Awakening With Sacred Art & Pilgrimage
Episode 25 of Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features a conversation with Brazilian artist, Tiffani Gyatso, about her life and work in Tibetan Buddhist Thangka painting. Tiffani begins by sharing her fascinating journey, from her upbringing in a spiritual community in Brazil to her studies in sacred art and geometry. They discuss her studies at the Gandan Monastery in Mongolia and the Norbulingka Institute in India, as well as her contemporary art practices and sacred pilgrimages. The conversation delves into themes of spiritual anatomy, the power of imagination, and the intersection of art and spirituality. Tiffani also discusses her art retreats at Atelier YabYum in Brazil, her global pilgrimages, and the importance of embracing both duality and non-duality in spiritual practice.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Tiffany Gyatso
04:56 Discovering & Training In Traditional Tibetan Thangka Art
12:59 Expanding With Sacred Art and Geometry
22:58 How Art Transforms Perception And Helps Open Consciousness
34:45 The Power of Imagination And The Erotic in Buddhism
41:31 Duality In Life, Art, and Buddhism
49:50 How To Balance Conceptual and Experiential Learning
58:30 The Value of Pilgrimage and Upcoming Offerings
Guest Bio:
Tiffani Gyatso is a Brazilian artist born in 1981. She studied graphic design in Munich, Germany and later specialized in Thangka Painting (Tibetan Buddhist Art). She was introduced to sacred arts at the Gandam monastery in Mongolia and completed her studies at the Norbulingka Institute, in India (2003-06). In 2016/17/19 she enrolled in several courses in sacred geometry and Islamic patterns at the Prince School (PSTA) in London, UK.
From 2007 to 2012 she undertook the large-scale project to paint a complete Tibetan temple (CEBB) in traditional form in south of Brazil. She teaches Thangka painting since 2006 all over Brazil and South America, opening in 2016 the first school and art retreat in Brazil dedicated to this art form, the Atelier YabYum.
Alongside her traditional practice, Tiffani explores a more intuitive and contemplative artistic language in her contemporary work. Horses, symbols of vitality and freedom that have accompanied her since childhood, are the main inspiration behind her paintings. Her contemporary works have been exhibited in Brazil and New York.
In 2015, she published Life and Thangka, and she continues to contribute writings to Buddhistdoor Global.
Tiffani has been leading annual art pilgrimages to India and Tibet since 2013, and in 2017, she co-founded Mystic Art Retreats to make the practice more accessible.
She works today at her studio Atelier YabYum at the inner state of São Paulo and teaches all over the country and South America. She lectures traditional Thangka painting and also gives Immersions on Creative art, self expressions and Art therapy groups which she developed based in body awareness, movement and contemplative arts.
Full Transcript:
Adrian: Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. I'm your host Adrian Baker, And today I'm speaking with Tiffani Gatso. Tiffani is a Brazilian artist. She has studied graphic design in Munich, Germany and went on to specialize in Tibetan Buddhist art, specifically Thangka painting, which involves painting Buddhist icons on the self canvases.
She has taught Thangka painting all over Brazil and South America from 2006 , and in 2016, she opened Atelier YabYum, the first school and art retreat in Brazil dedicated to this art form. Tiffani was introduced to the Thangka art form at the Gandan Monastery in Mongolia and completed her Thangka studies at the Norbulingka Institute in India.
In 2016 and 17, she took several courses in sacred geometry and Persian patterns at the Prince's School of [00:01:00] Traditional Arts in London. She also has developed her own contemporary art based on the intuitive and contemplative process, as well as the slow art workshop, which works through body awareness, movement, and contemplative progression.
She has exhibited contemporary works, several times in Brazil and New York. Tiffani authored the book. Life in Thangka: Searching For Truth Through Sacred Art and writes for Buddhist Global.
Tiffani now guides art groups to sacred pilgrimage sites throughout the world, including India and Nepal, Tibet and Bhutan, which is an important topic for our conversation, pilgrimage and sacred art.
So hope you enjoy my conversation with. Tiffani Gyatso, and as always, please feel free to leave any questions or comments or feedback in the comments section of YouTube or feel free to email at sahajasoma@pm.me.
I'd love to just start by just asking you if you could just give some context.
Can you [00:02:00] describe a little bit about your background, how you got interested in sacred geometry and sacred art and how this was a bit of a portal into your own spiritual path? And then I would love to hear you lay out a bit, about what you've learned through studying both the Tibetan tradition with Vajrayana, and also sacred geometry and the Islamic traditions.
So could you give us just a brief little explanation of how you became interested in your background?
Tiffani: I must say that my parents have a big fault on it because they, both of them, uh, real, let's say searchers.
So my mom is German, so she came from Germany and married my dad here in Brazil. And then when I was around seven years old, my mom created a community, spiritual community, so she was kind of a guru.
She used to receive messages from a higher being. And so she created a whole community and so living in, nature, and that's how I grew up. [00:03:00] I had in a way, many brothers and sisters and many other mothers and fathers taking care.
Adrian: And was this in Brazil?
Tiffani: That's the same land where I live now.
Adrian: Okay. Yeah.
Tiffani: And yeah, it was an amazing childhood. I had my horses. I used to be, barefoot, no electricity. It was quite wild you know, and we used to do shamanic, ceremonies and she used to mix everything. And my first time that I walked on hot coal, I was 10 years old.
So it was very common. And I thought, you know, as a child, everybody had that search. My mom was always saying about God, and we are born to be enlightened.
So I really thought everybody's looking for enlightenment.
Adrian: hmm.
Tiffani: So slowly
Adrian: Cause that was your world. Yeah.
Tiffani: Usually it's the contrary right?
Adrian: Slowly you realize that samsara is most of worldly. Yeah.
Tiffani: And when I wanted to leave Samsara, I didn't have my parents supporting me.
Usually it's the opposite that right. course then I, as a [00:04:00] teenager, then I, I went out. But, the, the whole community crumbled at some point And one of, my mother's here, so to say, she was, Australian and she went back to Australia.
And then I went, I was around 14, I went to live with her for a few months and she was working as a social worker in aboriginal community, a tribe in the middle of the desert.
And I lived there with the aboriginals and it was amazing.
Beautiful and I loved the desert and the stories.
And there started really that thing, you know, that having a family like that and traveling and just having so many people in the community from different parts of the world.
It just made it natural that of course I had to, to travel and connect and to know these people where they live and then, they are the aboriginals and the there so much I was seeing because of my upbringing.
