Well, if you see an image of Chenrezig, for instance, this is an image that’s meant to evoke compassion in much the same way that a vivid image or poem does in the West, say by William Blake. When they say that the Dalai Lama is an embodiment of Chenrezig, it’s recognizing this boundless compassion in him. It’s not saying that only the Dalai Lama is Chenrezig. It’s compassion that’s there in everyone, including yourself.

So most of these images are actually images of all beings - of your own boundless qualities and the boundless qualities of all beings, though those qualities such as boundless compassion can be very hard to see in yourself, and usually are easiest to see external to yourself first in others, or in these abstract forms. Apart from anything else, if you recognize them in yourself chances are you’ll immediately say “this is “my compassion””, try to turn it into a kind of possession or attribute, at which point it immediately stops being boundless. This is just a normal trap that we all fall into, nothing to feel bad about, is just the way we are. You can’t do anything about it except notice it with a wry sense of humour, the more you try to squash such thoughts, the more you increase yet another sense of yourself as a supreme thought squasher :). So that’s equally silly.

Some of them may be images of particular Buddhas or great teachers, for instance you’ll probably see many images that are meant to represent the historical Buddha Shakyamuni. You may find images of other historical great teachers, for instance the Indian mahasiddhas.

Then as well as that, you may see images of other beings in different “realms”. For Buddhists (unlike Hindus) these are not deities, they don’t live for ever. Rather they are beings like us but with very long lives. In our own cosmology, perhaps they are closest to our ideas that there might be extra terrestrials with immensely long lives, happy for millions of years or longer. Maybe with lifetimes of trillions of years. No real reason why our physical universe can’t have beings like that in it. So - it’s similar - what about beings with even longer lives than that?

Then you also have the idea that it’s possible to achieve various meditative states. They are not the end goal at all in Buddhism. But if you achieve a very stable meditative state when you die, then there’s the idea you can end up in realms of pure thought without a body , or even realms that go beyond thought at all. pure pleasure, and then beyond distinctions of pain and pleasure and even more refined states. These are thought of as all being in samsara for Buddhists.

In between those realms and ordinary bodies like ours they have the ideas of “bodies of light”. So some of these beings depicted are beings like us but with immensely long lives, and perhaps with bodies of light. Whatever that means - just think of as like very pure, no ordinary suffering at all. Not thought to be an especially good state to aim for long term because it’s quite hard to motivate yourself to do anything about it if you just experience pure bliss all the time, and yet, it doesn’t last for ever, in Buddhist teaching, eventually those conditions exhaust themselves and you end up back where you started. Other pictures may show beings that suffer greatly too.

So - those are the main distinctions I think

• Images that are like poetry or great art, meant to evoke compassion, wisdom, loving kindness etc, and though in human form, are meant to be a representation of this quality in all beings including yourself
• Buddhas like Shakyamuni and other great historical teachers, including sometimes mythological figures that are not firmly anchored in ordinary history as we understnad it in the West.
• Ordinary beings like ourselves but some of them with very long lives filled with bliss.

There are no deities in the Hindu sense or the Western sense in these Buddhist tankhas however. Though many may resemble Hindu deities. Surely from the style of the painting, there is some common origin there, but the way the images are understood is different.