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Padampa Portrait - Part Two
Detail of the Padampa lineage painting, +1 level - click to expand - © Sotheby's Today we will continue from the last blog where we talked about the content of the middle register with its central...
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End of Tibetology in Sight
Photo by F.S. Chapman, Lhasa 1936© Trustees of the British MuseumAt the risk of instigating largely gratuitous Schadenfreude on the part of a whole slew of opponents of our reputedly hallowed...
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New Old Histories
Two ragdung players at Tharlam Monastery, Bodhanath 2011; it is said the ragdung was invented for the ceremonial welcoming of Jowo Jé Atiśa into Tibet in 1042 CE - the name rag-dung means brass conch.I...
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If All the Land Were Paper...
Nicholas Roerich's Книга мудрости — Book of Wisdom...and all the ocean ink.I was amazed to discover for myself recently some older works of literature that weigh in on an interesting turn of phrase —...
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Is the Wishing Jewel the Holy Grail We Seek?
Nicholas Roerich (1933), White Stone (Sign of Chintamani or Horse of Happiness)ཡིད་བཞིན་ནོར་བུའི་དགོས་པ་གང་ཡིན་ལྟོས༎yid bzhin nor bu'i dgos pa gang yin ltos //What use is a Wishgranting Jewel? Look...
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No Jewel (as such) Fell in Tibet
Near Oberndorf in Tirol, August 2008I just finished reading the very thing I recommended in the last blog, the article entitled, “The Wish-Granting Jewel: Exploring the Buddhist Origins of the Holy...
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Tibetan Proper Name Index
For nearly 30 years I’ve been collecting references to Tibetan personal and place names from all kinds of sources, but generally from works in Tibetan language. Even the couple of devoted Tibeto-Logic...
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No Prophet in Buddhism?
You might well wonder what any normally Tibeto-centric Tibeto-logician would be doing spending his evenings leafing through a — well, not-so-recent — book about a Muslim theologian and Sufi...
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Marginal Amusement at the Bodleian
Earlier today, under inspiration from the latest blog entry from Janus, I was doing an internet search for ‘Hero Capable [of overcoming all comers all at] Once,’ or, in the original tongue, Dpa'-bo...
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Two Proto-Berlitz Phrasebooks
Source: HERE.Sometimes when you are reading two books at the same time you can find yourself faced with some interesting juxtapositions, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t venture to say my two examples of...
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New Works on the Works of Lama Zhang
Zhang Yudragpa: Detail of a tapestry portraitToday’s small blog effort, I feel it is fair to warn you, is likely to be of limited interest to all but the most dyed-in-the-wool Tibeto-logical...
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Dragon Year Losar eCard Greetings
This is that time of year when a lot of people are out on the internet using their search engines to locate sources of Losar e-cards. I know it’s true. Never mind how. But I would like to take this...
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Three Traditions of Ten Powers: In Buddhism, Judaism, Islam
From one of several old Kabbalistic ‘Tree’parchments in the outstanding collection ofWilliam Gross of Tel AvivThis mystical monogram, looking a little like a labyrinth, is made up of the first letters...
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Generating Sacred Symbols
Lumbini 2011PrefaceWhat you will find below if you scroll down a bit is a short section from a book manuscript I’ve been working on since I can remember. It doesn’t have a real title yet, or to put it...
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The Vajra as Implement, Emblem and Symbol
Vajra and Bell The Tibetan ritual implements coming next (after this) on our itinerary are not just artistic representations to be ‘read through’ to the high religio-philosophical matters of which...
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Pavements Like the Sea
Vancouver, August 2010For a long time I’ve wanted to immerse myself in the Tibetan accounts of Buddha’s life, and in the last few years I’ve found occasions to do just that. Almost all the good books...
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The Vajra in the Sūtras
Today’s blog continues from this one.What led the revealers of the Buddhist tantras to name their method Vajrayāna, or Vajra Vehicle? Here I would like to suggest, to the certain surprise of some...
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The Vajra in Vajrayāna
Sakya Jebtsun Dragpa Gyeltsen, holding Vajra and Bell© Trustees of the British MuseumToday’s post is a continuation of this one.There is a very interesting twelfth-century Tibetan work by Dragpa...
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The Bell and the Sound Symbols of Dharma
Bell and Vajra. From the British Museum© The Trustees of the British MuseumToday's blog entry is a continuation of this one."The world is sound. Immediately the question arises: What kind of sound?"...
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Symbols on the Slope
Sound Symbols, including the Bell, the Conch, the Cymbals and the Book, surrounding Samantabhadra and Samantabhadrî. Detail from a huge scroll painting illustrating the scripture entitled Stacked...
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