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The Realm of Dharmas, a Treasury of Jewels, Chapter 7: Everything is Totally...
The Realm of Dharmas,a Treasury of Jewels,by Longchen Rabjampa CHAPTER SEVENEVERYTHING IS TOTALLY NATURALLY-ARRIVED-AT IN BODHICITTA[Not only are all dharmas included in Bodhicitta, they are...
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Five Seals of Bon, but with Symbolic Figures This Time
I never expected to see this. Last year I blogged about the several Afroeurasian versions of the Seven Seals. Among other things I concluded that the several sets of seven are interrelated only here...
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The Land of Snows, along with The Seven Seals of Tibet: A Joycean Journey
Everest & Nubtse, photo by Vyacheslav Argenbe The Land of SnowsThe land of snows, where mountains touch the sky,And rivers flow from glaciers pure and white.A sacred place, where ancient wisdoms...
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Lamp of Assurance, a Very Nearly Lost Bon History
“Bon-byung Yid-ches Sgron-ma [b]zhugs.” Endangered Archives Project EAP687/1/19I see no need to overplay that old scenario of the precious object lost and unknown suddenly revealed to the world. It...
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Internal Conversation, Discursive Thinking, Troubling Thoughts
Star Trek: The Next GenerationSeason 7, Episode 6 — PhantasmsInternal conversation, discursive thinking and troubling thoughts. All three are practical synonyms for something that keeps going on when...
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Whose Praise of Tsari?
Pemakarpo, HAR 65368Over the years I’ve developed my own way of seeing holy places. I’ve spent decades living in one of the most celebrated pilgrimage destinations the world has ever known. I see...
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Terton Onomastics
Title page of a text included in BDRC no. W4PD975 (click to enlarge)If you’ve been with us in recent years you would know this: Surprising new pieces of older Tibetan literature are popping up all the...
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The All Making King’s Earliest Fragment
Scanned leaf from Matho, BDRC no. W1BL9, vol. 405 (click to enlarge)ཀུན་བྱེད་རྒྱལ་པོ་, the All Making King, is difficult to talk about. Let's start with the end of his name. As you may notice, if not...
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The Only Terma in the Matho Termas
Shrî Seng-ha, after the Gting-skyes edition, vol. 4One thing that has puzzled me about the 1261 history of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism associated with Scholar Deyu is its nearly complete disinterest in...
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Five Seals of Bon, New Surprises
Five Seals symbols at end of Menri Manuscript EAP687/1/39Click to enlargeYou might remember last May’s posting addressing my mistake in saying that in Tibet the Seven Seals (or in Bon, the Five Seals)...
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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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