In the popular iconography of the Four Friends of the Himalayas (depicted here by me), we can see that earlier depictions by medieval Buddhist artists moved towards an abstraction, essentialism and reduction. Painters are visionaries and imaginers in that regard, formally prescribing and envisioning a reciprocal relationship between species dependent on the environment, but also noting how they shape the living environment, which is signified by a tree (originally a banyan tree).

The canonical story, as preserved in the Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, recounts a dispute among four animals—a partridge, a hare, a monkey, and an elephant. They sought to establish a peaceful social order and decided to determine seniority not by physical strength, but by their memory of a great banyan tree around which they lived. Indeed, human society is based on a deep collective memory that all institutions and progress are ultimately based. In the story the elephant recalled seeing the tree when it was already a substantial bush. The monkey remembered it as a young sapling. The hare had seen it as a mere sprout. The partridge, however, revealed that he had eaten the fruit of a previous tree and excreted the seed from which this tree had grown. This memory-based criterion of leadership led the partridge to be the most senior among all and the origin of their sustenance and shelter. They lived in harmony, with the elephant carrying the monkey, who held the hare, upon whom the partridge stood. It teaches the viewer that a harmonious society is one where the strong (the elephant) support the weak but follow the guidance of the wise (the partridge).

While my drawing illustrates this story, Buddhist scripture describes the allegory in more serious contexts of soteriology and realisation with reference to Buddha and his three foremost disciples: the partridge represents the Buddha (the source of the Dharma, the seed giver), the hare is Śāriputra (supreme in wisdom because of his penetrating insight), the monkey is Mahāmaudgalyāyana (supreme in psychic powers, able to harvest fruits by his agility), and the elephant is Ānanda (the Buddha’s cousin and attendant who could memorise the sutras and became the carrier of teachings). The story suggests the interwoven roles of the Buddha and his three key disciples in the reproduction of nirvanic technologies. The artistic choice of animal for each historical person is deliberate and symbolic of their roles in an envisioned community of the animal kingdom of which we are a part.

On another level, the iconography of four friends has been constructive because it depicted enlightened beings in and as animal forms dependant on trees. The iconography knocked down the pretences of human beings as distinct from animals. It is a visual manifesto of the circle of life and web of life—or regeneration and rebirth—in which a person today can be a monkey tomorrow or vice-versa.

The allegory of four friends and how they are depicted artistically is relevant for modern societies. It presents a model for community that directly inverts the principles of raw power and short-term dominance that often characterise our political and corporate landscapes. Brute economic, infrastructural and technological scales are often a direct index of leadership, not wisdom. Our greatest challenges can only be met by a social order where respect is earned by wisdom and generosity of contribution, and a space where every role, from the foundational to the visionary, is recognised as essential to the whole.

The Mandala

The mandala is another popular iconography in the Himalaya, although it originated in India’s Pala Empire (c. eighth-twelfth centuries CE) as a distinct art form. Mandalas were created as sophisticated meditational and ritual tools, and as blueprints of the universe and maps for the path to enlightenment. Practitioners visualise themselves entering the mandala, dissolving their ego, and merging with the central deity.

Among the most complex cosmology that stretches to be a unified theory is the five storeyed mandala of the Kalachakra and Vishwamata mandala with 722 attending deities, introduced in the eleventh century.¹ These deities represent aspects of outer, inner, and transcendental time and our cyclical existence. The main statue of Kalachakra and Vishwamata and the mandala are shown above.

The outer time includes the natural environment and planetary cycles, and time-counting systems like calendars are linked to them. This reflects the Wheel of Time aspect, emphasising that everything in the external universe is in a constant, cyclical state of flux. The inner time refers to subtle body cycles in the human body including the channels (nadis), energy-winds (prana), drops (bindu), and the chakras. A basic map of the subtle energy sytem, as it is described by Longchen Ramjam in his fourteenth-century text, is shown in my detailed drawing.² It also includes the cycles of breath, the flow of psychic energies, and the passage of a human life—birth, death, bardo (intermediate state), rebirth. For example, the 21,600 breaths a human being takes in a day are correlated with the 21,600 solar years of a cosmic cycle.

The understanding of the interconnection of the outer and inner is then leveraged to achieve liberation. The goal is to realise the indivisible union of great bliss (mahasukha) and the empty nature of all phenomena (shunyata). This is achieved by manipulating the subtle energies within the body to bring about states of profound bliss, which are then used to penetrate the true nature of reality.

Where did it all start?

Going by S. Dhammika in his Nature and the Environment in Early Buddhism, the Pāḷi Tipiṭaka shows how the natural world has been reflected in early Buddhism's ethical and philosophical framework.³ The Buddha regarded the plants as still (thāvara), but recognised them as one-facultied life forms, whereas human beings are multiple (six) facultied. The Buddha and his enlightened disciples were consistently symbolised by specific animals like the bull-elephant (nāga) for his solitary nature, the lion (sīha) for his fearless teaching, the thoroughbred horse (ājāñiya) for his trainability, and the bull (usabha) as the natural leader of humanity.⁴ This textual symbolism was directly translated into visual art such as the Aśokan pillar capital from Sarnath.⁵

Most popularly, the Bodhi tree (assattha, ficus religiosa), under which the Buddha attained enlightenment, became the primary aniconic symbol in iconography. Thus, the natural world in the Tipiṭaka became the source of a symbolic language that allowed artists to visually represent the Buddha and his Dhamma, creating an iconography deeply rooted in the tradition's environmental and ethical consciousness.

Ultimately, these different images—from the cooperation of the Four Harmonious Friends to the detailed design of the Kalachakra mandala—come together to share a single vision of the universe. By linking the lessons of the animal kingdom with the larger cycles of time, this artistic tradition breaks down the walls between humans and nature. It reveals that our lives are not separate from the environment but are deeply connected to the changing world around us. Whether rooted in the story of the banyan tree or the sacred space of the mandala, these visual stories remind us that we are all essential parts of a vast, living web. Unique to this view: it is not just humans who are special but every single being—from the smallest insect to the largest elephant—holds Buddha-nature, the inner seed that gives all creatures the equal potential for final liberation.