The urge to fly has transfixed human imagination with a steady, irresistible charm for millennia. This catalog presents Tibetan paintings that explore the theme of flying as a spiritual power. In Buddhist thought, flight is within our potential as human beings. With advanced spiritual development come supernatural powers such as flying, levitation, or the ability to walk through the sky as some walk on a mountain path. Indo-Tibetan literature is filled with accounts of the phenomena, and biographical accounts of the great lineage masters often includes a section on occasions when flying was called for. Similarly, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist artists frequently draw from flying anecdotes in their paintings and sculptural works.

Flying Mystics can perhaps be regarded as a preliminary adventure into this ancient and venerable history. Using Buddhist art and literature as its vehicles, it presents some of the greatest Tibetan masterpiece paintings depicting famous Buddhist masters of flight, and also draws from the biographies of the most famous Buddhist flyers over the ages.

The Flying Mystics of Tibetan Buddhism, Glenn H. Mullin, Serindia Publications / Rubin Museum of Art, Hardcover, 2006, 248 Pages, $39.95

Glenn H. Mullin is an internationally renowned Tibetologist, author, and expert on Buddhist meditation. Glenn Lived in Dharamsala, India, the home of the Dalai Lama, for many years, where he studied Tibetan language, literature, yoga, and meditation under twenty-five of the greatest masters of Tibet. He is the author of over fifteen books on Buddhist topics and has led many pilgrimages to Nepal and Tibet in the last five years. He now divides his time between writing, lecturing, giving workshops, leading pilgrimages to the power places of Central Asia.