And actually then, when I came back to Brazil from Australia [00:05:00] then, my mom received a message saying that she now had to find her spiritual master in China, but she had to deserve it, whatever that meant.
That she had to make a pilgrimage to China. That's how she would deserve the master and whoever would like to follow her. otherwise she would go alone. And my dad was like, no, you crazy. We cannot do that. He had just bought a sailing boat around the world.
Adrian: They're both total explorers. Yeah.
Tiffani: She told him, "sell the boat!" And, uh, I was living in the boat for two years. There was also another part of life, you know, living in a sailing boat.
And then we were ready to go around the world and then my mom said, no, we are gonna go by land. After a lot of, whirling, he sold the boat. But he went sailing from Brazil to Portugal to Europe, you know, and then, yeah, he did that.
And my mom then arrived there. She bought a motor home in Germany. And I, you know, as a 18 years [00:06:00] old, she said, come with me, but find somebody to pay.
I was only 18. She couldn't support me.
And at that time I had a boyfriend who had a friend who had the money, so we convinced that friend who had a very normal life, IT, you know?
Adrian: Oh my God.
And
Tiffani: he came, he bought a motor home and we went with two motor homes. we went Ukraine, all Russia, and then Mongolia.
We drove all around and the moment we wanted to cross to the border, to China, it was so complicated, bureaucracy, and then we stayed longer in Mongolia, which was amazing.
And there I saw Thangka painting for the first time. And I remember getting inside a temple, you know, with dust like that 500 years of dust, nobody had, those very
Adrian: Dust and mold and, yeah.
Tiffani: and like really going back in time.
And because we were with car, we would also reach places that nobody else would go and just [00:07:00] camp there, you know? And, um, so that, that was, I think, really beautiful. And we had lots of stories around, all this talking about pilgrimage, you know.
Adrian: Hmm.
Tiffani: You just put yourself in situations you can never think about. You create cracks so that God can talk to you, whoever we call it.
But anyway, it was there that, when I saw Thangka, I not even found it aesthetically so beautiful. But I found it was familiar. It was so familiar.
So, however I can explain that, I just realized I loved art. I wanted to paint, And I just thought, wow, there is the spiritual path through art.
Adrian: So you, you had that insight at a young age, 18 or something around there. Wow.
Tiffani: Uh, and it was funny because, we had like this special interview or, moment with the Abbott of Gandham Monastery in Mongolia. So it was like this special lama who couldn't speak English, and we had [00:08:00] a translator.
On the way out after that meeting, he comes to me and he looks at me and he says in English, which he said he didn't know how to speak, but he spoke to me and he said, you will become a Thangka painter. You are a Thangka painter.
And I don't know why I just took it that, grabbed on that and said, this is my truth. And I don't know if, you know when somebody talks to you like that you always think, oh, he saw something on me. I'm special. I'm am the Thangka painter. But actually, that gave me the strength just to go with full purpose.
And I did a lot of rounds until I was accepted, as the first, western woman at the Norbulingka Institute founded by his holiness, the Dalai Lama in Dharmasala in India.
So it was only open to males and only Tibetans at that time, so I insisted so much. And there is a whole story. There is a book that I wrote about called Life [00:09:00] and Thangka, published, in India.
And I talk about that moment, that I was received there and it was supposedly for only one month, then it went for three months, then it went for a year, and then two years and then three years. They eventually on the third year, they eventually opened to other Tibetan women. And today they're open for foreigners too.
But yeah, so it was then I started having that training under very traditional Tibetan way of teaching, which is repetition, time, no explanation. My teacher didn't speak English. I didn't speak Tibetan.
He would just, no. And he would just smile at me, point it out. , What I had to draw. No paint. I couldn't, I was not allowed to touch paint.
Adrian: Wow.
Tiffani: Only drawing, only the proportions only. And Buddha, the face of the Buddha, the body of the deities is they have real measurements, and so you have to learn by heart, all of those [00:10:00] proportions. And this was a real, let's say, ego polishing because it wasn't about my How I think, you know, I used to start doing the Buddha with a very thin, a bit thinner face, a bit shorter the ears, you know, it look weird.
And then he explained to me, no, the Buddha has to have a chubby face because it's one of his 80 minor marks and 32 major marks that a Buddha, a Chakravartin has in its body.
And one of them is that it has a chubby face representing the youth of his freshness, of his knowledge. He's always fresh. He's like a baby in the world. He's seeing everything with curiosity. So that's a symbol. You cannot put your idea because my ideas are filtered by my culture, thinking that a thinner face looks more pretty.
Adrian: Yes.
Tiffani: I had to reprogram my idea also of representing, for example, his arms [00:11:00] draw with much longer arms, you know, than a usual human being. And that is a representation that he can embrace more, embrace the whole world, the whole people. So he has a larger shoulders and longer arms.
So there are so many, symbols on that. So it is a spiritual anatomy. It's not how he was. I'm not drawing the Buddha as he was.
And for example, one symbol that we take for granted is that he has those curled hair and we think, oh, he had curled hair and we see as a attribute of his actual body.
But actually it's written that, in each pore of the Buddha's skin comes out one hair. The pore right, the holes in our skin. It comes one hair in the shape of a galaxy because each of his pores is a universe.
And even that, symbol that we see here also in [00:12:00] the great stupa in Nepal, we see very well draw this circle here is also, it's actually, a hair, curling up, symbolizing again, that spiral of galaxy.
So remembering, and look how beautiful. Now you, when you look again at the image of the Buddha, you're gonna remember that. And then you will see that his body is like a collection of infinite universes.
And when we talk about the body of the Buddha, it's our capacity. We have in us all the universes. We know that. That we have this infinite potential.
We have to choose one universe, like we said, But who knows? Maybe the enlightened one just knows that consciousness is everywhere at the same time, all mixed, all together, you know that consciousness.
So that in the icon is symbolizing that through his curly hair, his infinite body, infinite universes.
So [00:13:00] sacred art is like, it's a lineage of thought. It can be from any religion or belief. And there are codes, that I share, with people to create a bridge to what I call God. And this has to be followed in that way in a certain way and through symbols and all of that. So all of it has that purpose to create a bridge, a visible bridge to the invisible. Yeah. What we don't see.
Art I think helps you to open the eyes because imagine if you have beauty all around, but you don't have eyes, right? So it's useless.
So it's more concern about not looking for beauty, but looking for opening this eye. And this is what we call the third eye, I believe.
This is how then, TMD experiences can help you, which is actually opening this eye to see the beauty which is already there, or to see beyond even what we are seeing with our horizontal eyes.
