The One Gone Beyond: Nearing (2025)

The One Gone Beyond: Nearing is a generative digital screen edition based on the thousand-year-old sacred geometry used to construct Indo-Tibetan thangka paintings. Its underlying grid corresponds to Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical figure who established Buddhist philosophy and its subsequent religious traditions 2,500 years ago.

The piece is executed as custom computer software rendered in real time. It filters a low-resolution image of a traditional thangka painting through the sacred geometry of Shakyamuni Buddha, with colors that shift in six-minute cycles—a common duration for a focused meditation session. These cycles are not video loops, but continuous algorithmic renderings translated through the “mind” of the computer that aim to evoke specific meditative states in the viewer. In this case, a concentrated meditative state resting in pure awareness.

The subtitle, Nearing, refers to the fourth of nine stages of meditative concentration—a state in which focus stabilizes enough to rest more on the object of meditation than on discursive thought.

Thangka paintings are part of the Vajrayana tradition of Buddhism. They often reference a key concept familiar to tantric practitioners: the three bodies of an enlightened being—dharmakaya (mind), sambhogakaya (energetic or emotional body), and nirmanakaya (physical form). In tantric visualization practice, the deity one imagines often relates to the energetic body, serving as a bridge between mind and matter.

This energetic form arises from a field of infinite light and clarity, into which it eventually dissolves. I try to echo that process in the artwork’s evolution: emerging from a single color field into which it eventually dissolves.

 About the Hidden Geometries Series

The One Gone Beyond: Nearing is part of the Hidden Geometries series, based on the grids that Himalayan painters have used for centuries. I learned these techniques over the past 24 years from master Tibetan and Nepalese thangka artists in Nepal and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Like other works in the series, this one is inspired by the long South Asian lineage of devotional art. Unlike much Western art, which often emphasizes cultural, aesthetic, or intellectual content, devotional art seeks to induce a direct inner experience. My work continue that tradition, aiming to evoke specific meditative states in the viewer.

The thangka paintings upon which these works are based are part of Tibetan Buddhism’s Vajrayana tradition. In this form of Buddhism, we understand both these archetypes of enlightenment and ourselves to be comprised of three “bodies”: our physical body, our mind, and an energetic body that bridges them. We experience this energetic body that translates mind to matter when we speak, dance, exercise, play music—and make art.

In tantric visualization practice, the archetype one imagines relates to this energetic body, embodying qualities like love, compassion, wisdom, and power. Its form arises in meditation from a field of infinite light and clarity, into which it eventually dissolves. I echo that process in each artwork’s evolution: emerging from a single color field into which it eventually dissolves.

Technically, each software art piece is executed as custom computer software written by the artist that is rendered in real time on a small computer mounted on the back of the display. It filters a low-resolution image of a traditional thangka painting through the sacred geometry of the particular archetype. These cycles are not video loops, but continuous algorithmic renderings translated through the “mind” of the computer.