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Tibet Outshines the Stars of the Nations
Lynn Greyling,ducks addedI was having visions of northern lights flash dancing in a starlit Norwegian night, even while thinking to write a light-hearted piece about the Milky Way. To begin with I...
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Recovered Connections 1 - The Four Caches
Let’s not make this about me, but I’d like to lead into the subject lightly by telling a story that does involve myself. I believe it may help explain my enthusiasm for the subject.When it came time to...
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Padampa in the Vatican?
༄༅།།དངུལ་སྒོང་གི་བཤད་འབུམ་ལོ་རྒྱུས་བཞུགས་སོ།།Recently back from a spell in Rome, I have exciting news to tell you about something I found out about while I was there. Just a few days before departure...
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Slippage in Buddhist Geography, by Todd Gibson
Swat River, Pakistan - Wikicommons“Slippage” in Buddhist Geography: Orissa, Bengal, Kashmir, and Nepal as Sacred ProxiesTodd GibsonNote: Today’s blog is an original essay by Todd Gibson. It is...
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Bon Studies of Guru Chöwang at Age Six
Guru Chöwang statue, HAR 73029In the face of a recent statement on the hopelessness of ever finding chronological coordinates for the history of Bon,* I have to say I’m not so pessimistic, at least...
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Recovered Connections 2 - Interdependent Emergence of Tibetan Buddhist Schools
• Continued from Recovered Connections 1.Without a doubt it will come as a surprise to many to see just how prominent the Zhijé school is within the early Matho fragments. Comparatively fewer are...
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Turtle in a Bronze Basin
... the thoughts of a turtle are turtles ...If you never kept a turtle as a pet, I don’t recommend it. First and most seriously they are difficult to care for unless you know what you are doing, and...
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Turtle in a Bronze Basin Revisited, by Jean-Luc Achard
Today’s blog is a guest blog by Jean-Luc Achard. It was written in response to the immediately preceding blog, “Turtle in a Bronze Basin.”The image of the turtle in a bronze basin is quite frequent in...
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Women Disciples of Padampa: Very Early Ladakhi Zhijé Fragments from Matho
Matho manuscript fragment W1BL9 v314It’s been a full 20 years since that essay about early Tibetan women religious leaders entitled “The Woman Illusion?” The book is nowhere near being closed on this...
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Seven Women, the Padmasambhava Text from Rome
I first noticed it last winter, in the IsIAO reading room in the National Central Library of Rome. As you see in its title, it’s a Nyingma text, with teachings Padmasambhava granted to seven women...
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Initiation Cards with a Lineage
“Slob-dpon ’Bu-ta Kug-ta”I’ll admit the drawings may not be the finest of fine art. Still, undeniably pleasing overall. Face it, the coloration, plain clumsy, may have been added by a later owner. The...
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Tingrian Couplets in the Meditation Manual
Padampa in Saspola Cave, LadakhPhoto by Rob LinrotheHere you will find on offer translations of six Tingrian Couplets. They were preserved in a 15th-century Nyingma & Kagyü meditation manual...
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Is That Padampa Probable?
Amitābha The Buddha Amitābha. Chromolithograph. Wellcome Collection.Every time I write a blog I go ahead and put it up, thinking it’s over and done with. But it usually isn’t too long, maybe an hour,...
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The Golden Rule, Machine Translated
First question: How is it golden and who decided it has to be a rule? It appears the name emerged in England or the continent just a few centuries ago. Wouldn’t it be more of an appeal or an...
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Seven Women, a Unique Padampa Text from Bhutan
Guru Rinpoche, with Nyangrel and so on (see below) HAR 160. I’ve written before about how there were in the 11th-12th centuries, several popular Buddhist movements that virtually disappeared from...
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The Realm of Dharmas, a Treasury of Jewels, Chapter 8: The Nonduality in...
The Realm of Dharmas,a Treasury of Jewelsby Longchen Rabjampa CHAPTER EIGHTTHE NONDUALITY IN BODHICITTA[To show such a pure nature naturally-arrived-at to be of a nondual character, an illustration...
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Skepticism toward Doctors
A physician taking pulse readings“One who out of desire for material gain merely assumes the guise of a physician is a destroyer of life.” — Bshad-rgyud, ch. 31.Even if it isn’t always transparent,...
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Prayer Wheels, Odd Ideas and Even Odder
Look closely at this illustration, found in a brief chapter on Tartary published in 1741. Engraved by Bernard Picart (1673-1733), it is one of many found in a 7-volume encyclopedia Religious Customs...
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Persian Name in a Bon History, Anenhar in Drenpa’s Proclamation
A figure with the very unusual name Anenhar (A-nan-har) is mentioned twice in the recently released translation of a late 12th-century Bon historical text, Drenpa's Proclamation(pp. 254-5). He’s...
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Two Odd Words that Ought to be Persian
Ya-ladIn our last blog, we put forward a method for identifying foreign multisyllabic words in Tibetan. We should try again, just to add a little refinement and state it in a different way. To begin...
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Thank You for the Light, A Turkic Loanword
Lcags-magThe ink is hardly dry on the last blog and the holiday season is bearing down on us. Still, I’d like to add on one more before giving these loanwords a rest. This example does suit my...
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Sag-ri and Sag-ti, Two Leather Loans
Shagreen on an 18th-c. Turkish daggerkept at the METToday’s guest blog is by Michael Walter.Concerning sag ri and sag tiIt may be best to begin this brief analysis with entries from a Syriac dictionary...
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Mandala Architecture, the Top of the Wall
Diagram of the mandala portal and wall, with labelscourtesy of Yael BentorI suppose I ought to go into a long-winded preamble before getting to the point. But first of all let me state the point, or...
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Turkish Dzogchen of Early Ladakh
Hong Kong, May 2018 It is honestly difficult to contemplate writing up a blog after giving it a title like that one you see above. There is a promise and an aim indicated in it, but I suppose the...
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Macrocosmic Man in the Kālacakra Tantra
Well, Leonardo’s Vesuvian man it is not. I am not and never have been an artist. I drafted the drawing you see here above decades ago, in the early ’80’s, as part of an attempt to understand the first...
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