Bob Schwartz

“If you are a smartphone user, you look at the lock screen—the opening screen you swipe to get into your phone—maybe a hundred times a day. Just a second at a time, but seconds add up to a real experience and impression. The pre-loaded images on lock screens are pretty banal, meant to show off the screen’s high-resolution capability without offending or overexciting anyone.”
The Art of the Lock Screen

A while ago—okay, a long while ago in Digital Time—I wrote about the creative possibilities of the lock screen on your mobile devices. Since then, my own devices have gone through a lot of different lock screen looks.

My latest lock screen art is shown above. It is a Tibetan thangka circa 1700, done in ink, pigments, and gold on cotton, depicting Amitabha in Sukhavati Paradise. Amithaba (Amida in Japanese) is the Buddha of Infinite Light and Life. Sukhavati Paradise is also known as the Pure Land, and is a centerpiece of Pure Land Buddhism—not as well-known in the West as other traditions such as Zen, but the dominant Buddhist tradition in Japan.

What the Pure Land is, where the Pure Land is, and how to get to the Pure Land are big topics for another time. But just look at that image. Even if you know nothing about what it means, seeing it each time you open your phone can certainly be a help in making things better.