And I think it's so beautiful. That's why you have all this deities with the [00:14:00] third eye. I think it's more to symbolize that, see beyond, open the eye for the real beauty and sacred geometry, it really brings us to that. So then that comes to that part of falling in love with beauty.
And at the same time, so now it comes, the moment then to surrender to that beauty.
How can you live a life that you can welcome that? And I think for example, it's only when I see the world in its beauty that I can be open to eroticism in my life.
Because it doesn't have to do only when I need something beautiful. It's, I need a beautiful woman. I need a beautiful man so that I can see beauty, But if I practice, like if I see the angle of light, how it comes through the window, and I see the perfection of it, because I exercise with the, for example, seeing or practicing sacred geometry, for [00:15:00] example, I can s ee the beauty of that angle.
And I had already epiphanies of like, just the angle of that ray coming is just like, I knew that was so rare or whatever, it was a miracle and it was an ecstasy moment.
And I believe that is what it means to open the third eye, is that finally you see it. why do we see so much about, Hey, you have to include art, go to museum, go do this, do that, it's more about opening than actually finding the "right" art.
Adrian: Yeah, I mean from, and help me to understand it, But what I'm hearing from a contemplative perspective, I'm thinking about it through the Buddhist perspective, is it's not about the object, it's about transforming our perception.
And so it's a way of seeing. It's transforming, a way of seeing,
And how is that similar to or distinct from a tantric view, which is like seeing everything as sacred. So even when you're in Varanasi and it's, extreme poverty [00:16:00] or, things not looking conventionally beautiful, right?
Just seeing them as sacred. Are you talking about it in that same kind of tantric sense or, yes, but also something different.
Tiffani: yeah, I was thinking about that because everything is, I mean, Yab-Yum. The deities is in sexual union that we see in tantric art. The first layer we see, wow, section union. And then we learn that this is a union of skillful means and wisdom.
And skillful means I read as what the Greek called the Apollo. Apollo is like structure. And seeing the harmony, let's say geometry, you know, the mathematics.
And then comes Dionysus, which is the bliss, which is now you have the structure, now you can dance on it.
Adrian: And it's the dynamic creative force, right? Yeah.
Tiffani: The energy of it is the emotional intensity.
I think in my perspective, it is [00:17:00] not about, the union, that it becomes one, but it is actually that marriage.
That dance of both is, I don't have to choose one over the other. To be geometric, to be Apollo, to be beauty and to be this is the right way, and it's also not losing myself and losing my ground. Marriage.
And so what we understand of marriage is what we call, when a, woman and a man comes together. This is a marriage, but it's symbolic. We have to see that everywhere.
Adrian: two individuals now since we've redefined,
Tiffani: yeah. Right, right,
Adrian: Since we've redefined marriage. But, but, but
Tiffani: Even
also
Adrian: absolutely. Why duality. Yeah.
Tiffani: Totally.
Adrian: But that's a good point. I think sometimes, that gets lost in sort of people who are in the earlier stages when they first encounter non-duality.
It's this more basic kind of non-dual good, dualistic bad. But there's the absolute and the relative. And even though on an absolute [00:18:00] level, there's that interdependence, it's the non-dual, on the relative level, duality is contained within the non-duality. And duality is where the erotic happens.
And it's that draw between the two that creates the creativity, that creates that mystery, the creation, the push and pull, the dance.
Tiffani: totally.
Adrian: And so enjoying the duality, but recognizing the interdependence, the non-duality within that.
Yeah.
Tiffani: And I see as a dance, you need that kind of distance. And again, it's not about the object, but about the perspective.
To see everything, to see the shine, the light of things, so you fall in love, but for that you need to open your eyes. And then there are practices, like for example, when you have what we understand of as intense emotional awakening, usually happens even without, and better, not without effort, when you are doing love making.
Because you can have that experience, of the beauty of that merging, of like, I don't know [00:19:00] where I end and the other begins, I don't know what is that limit. I I lose the limits. I go beyond myself and it doesn't matter anymore.
And then you'll go, you'll come back because life is pulsation anyway so you contract and you expand. And Then I think during love making is when we can come closest to that idea of what is, when something is really shining. And also myself to see myself as that fire.
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: And why not expand in all things in life and live with that?
And it doesn't mean that, I have to literally make love with everything, but actually to see that all the time, I'm actually penetrating space and light is penetrating me. So it's what some call, like the cosmic fuck. I think we even talk about that in Bhutan, right? It is like the cosmic fuck all the time.
So Actually it's the dance of creation and all the time is like things are being born out of this union. [00:20:00] But then a third thing comes at the same time. Next to me, something is dying. Nature is dying and being born at the same time.
So you have, again, Eros and Thanatos and that dance, need that polarity. Of birth and creation and death at the same time because that it creates the movement and that is the dance. Choosing one or the other, it will mean lack of movement. You need that polarity.
And again, this is what, in tantric deities, I think it's mostly what is appointing to, this union and this dance is inside of you. It's not something really external. And some people think, oh, but poor monks, they have vows of celibacy.
But this is the first layer. I think the monks who do not practice in depth will suffer a lot because they touching that fire, which can be touched through sex, which they cannot perform, but they can touch the same energy. If they understand [00:21:00] that love inside themselves to the world, through service, through they practice. They can touch that same, but I think it's more difficult
Adrian: yes, it's more subtle.
Tiffani: Yeah. More subtle.
Adrian: It is.
Tiffani: I think, but the yogic you dive into the experience and I think was Dr. Nida who said that, tantra is like licking honey from a sharp knife.
Adrian: From a razor.
Tiffani: Because
Adrian: Hmm.
of course,
Tiffani: that involves into the moment you touch that vital energy and you see yourself as this vital and radiant being, of course you can generate attachment and that brings suffering.
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: But I believe looking at that. I would call sacred suffering. You can make it like that because what you were saying before, alchemy for example, it's only done when you burn, desolate, turn it into ashes. That transformation can be painful. Even when a bug transforms into a butterfly inside the [00:22:00] cocoon, I was even seeing a documentary about it, the bug goes through such a painful process and contractions
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: So imagine that if you wanna come out with wings, which is something totally out of your structure, it's like a little death.
And so instead of avoiding that suffering that might come with attachment through the relationships or w hatever we have so easy to bring any suffering attachment, but then make it your practice instead of avoidance, because it will come without effort, all the suffering. It will come anyway.
So I think art helps us to transform also suffering, to get that full handed, okay, what is all this shame, anger, anxiety? I have it. This is raw material. Why would I deny a part of me? It's here. I cannot avoid. and then art helps you in transforming that, and then it turns into what you would call beauty.
