Tao Te Ching
Li Gotami Govinda
(Ratti Petit)
1906 – 1988 CE
Pioneering, fearless, artistic woman of wisdom
Photographer, painter, writer, composer, fearless traveler, and wise woman; Li Gotami was born into a wealthy Zoroastrian family in India, studied painting in Europe, became a close student of Abanindranath Tagore, and married Anagarika Govinda. A passionate traveler, she quickly broke out from the narrow boundaries expected of traditional Indian women. For many years, the couple lived near Kasar Devi a bohemian Mecca for their many friends—spiritual seekers like Walter Evans-Wentz, John Blofeld, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, R. D. Laing, and Robert Thurman. Their many expeditions to Tibet included a perilous one to Tsaparang, the ancient capital Guge considered by some historians as the origin location of the Shambhala legends. Here she took photographs, did sketches, and made fresco tracings which preserve a record of how Tibet once was before the devastation of the Chinese invasion and extensive desecrations during the Cultural Revolution. In later life and in ill health, the couple moved to California where they were supported by Alan Watts and Suzuki Roshi's San Francisco Zen Center.
Lineages
Artists Tibetan Vajrayana Women of Wisdom
Eras
Western
Post-Romantic Age (1850 – 2018 CE)Great Depression (1929 – 1941 CE)
Roaring Twenties (1920 – 1929 CE)
Unlisted Sources
Tibet in Pictures
Quotes by Li Gotami Govinda (7 quotes)
“Avolokitesvara wanted to help the whole world, but could not do so with only two arms and one head. He therefore burst into a thousand arms and a thousand heads”
from Tibet in Pictures
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“wisdom is represented by the divine female form, compassionate action by the divine male. Both symbolize the lunar and solar psychic faculties in human beings, which must be integrated in the process of enlightenment.”
from Tibet in Pictures
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“To symbolize the ego—which misleads people into believing that they are permanent and separate beings—a small figure was made of tsampa... the dancers stabbed this figure of evil with daggers.”
from Tibet in Pictures
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“Yamantaka combines in himself the animal, the demon, and the god, the primordial powers of life in its aspects of creation and destruction and the faculty of knowledge which ripens into liberating wisdom.”
from Tibet in Pictures
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“The coming Buddha, known as 'The Great Loving One,'... The gesture of Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Law symbolizes what he will do when he comes to restore the purity of the Buddha's teachings.”
from Tibet in Pictures
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“Wisdom that is not put into action is without true value; therefore ghanta—which symbolizes awakened wisdom—and vajra—which symbolizes the power to actively realize the means of compassion—must act together.”
from Tibet in Pictures
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“Yama Raja executes the law of karma, making visible to the dead the totality of their pas actions in the mirror of karma.”
from Tibet in Pictures
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