in Switzerland for over ten years. During this time, my life has changed significantly – language, daily life, surroundings. Yet, thangkas have remained. Not as a memory of something past, but as something that always brings me back to myself.

When I look at a thangka

I still remember my first encounters with thangkas as a child. I simply looked at them then, without questioning them. They were just there, like mountains or the sky – natural, silent, present.

Today, it's no different. When I stand before a thangka, I don't try to understand it. I simply let it affect me. And eventually, something very simple happens: my mind becomes calmer, without me forcing it. It’s as if something inside stops rushing.

What I see in these images

Many people first see the colors. Gold, red, blue – clear, vibrant, powerful. I don't see decoration in them, but states of being.

Red feels to me like heart energy, like warmth, like life. Blue like something infinite that cannot be held. Gold like something that remains, even when everything else changes. White like a clarity that does not need to be explained.

And yet, the most important thing is not what I see, but what becomes still within me as I look.

The way they are created

I once had the opportunity to watch a thangka painter at work. It was a small, quiet room. Nothing about it seemed hurried. Every brushstroke had weight, not in a physical sense, but in the attention it received.

Sometimes he would pause, as if listening inward briefly before continuing. In that moment, I understood that a thangka is not simply painted. It emerges from a state of being.

Between Tibet and Switzerland

In Switzerland, I have come to know a different kind of silence. The silence of the mountains, of the clear air, of the vast landscape. This often reminds me of something I know from Tibet, without being able to name it directly.

When I walk through nature here and later see a thangka, it sometimes feels as if two kinds of silence meet. The outer and the inner.

What I often want to tell people

If someone asks me what a thangka is, I don't give a long explanation. I often just say: look at it, without wanting to achieve anything.

Because as soon as we absolutely want to understand something, we sometimes lose the direct experience. And it is precisely this experience that matters.

For me, thangkas are not objects. They are encounters. And each encounter is different, depending on how we are in that moment.

Why they have stayed with me

There are days when my mind is loud. Many thoughts, many directions, many things at once. In such moments, I don't go far away, but to a thangka.

I don't look at it for long. Sometimes just briefly. But in that short time, something changes within me. It doesn't become perfect, not complete – but calmer. A little bit more myself.

A final thought

I don't believe thangkas provide answers.

But they change the way I view the world. And sometimes, that's exactly enough.