Adrian: You talked about this [00:23:00] idea of, not the object, but it's about transforming our perception. And I think about this a lot because the emphasis is so much in, buddhism about that in particular.
Is about transforming our perception of something, but also recognizing that things happen interdependently, right? This process of perceiving, I'd also like to hear your thoughts on what is the role of the object though, and honoring things on the relative level. Because some objects speak to us and others don't.
So from this Buddhist perspective, we're not wanting attraction or aversion, because we're getting to that place of liberation. But on a relative level, it's totally healthy to acknowledge that some people we're more attracted to. Some pieces of art speak to us. Certain religions, and symbols from those religions... There's something perhaps about the archetypes of Vajrayana, I'm guessing that speak to you and certainly speak to me.
So what about the role of, the object as well and honoring that, in that process of perceiving and opening to beauty?
Tiffani: In sacred geometry, we [00:24:00] study things like the golden ratio, the fibonacci sequence, which coordinates, for example, the number of petals and flowers, the number of seeds inside the fruits, the shape of our bodies.
So they are formulas, in geometry, which brings balance. The size of the earth and the moon. It's, have you ever thought the distance, between the moon and the sun and the, and earth, that when there is a eclipse, the moon is actually the same size as the sun to cover it. Is a perspective, but it is all in balance. So it gives us this, experience of total symmetry.
So we are naturally attracted to what is beautiful harmonic and it brings life, and peace. So naturally without even knowing, we are made of those formulas and we go and we run away from shapes that will, kill us or harm us, So for [00:25:00] example, when we study numerology or even the shapes, we always say, for example, the number four is related to the square or the cube. And the energy is the energy of stability and, security and element earth.
And you can see by the shape, if you try to roll, a cube, you know, it rolls one, two, and then stays stable different than a circle, a ball. You just, it rolls to the infinite.
If you see, for example, just to give a example of shapes in our, in our history, in the old days when we were nomads or the natives here in Brazil, we think about the houses they live, they were Oca. Oca is house where they live here is round or the tipi is round. The yurt is round. Why? Because they lived in community.
They depended, in each other much more. Each one had a purpose in that group, in that tribe, which is different from today. Today we are so more individuals. People [00:26:00] live alone and It's normal
It's
Adrian: about privacy, the architecture, reflecting that.
Tiffani: Yeah. And our houses changed into squares.
So when I'm looking more for security what do I do when I'm afraid? I go inside my room. I hide under square blankets. We don't, perceive that, but we are actually choosing shapes, depending on how we feel about those. So before we used to be more circular, more equally, more sharing, more community.
So roundness was more in our lives. Now, for example, we live more in squares and straight, lines. Our roads are, are straight, we cut mountains and make tunnels to be straight. Before you had to go so much around like a snake. You used to go around like rivers.
but now, so that also reflects our civilization. Where is it going? So we can understand again, talk about the microcosm and the,
Adrian: the macro and micro. Yeah.
Tiffani: It's always a reflection.
Adrian: Hmm.
If you
Tiffani: see a [00:27:00] cell, if you see a atom, how the electrons go around the center is the same as the solar system. So you can see the solar system as a atom of the whole universe. there are natural shapes. So we are gonna be attracted to it because it sustains our life.
They are in favor of our life. So of course when we say somebody's beautiful, we are talking about a very harmonious face and body, of
Adrian: When you say harmonious, I'm sorry to interrupt. I want to just clarify 'cause I've heard a lot of people who are found conventionally attractive or beautiful if they measure their faces, models, whatever, celebrities, they're, it's very symmetrical. Is that what you mean by harmonious, like symmetrical,
Tiffani: Symmetrical aligned to the golden ratio, let's say the classical, the Greek beauty, the Greeks were obsessed about the golden ratio and the perfect beauty. So you see all the statues and everything in that [00:28:00] era of classical Greek art. It was all about that kind, of beauty.
But we see that also beauty, what we call beautiful, now is also mixed with cultural beliefs. A woman body should be like this. So it used to be more, it has more weight, you know, the body in the old times, it needed more weight. It symbolized that the woman could have more, it would be more fertile and all of that. So it was important to have a big family.
Nowadays we don't want a big family. It's not so common as it was before. So also the body shrinks. So we are reflecting, again, our way of thinking.
Adrian: Hmm. Now our
Tiffani: sense of beauty also represents our way of thinking. The body I am attracted to represents the way I think.
What I'm saying that you are attracted to things that reflect your way of thinking, right? [00:29:00] So, um, totally, totally. I, I say that we are very free. We are very free to
Adrian: Yeah.
choose the
Tiffani: illusion we want.
Adrian: Yes. But you have to know it's an illusion in order to choose it.
Tiffani: are always creating an idea of something
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: okay do I believe in that? It sounds very true, what I tell myself. So the story I tell myself.
But at the same time what I believe, it's so conditioned, like you said, by our culture and by our religion, and by everything else. Everything, what we think it was actually given to us, it was kind of programmed to us.
At the same time, can we live without any program? That's also the even the program of you have to be free, you have to give it up. This
Adrian: It's also a program.
Tiffani: is also a thought,
right?
Adrian: and that's the thing you can have a kind of non-dual realization beyond the realm of thought, but the moment you start putting it into words, once you go off the mountaintop, you [00:30:00] are inside of a path. You are inside of a series of concepts, teachings, and that is going to have certain limitations. The moment you put into language, it's just inevitable.
Tiffani: It doesn't matter what. So that's the thing, create a reality that actually benefits you and the people around, but at the same time, there are people who don't care about others. They care only about themselves. Then they create that reality. They hurt others. And then, so that's the question, you know, And that's why I think Buddhism talks so much about, intention.
Adrian: Yes.
Tiffani: And the preliminary before you do any practice to empower you, why do you want to be empowered? Why do you want that wisdom? So the preliminary, why you do so many practice, it's to really purify the intentions.
If you think of of, Buddha Manjushri, it comes with a s sword of fire. And in the other hand it has Prajñāpāramitā [00:31:00] in the other hand. So a s sword and that sutra and that symbolizes that before he gives you the knowledge of the Prajna, he comes with a sword of fire.
He has to cut your ignorance, before giving it to you so that the teachings stay pure. Clean. And that's all about what's the, preliminaries, you know, in Buddhism, which is a big thing there. But so many people want to jump already to the, to, to the Tantras and everything.
everything Now imagine, Now, imagine licking that, sharp blade, you know, and then you're, wow, that's honey. And then you, you're dead.
