The Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols

Robert Beer is an artist and scholar of Tibetan Buddhist iconography who has spent decades studying and painting traditional Tibetan sacred art, and this handbook, published by Serindia Publications, an academic press specializing in Asian art, systematically documents the symbols used in Tibetan Buddhist art and their meanings. Its strength is that Beer combines an artist's close attention to how symbols are actually drawn with textual research into their doctrinal meaning, drawing on Tibetan sources and consultation with Tibetan teachers. Its limit is that as a single author's synthesis of a vast visual tradition, some regional or lineage specific variations in symbol meaning may be simplified for a general handbook format, so highly specific ritual usage should be checked against a source focused on that particular lineage.