As we count down the days until the June 11 opening of the Rubin Museum Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room at the Brooklyn Museum, we're taking a closer look at shrines, their significance, and the iconography represented. First, what are shrine rooms? 📿 Across the Himalayas and beyond, Tibetan Buddhist shrine rooms serve as sacred spaces for daily devotional activities, offerings, prayers, and rituals. They can range from a humble space in a home or a grand temple. As part of daily practice, #Buddhist practitioners engage all of their senses while performing religious actions of body, speech, and mind. They look at the images, use ritual instruments, recite mantras, and hear sounds. Practitioners use prayer beads to keep track of their recitations, and they make offerings of light with butter lamps and scent with incense. Engaging in these activities fulfills their aspirations for well-being and reminds them of Buddhist concepts of cause and effect and impermanence, and ideals of awa...