Adrian: No, absolutely. You're supposed to start with the sutras, with Theravada and then Mahayana, and then Tantras but Vajrayana's built on that.
Tiffani: But I would say that if you don't have religion, how do you do it?
And that's my perception then it's go back to nature and Really to understand nature doesn't mean just expose yourself to nature, but learn [00:32:00] how to talk with it.
And I think in that moment is very beautiful. For example, ayahuasca experiences because it opens you to understand nature to really hear it, to see that each tree has an intelligence.
They're talking to each other. And without that third eye opening experience, you will not realize, you would just see them as a shape, right?
You can just sit there on the tree and just see as a shape there. It has shadow, it has light, it has green. But then to see the beyond, or you do experience like that or you come to experience like that, or for example, when you studied the sacred geometry, you start seeing that perfection.
And, and of course that perfection of shape of fractals, how, if you get a broccoli that it's a perfect fractal and you understand that you are a fractal of something else. Are you a fractal of God isn't it somewhere said that we are [00:33:00] made in the image of God?
when you know that language and for example, broccoli, you have a moment of like, satori. This is perfect. This is perfect. it's a tree a plant can teach you that can bring you to that experience through the vision, through the shape, through the object.
So, an object,, let's say that broccoli, or if I cut a tomato in half, a orange and I see the perfect symmetry of the division, and I say, where is this intelligence? And then you wake up to it. So it is a meeting of the object, especially from nature. And that third eye-opening, that opening. That generosity of presence. I'm here with that and I'm opening my senses to perceive it.
Adrian: Deeply present. Intimate. Intimate with it. Yeah.
Tiffani: That's why there's no benefit of art without presence.
Adrian: Ooh, I like that. No benefit. Far without presence.
Tiffani: I had a teacher in art [00:34:00] school and, he said, you need to be so generous, when you go to art museums if you want to understand and be transformed with them. Otherwise, they are only shapes. You go shapes after the other and you go to museums scrolling, like you scroll your cell phone, one shape, one information after the other, becomes, you know, you see one information of war right after you see a video of a recipe and, you know, so it, it changes and everything turns into the same taste because I'm not there.
And then to understand, an art piece, you need time. You really need time. Like reading a book, you need time. And I'm afraid that is actually what we are losing nowadays.
Adrian: Oh, for sure. In our previous conversation, you were talking about, the power of Vajrayana and what we're doing is harnessing the power of imagination. I'm hearing through your training process how you must have been learning about the paramitas and patience, and also about the [00:35:00] power of imagination.
I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little bit and explain that to folks.
Tiffani: What is beautiful and so sophisticated that the Tibetans up there in a far land, isolated, came up with that. Which is to recognize the power of imagination.
We see how, it is used today through our media. It shapes our imagination so we are totally manipulated. We totally let that power in the hands of the media, of the culture, and how much do I know how to master my imagination? And sometimes I'm even imagining things that, brings me into a black hole.
Because I don't know how to master my imagination or in other words, also my thoughts. My thoughts create, the reality I'm living inside of myself.
Deity practice, Eden practice especially about that. There's so many complex, [00:36:00] visualization. You enter the mandala you see lotus with a thousand petals. You see the syllables, you see the channels and all of that. But at the end, you see yourself as the Deity.
So imagine between feeling yourself like a loser or just trapped in samsara. Instead, okay, I'm here and I have a luminous body. My body contains infinite universes. What a miracle.
You know, So I can choose one or the other. So in that practice, really Vajrayana sought the, and refine that, you know, and refine that, practice, which is of imagination.
Just try now, for example, to imagine the war that is going on in Gaza. So many places in Africa, middle East, and you know, so many places you start thinking, you start crying. so your thought actually made a physical reaction in your [00:37:00] body. Talk about, imagine just the thought of having a erotic imagination.
Just by imagining, I mean, Just by imagining with practice you can have an orgasm. Just with the power of thought. Of imagination. You don't have even to touch, you see?
And so, I think they really refined that potential. And, I think that is what they realized through the images, that we can, imagine ourselves and we imagine the world as a mandala. So it's a real map also to orient yourself, and the best way in Samsara and where we are, and transcend that, because it might just be that samsara is the doorway to nirvana.
Adrian: Yes.
Tiffani: The more you go deeper, you go deeper as a mandala, you come the other way through. Is the same thing. So it might just offer that kind of practice.
Adrian: I love that. And it's making me think and there'll [00:38:00] be a chance to come back, I think to the erotic and it's what we were talking about that we wanted to discuss sort of the light and shadow of Vajrayana.
'Cause that's the way I think about everything as light and shadow, and I'd love to hear you say a little more about the power of having that map and the paths and what you discovered in terms of the beauty maybe of the structure.
But then also getting into we talked about with the erotic, about the erotic is actually about the not knowing and sort of the candlelight and how Vajrayana is kind of like turning on the light so much.
In both the beauty of that, but then also what that does, to the relationship of the erotic.
Can you share about that, what you and I were discussing earlier?
Tiffani: Yeah, yeah. So if we are gonna talk about that and that we know, as I said now, the erotic. Practice, so to say is broad spectrum. We know that it's charged, charged of energy. If [00:39:00] we start thinking, if we start experiencing, we cannot compare, maybe. Battlefields in war maybe is charged as well.
That's why, you know, s exuality and death, eros and thanatos are so combined because it's probably the most charged, you know, so close to death. And then in sex, so close to be reborn. I believe, you know, in that orgasmic moment, you're being reborn. And then in battlefield you are like dying.
And then it's so funny because in our life, in every culture is the biggest taboo, right? It is actually childbirth. You don't see it. They don't train about, they don't talk so much childbirth and how to take care. It's the birth, the whole birth, and then sex. How to create life, and death. If somebody is about to die, you don't talk about,
Adrian: Yeah. There's shame around all of that.
Put it in the shadow.
Tiffani: Yeah. If somebody is about to die, why not talk about that?[00:40:00]
No. If you talk about that, you are offending.
Adrian: Actually the time of death is uncertain.
We're going to die, but the timing of death is uncertain in the way that can deepen our appreciation of how we're perceiving reality. It can open us to the poignancy appreciating life. Right. But, But that unwillingness to turn towards, right?
Tiffani: Exactly. And by realizing that you are going to die at any moment, it bring you a experience of fear or of intensity of more pleasure.
I keep thinking if you are about to die in five minutes, they gonna turn on the electric chair, whatever, you know, what would you have done differently?
