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Tsa Tsa: Images of Awareness
Tsa Tsa are sacred sculptures, not because they are shaped just like the actual bodies of deities that exist like superheroes somewhere out there, but because their forms encode essential expressions of wisdom and compassion, and especially because the fact that they appear as forms is undeniable. As such, Buddhists consider them to be expressions of the tangible experiencable aspect of enlightenment. When philosophers talk about Being and so on and so forth, there is always a critical place where words fall by the side. In this place we find ourselves forced to admit that although we don't really know if anything actually exists separate from our minds, we can't just say that nothing is real. We can't just tell ourselves that nothing's going on because every time we do something we have to deal with the consequences. This is the form aspect of awakeness, also known as the Nirmanakaya.
The Nirmanakaya is known as compassionate embodiment, meaning that the forms that appear are specifically generated out of great love for beings who are finding their way through transient lives. Sacred images are thought to be able to galvanize and stir the seed of awakening within these beings, just by merely coming into contact with them through the senses of touch and sight.
Tsa tsa are often reproductions of sculptures, casts made from molds. Tsa tsa molds themselves can be considered expressions of the essential insight of Buddhist meditation articulated in the Heart Sutra and elsewhere. In order to distinguish this insight from any kind of conceptual thought, it was given the name "Transcendental Wisdom," "The Wisdom Gone Beyond," or Prajnaparamita in Sanskrit. In Buddhist iconography and art, Prajnaparamita is portrayed as a female buddha, and she is called "The Mother of the Buddhas."
The heart of the Heart Sutra says, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is none other than emptiness, emptiness is none other than form." Usually only the first two statements are quoted, but these four statements are deliberate in that they overturn all four positions of classical Indian logic. In Indian logic, all debates fall into defending one of four positions: "It's this, it's the opposite of this, its both this and the opposite, or it's neither this nor its opposite." The Wisdom Gone Beyond says, "its not this, nor is it the opposite, nor is it both nor is it neither...its actually beyond all those strategies and ways of describing what is going on."
A tsa tsa mold is a form in that it's shape holds the contours for a cast to form around (form is emptiness). At the same time, a tsa tsa mold is a vessel, for a mold is a space that a cast can be poured into (emptiness is form). But the mold only gives the cast shape by being what the cast is not (form is none other than emptiness), and the mold only functions as a vessel if the cast is poured into it (emptiness is none other than form).
Tsa tsa molds also beautifully express the triumph of the nirmanakaya as the embodiment of wisdom love: no matter what is poured into the tsa tsa mold, be it water, plaster, clay, or whatever, it will faithfully turn it into the graceful contours of a buddha. Once a perfect tsa tsa mold exists, countless casts can be produced from that solitary design. Here again the mystery of emptiness and form, the one and the many is apparent.
Great Queen Prajnaparamita,
your womb is
the miraculous vessel of form:
within its spaciousness
the elements are unfailingly sculpted
by your love
into children of wonder.
Water mingles with earth,
awakening the fire of longing.
Spurred on by the wind of blessings,
this child:
impressed by the Space Queen's seal.
Blessed Princes and Princesses
enter realms of delight,
liberating all who encounter them.
Creative potency of wisdom's art,
may the sacred bloodline
of the Queen and King
bloom as poppies
of the summer rains.