Years back I got ushered up to talk to GMR, By Ted Lafferty and Kimberly Theresa, with out really knowing what was going to happen. before I knew it I walked away tasked to design a book  cover for a wide release version of the King of the Dharma book, at the time only a limited run of 1008 prints had been made. I took the task seriously and spent a couple of months reading digesting, then ultimately painting this in many stages. At one point I even rented space with Ori Carino,(who did illustrations on the interior) and slept on the floor of the paint covered studio trying and hoping meditation would yield a result on how to create 1 image that summed up Je Tsongkhapa's life.

Eventually after getting quite nervous and really having nothing to show for it  a lesson from Alan Watts came though on my podcasts, a debate on form Vs beauty or, style vs substance, something like that ... and what I  ended up landing on was the Beauty, Joy was the right and higher, more immediate road to what I, and maybe we all, are after.

So I let go of technically resolving a story moment from the book and got to drawing in a way that made me feel good looked beautiful to me,. Loose. And these lines, and ribbons and energetic burst came out.. and this ended up becoming the the foundation. first as a pencil drawing then worked it up and spent a lot of time figuring out all the technical stuff.

Unfortunately the book was never able to be re-released, the publishe felt not enough people would buy itit s a big expensive book to print and it would be a big loss.

When I heard the news of Lama Marut being sick, I sincerely thought I'd have more time. 

Many thoughts came to my mind, how many things I learned from him and acted upon... he would never know how much he completely changed my life... my blood and bones have this guy and what he stands for in them..I’m beyond grateful and never thought i had the constitution to gush and pour my heart all over him during my time with him. 

One secret I held until this point was that I made the central Buddha Palita figure in my Original, in Marut's likeness. He's wearing a pointy hat, (you dont want to come to a debate like this with out a point hat) so it covered him up, but it was a little something for me I hid in there.

This image depicts a powerful Moment, the lineage holder on emptiness, debate the nature of ultimate reality, which gets kicked off by Arya Nagarjuna.

Lama Marut taught us Arya Nagarjuna. Every time I saw him he taught Nagarjuna. The last retreat I saw him was all Arya Nagarjuna. It was life changing I got the transmission.

So I thought, I cant imagine where Cindy and Marut are right now, but you know,at least  I really thought this would make them both laugh, you know that's  really a shot in the arm. 10 years ago I gave him a bracelet that had alot of meaning to me, and the next day someone else was wearing it, something straight out of the playbook he had taught me... So i knew this would really bug him out ;)

Unfortunately he was gone with 2 weeks of the notice:

I'm happy we have something like this for him; and its also still really hard to fathom and never thought of it as an image we would look at to think of him, and be the cover of this amazing poem of everything we heard.. still all very fresh, ill have to post that in the coming days.