For sure, it will be very rare that somebody would answer I would have done less. I would have lived less.
Adrian: hmm. Right.
Tiffani: The most probable, answer will be, I would have loved more. I would have done more. I would have dive into [00:41:00] it. And the person realizes that five minutes before. And why can't we just realize at every moment?
No, I don't believe that our lives should be totally charged all the time with that kind of emotional charge and
Adrian: Oh it's not sustainable because even that labeling of it is relative to something else. It's a comparison.
Tiffani: Because I think in silence and total relaxation lies a simplicity which is part of life. Again, talking about the dance, the opposite, you know, the polarity of contraction and expansion.
So again, polarity is so important, or duality is so important in iconography, which you see all the time in tantric art.
So you see the Yab-Yum, the two deities, male and female together as aspects of our own male female energy inside of us. You see the vajra and the bell is again [00:42:00] talking about duality. You see the curved knife and the skull again, symbolizing, the duality always playing in two.
So that moment of, silence and stillness is to create a condensation for a moment, like a pressure cook, you know, a pressure cooker, you also need that limitation. You need that limitation to be able to expand. Then when you expand, you cannot anymore. You come back to that zero. And in geometry you are always actually imitating the universe.
When you draw the circle and you draw with a compass, which is like this one, it opens to two and it goes round creating its limitation by drawing. The practice of drawing is also imitating the natural step of the universe outside and inside. So it's that contraction and expansion.
You know, there's [00:43:00] um, philosopher called Bataille, French. And he used to say that eroticism, it's about recognizing the limits and then exceeding it. How do you exceed it?
So for example, talking again about, the, the Greek God, Apollo, which is, I was saying before, but it's about that limitation. You know, I have, I have my skin to limit what contains in me. I need my shape,
Adrian: It's an order chaos principle.
Tiffani: It's the Apollo is that shape,
Adrian: It's the structure.
Tiffani: Yeah.
Yeah.
Adrian: That's what I mean by order.
Tiffani: What is important is the idea of limits to create expansion. you know, It's like a dancer can go crazy if he has a floor, he has there, he needs something in there. So inside of us too, we can embrace those two principles with no problem.
It's not one or the other, and how to make a dance is the art.
So coming to your [00:44:00] question, what happens as I experience in V having all different kinds of experience in and outside of Vajrayana, and when it teaches them on tantra and about that harnessing this energy, the kundalini arising, the sexual arousal as a energy principle, as a intensity principle, as knowing yourself like a alchemy. Wow. I'm able to experience that and to merge and to lose that self, which I call self through that energy.
But sometimes when we fragment it to explain and then saying like what I said, having a surgeon white light on top of that corpse that you are opening to study. You know, and then, And then you, it's what are you doing?
Also, you are understanding, but you are missing the whole body as a whole, [00:45:00] because you're putting it apart. you're putting each little thing apart. And so this is when we become too conceptual, explaining too much. And even I was reading, about, and karma mudra all the steps.
If you imagine if you're doing love making and then you're thinking about oh no, wait, now you have to breathe like this. Or you have to look like this because it's said like that. You cannot do it. It's the moment that you forget about that.
When you forget, okay, you can read, you can know everything. But that moment of union is the moment when you have to surrender to the chaos, surrender to unknown, because it's only there that You can be taken and not you taking the experience, but the experience can take you.
Otherwise all what you know becomes a obstacle. All your practice and all your books becomes a obstacle.
you know, I have a teacher, Yuma Mudra and Raji. She's Vajrayana and he's a Sufi. They are married. They [00:46:00] combine their work in a beautiful way and one of her things, she says, when you are lost you know, in your mind and your body and your life, come back to the body. Cause your body's always there.
Your Sensations. So you are reading all these books, you have all these ideas, you're going crazy. And then come back to the body. What is the sensation of my leg touching here? The chair, the sensation of the air, enlarging my lungs, my tongue being wet in my saliva. You know, All of that. And then you come back because this is the door for presence.
And then when we go so far in concept, and it can be talking about the experience, but it can also be bringing us apart from it.
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: And there is this example, of somebody who studies all about grapes and wine and knows everything about wine, but have never been drunk.
Adrian: Yes. Actually that's a really good point to elaborate [00:47:00] on for a sec, number one, the Erotics about the mystery, it's about the unknown and the beauty of Vajrayana is the clarity of the map.
But it doesn't have sort of what Zen has as that sort of don't know mind. Zen talks about being intimate with not knowing, and Vajrayana doesn't have that. It wants to map it all out, and that's beautiful and there's something very attractive about that.
But it does lose that sense of eros in that sense of not knowing, being with the uncertainty. So my teacher, Douglas Brooks, would talk about this a lot. A Shakta Tantra teacher say the archetypical, masculine and feminine, they each map certain things. The masculine is liberation, and the feminine is connection, right?
Or intimacy and autonomy. But the masculine is also about clarity, wanting structure, order knowing, and the feminines much more comfortable with the not knowing the ambiguity.
And so I do see Vajrayana as, not wanting to be intimate with [00:48:00] that, not knowing in a way. And that's part of where the eros can feel like it's missing for me.
And then there's a second point, which is about, this notion of, you said it at a point where you talked about being taken by the experience. Then you started to talk about your Sufi teachers and this notion of intoxication, right? And we get language around toxification in Sufism.
We also get it in Kashmir Shaivism. If you're studying like Abhinavagupta, and I'm not saying you don't get elements of it in Vajrayana, but it seems to me that Vajrayana is uncomfortable with that notion of intoxication or has a complicated relationship to it, because it's landing on that more archetypical masculine side of things as wanting that liberation, wanting the equanimity and wanting that equanimity means not wanting to be swept away by the experience.
And intoxication, of course, in a Sufi sense, [00:49:00] in a Kashmere Shaivism sense, it's not about hedonism, right? It's about intoxication with a divine, with a much more subtle, sophisticated, ethical form of intoxication.
But I've always felt, it's interesting we're using concepts to talk about this. Of course we have to use language, but what interests me is not like how the maps are different, but how experientially, I always felt that fullness, that opening into when I practiced Kashmere Shaivism, that Vajrayana and Buddhism just didn't seem comfortable with.
It's too out of control. It wants that total cutting through equanimity. I'm wondering, comparing that to say sufism, and you studying in that tradition, does that resonate at all with your experience and how would you describe your relationship to Vajrayana?
