Tibetan Proverb:

"The mouth speaks of the Holy faith,
And the hand sets about committing murder."

A contemporary application of Tibetan calligraphy which I made in response to the pure insanity happening in world politics and within the current U.S. administration.

The U.S. and Israel have begun a war with Iran in ‘Operation Epic Fury’. We’re talking lots of old religious stuff here. “The Christian Zionists, who believe Israel must vanquish its Muslim enemies to usher in the second coming of Jesus, consider the current war to be a prelude to the End Times.”

Trump was told to be “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth,” while people in his administration are literally praying over him in the Oval Office.

༆ In this artwork, the two words scribed in red ink are to highlight the main concept of the “Holy War”.

ཆོས means the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha. In the context of this proverb as it’s written, I’ve used this word to illustrate the “Holy (faith)”

གསོད is the verb ‘to kill’ which I’ve used to represent the act of war.

How do you visually represent ཆོས་གསོད - ‘Holy War’ ?

I kept coming back to the question “what is the result of a ‘holy war?’ The key element I used here, is the single drop of blood, flowing from the tip of the letter ད at the end of the verb ‘to kill,’ and down the entire length of the paper.

That’s the only result I can see.

༆ This proverb is from a book of Tibetan Proverbs compiled by Lhamo Pemba and published in 1996 by the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives.

Scribed on Fabriano Artistico paper with black and vermillion ink, using a particular Petsug and Yig-chung scripts originating from the Golok region of Amdo in Tibet.