Tiffani: First I, I think Vajrayana might have not been always like that. When it came monastic, especially with the Galupa, I dunno, in which century was [00:50:00] that, but later, then it was emphasized about the theory and, and really getting, disseminating the knowledge and, So it is how we are getting it now. Because if we go to the essence of the dharma of Buddhism, it talks so much about that, emptiness and bliss, imagine and bliss making love in the open sky and the doctrine world view, it's amazing,
Adrian: yeah,
Tiffani: so I don't think it's a problem with the teaching, but it is just the institution maybe how it focused.
Adrian: Yeah. the institution shaped the teachings.
Tiffani: Right. So I think this is just a aspect and is a matter of the context because I think Vajrayana gives us, quite a beautiful map.
I think you need quite a lot of self-esteem, I would say to get the teaching and maybe try to experience your own way. You know, maybe you don't need the formal practice.
Like I was never connected to formal practice or even the ngondro because [00:51:00] I had very strong in me, since the beginning, even painting all the deities that I wanted to experience the deity as it is. Read all the books, know about and have that experience, bring it to myself.
Of course there is great, merit in doing all the practices, but, there are many path for many people and I didn't feel I should be doing that.
And then slowly I was open making that open in me to receive a feeling directly from what I was experiencing through the painting, through the art, from the deity itself, which already lived inside of me. It's a aspect of me i'm trying to awaken through the practices.
So through the personal connection, you know, and what Vajrayana talks about is go directly there. You don't have to study about wine to be drunk.
Adrian: Yes.
Tiffani: It will be good for you to know certain things about wine before getting drunk, but there's also [00:52:00] the other way. First, get drunk and then maybe you can learn about Oh, oh, do the opposite there is no right or wrong.
Adrian: You mean go directly there with the experiential rather than the conceptual and the study. Yeah. I think that's part of the history of dharma in general is that, it became more and more monta size over time. It became more about the scholastic as opposed to the experiential 'cause of course it was very experiential early on with the original Buddha.
Different flavor, more aesthetic, but certainly very experiential. And then, you know, it, it did become very much about the scholastic and there's always that healthy tension. I think that's a wonderful part of dharma.
Hevajra Tantra,
Tiffani: Ian was saying, it's said that all mahasiddhas, every mahasiddha should learn how to dance and sing.
Adrian: Yes. That Ian quotes that in his book on tibetan yoga, which is wonderful. Yeah.
Tiffani: And there is a time, I think, when it was practiced with that intention was more focused. You know,
Adrian: Hmm.
What
Tiffani: matters is, do you know how to sing? Do you know how to dance? Or do you [00:53:00] know how to explain to me all about the universe? You know? But
Adrian: yeah.
Tiffani: first, can you sing that?
Adrian: Yes.
Tiffani: Can you express the universe? Can you evoke the universe in you right now?
But I think it's beautiful if we think about not one being better than the other. Again, I am a being that it's better I know how to work it out and take the best of the dual world, of this polarity, Apollo and Dionysus. Which is the straight line and the organic flow. The floor of the river so that the river can run.
It's working your best way. So you can have the dance, that dance, which is, it's always two. It's always me penetrating space and light penetrating my being is that, you know, cosmic love making is all the time. All the time. So then I bring [00:54:00] that eroticism into a pleasure of living. You don't walk through space. You lick the space while you walk. if you really do that would walk like shining. You would walk my God, life is, oh, it's, you. See, so in, in that, again, we come back to the power of imagination
Adrian: Hmm.
Tiffani: And we are erotic beings because of our power of imagination. Because animals they are driven by the sexual instinct.
They don't have imagination like, I can imagine doing this or this is, when I talk about the candlelight it's not that, not anymore that surgeon white light, in a hospital.
Adrian: Yeah,
Tiffani: it's the candlelight. I imagine she takes out her clothes, maybe not. Maybe she has a red thing under her, you know, a black or whatever.
You know,
Adrian: but leaving something to the imagination.
Tiffani: [00:55:00] To the imagination. So, like animals, no other being does that, when a, dog feels the instinct, he doesn't even look what kind of, female dog he sees. It is like, it's a female dog, I gonna do it. so I think for you to have that eroticism you need that kind of maturity and refinement and that refinement, art can give it to you.
How you are able to appreciate through the education. Again, Apollo, vocation of art, sacred geometry. Which is about learning the structure of the universe and then opening your eyes until you are part of the dance, until you can hear the music.
It's beautiful because art and studying sacred geometry, it's sacred because you're studying the universe. You know why galaxies are shaped in spirals? Why water goes in spiral. Why they something called the golden ratio? Because they are common shapes in small, micro and the [00:56:00] macro.
That's why they're called sacred because there everywhere. It's not something that we created sacred geometry. We didn't create, we just perceived. Is the study of the world. And when I studied the world, I can understand. It's like a lover. You fall in love with it. You get to know, you get to know more.
You, You get more into it. So be interested in life. Be interested in the soul of that tree. Be interested in the angle of that light. And be interested that is the fire.
And if you are not interested about life, if you are in a state of depression, just evoke, you know, the world is available. I went through a, long depression during COVID because it was the same time as my divorce and not a good one. I remember just being to the really bad place and, I couldn't sleep. I remember I spent so much time looking at the stars and over and over [00:57:00] again. After a year, almost every night star watching, I realized realized what they meant by the fixed stars and the planets.
Because, there is actually the stars. Some move, they're in different places in different time of the year, you know, so I realized how my ancestors, our ancestors actually learned by being present. By being present. So even in my state of depression, just by sitting with nature and watching, but being open, trying to open just this, this third eye.
If this is, hurt by reality, open then this, and you will see that beauty is available, but we have to open the eyes. It doesn't matter which state, psychic state you are. You can make that little effort and then it'll grow into you until it becomes fire.[00:58:00]
And that fire in the heart will illuminate the path. But it's your own fire. Then suddenly you say, oh, there is a path. It wasn't here before. No. You suddenly litten that path with a fire in your heart, with the fire of falling in love again. But with life, not with one person, not with one, but expanding that,
Adrian: Yeah. And it's finding that thing that makes you fall in love with life again, that death and rebirth experience, music, art, whatever it is.
I wonder talking about portals into that death and rebirth experience and falling in love with life again, if you can talk about pilgrimage as a practice for doing that, because that's part of what you offer.
And that's a theme I'm having on the show recently with some guests. So can you talk about pilgrimage as a portal to that falling in love with life, again, going through an initiation or a death rebirth experience.
Tiffani: There's so many aspects, layers of it. Because one thing is just the [00:59:00] fact of traveling, of going out of your known comfort zone.
Adrian: Mm-hmm.
The
Tiffani: patterns, the routine, and you think that, that's more or less the way of living. So it's only when you go to a even more different culture that you see, oh, there are other ways of being, of thinking of, taking life on, you know, and that only, that not even as profound as a pilgrimage.
Now if you do pilgrimage, it means you are going usually to a sacred place. So a place, there are places which are charged with energy
Adrian: shakti.
Tiffani: has that Shakti. We know that we go to places and we feel it right away. You wanna be in your knees in some places.
And for some people it might draw more into some kind of path. Others, you know, it has to be on a, mountain and it has to have difficulty, and that actually I think is a very important part of the pilgrimage, that level of, difficulty.
[01:00:00] And here we bring thing about the benefit of suffering. And knowing how to suffer with quality and what we can call sacred suffering, which is not to avoid, but that suffering means, when you go, for example, to the gym, through effort that you create muscles.
So the same thing to create emotional and spiritual muscles, you have to make that effort. So it's different if you see teachings in YouTube, which we see from all the greatest teachers and gurus we see in YouTube. We have availability to all the teachings, but we don't have the muscles to support that teaching.
Adrian: We didn't have the initiation in that sense.
Tiffani: it's different then, you know, for example, when I went then after Mongolia and I wanted to go to India. I didn't have the money, to go from Mongolia to study in India. So what do I do? I was 18 years old and I knew how to work out a little bit [01:01:00] with websites. I went to Germany, I worked, and finally, I was there to receive the teachings of Thangka painting.
Three years later, I spent three years saving money and all. So when I arrived there, I was like so thirsty and hungry for that. It was like, you can beat me. I'm not coming out of here. My teacher didn't call me by my name for a year and a half. He used to call me inchipumo, which means like gringo,
And, you know, he was always smiling. He was nice, but he didn't take me serious at all. But because I had such a effort to be there, i'm not gonna leave so soon. You can call me by any name you want, but I'm not leaving here. And that is thanks to the effort I had, the muscle, the internal muscle to really be ready and to really benefit from the little teaching he would give me that would feed me [01:02:00] so much.
I would feel so well, one drop of water when you're in the desert, you know, it's like, you know, you, so when you stay at home, how thirsty are you? How hungry are you? So again, talking about creating that polarity even stronger, the stronger it is, the greater is the moment of union, of ecstasy, of that, what we call the sacred union.
But you need that stretch. So that stretch, I think is the effort that we do while a pilgrimage. Let your monsters come out, sweat and blood and let it alchemize until you wanna give up until you don't believe in God anymore. Until you know.. and you're stretching that and. Just tell me that all the stories that we hear of great ecstasy, it's after usually, the dark night of the soul. Is after great suffering.
You have that combination of [01:03:00] aha
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: The universe is pulsation. The universe is that our heart is pulsating. Our breath is pulsating. The universe is pulsating. So how can we just think we are different than that?
So I think pilgrimage creates that polarity, and that's why I think it's cool if we have a little bit of effort on that, and that's why, you know, if you go around Kailash, it's high altitude. three days. It's effort.
The Camino del Santiago, you go, it's 800 kilometers. And you think it's easy. I did for a week only, I did only 150 kilometers.
And that was already, you know, I was romanticizing first, oh, the Camino. And then actually walking in with your blisters is like what, what I, what was I thinking? And then I'm here with myself with thoughts which are not holy, not sacred, what do I have in my mind? And I'm telling this is sacred pilgrimage, you know? And, amazing.
It's [01:04:00] amazing the kind of experience that we can get. We can create cracks in ourselves, and it's through that crack which hurts, which is the divine light comes in and your light goes out to the world. So avoiding those cracks, and putting so much effort to have a safe life, which is what we are being taught to do. And accumulate more money, accumulate a bigger house, a bigger, everything is about accumulating and paying for security. And, the indigenous didn't live like that. And they were happy,
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: for sure, happier than us. And when the colonizers came to, you know, Brazil, at least, there is a story.
They said, why do you want to accumulate gold or wood? Like they didn't understand the principle of accumulating. So it was a life of total trust with nature. They really lived with what they had [01:05:00] for the day, and it was possible.
What are we trying to attain? How much do we need?
Adrian: There's a question to sit with.
Tiffani: Totally.
Adrian: Yeah.
Tiffani: So, that is a question to go through pilgrimage. You can determine a question and go for it. And I think it's so valuable. I think, you know, everybody who is in the path, who's searching for something should, do a pilgrimage in the sense, just go to the, the spiritual gym.
Adrian: Yeah. putting yourself out there, right? that. On that note, I think that might be a good place to end and can you share with people any upcoming offerings that you have, whether it's pilgrimage or anything else you'd like to share?
So,
Tiffani: I have a, organization. I, so I take trips, with that focus to sacred places and meeting with other local artists and knowing the world of the artist and putting hands on usually to sacred art, so, Buddhist art and Hindu art. I've been doing trips, since 2012 so all [01:06:00] these
Adrian: So Islamic art too, right?
Tiffani: Islamic art.
The next trip is going to be in April, 2026 to Bhutan. So soon is gonna be in my website. Next month gonna be there, the itinerary for April. Probably another trip to Tibet also in May and to Morocco in October, 26.
So these are the ideas so far. And of course in my website, TiffaniGyatso.com. I put the trips there. Also my Instagram and here in Brazil I also, every carnival holiday I offer, art retreat. So it's more or less five days of intensive art, and we take it from geometry, sacred art, to what we call intuitive art, writing, poetry dance.
Adrian: Nice. welcome as well.
This is February for Carnival?
Tiffani: So next year is gonna be [01:07:00] February 17.
Adrian: Okay.
Tiffani: on that week. And English speakers, Portuguese, Spanish speakers.
So next year I'm gonna have Carolina Fonseca, which is a dancer from Portugal coming,
Adrian: Hmm.
Tiffani: and we are going to explore. the five wisdom Dakini
Adrian: Nice.
Tiffani: the geometry of space.
Adrian: Very cool.
Tiffani: Me in space, according also to the five elements. And everybody's welcome and you don't have to be a artist or anything.
Adrian: Nice. Wonderful. We'll we will include the link to your website and folks can check that out and they should absolutely join you. I'm looking forward to joining you on one of those. Thank you so much for your time, Tiffani. Really appreciate it.
Tiffani: thank you so much to opening this space and it's beautiful also the work you're doing, just connecting and combining the dots and making all this podcasts and it's great. It has been a super pleasure being here with you and hopefully meeting you in the path soon in person. Right.
Adrian: All right, thanks.
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