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Isolation, Retreat, Renunciation, Concentration.
The way to Zanabazar's retreat placeI just started reading a new volume that’s part of Halvor Eifring's bigger project to study meditation as a phenomenon in a broad spectrum of religious cultures. The...
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The Padampa Diet Plan
བརྟུལ་ཞུགས་གྲུབ་པའི་རྩེར་སོན་ཕ་དམ་པ།།Given the richness of detail in the literature contained in the Zhijé Collection, I have sometimes found myself inclined to mine it for topics that might be...
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Padampa's Plant Community: P’i-kuo's Response
Artemisia vulgaris L.You may recall that in our latest blog there was a bit about the botanical identification of the mkhan-pa plant that grew where Padampa stayed when he first arrived in Tingri....
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Proverbs of Dezhung Rinpoche
On the high roads from India, the Dharma spread.Before the Dharma spread, the conch spread.The white conch opened the way for the Dharma.On the low roads from China, law spread.Before law spread, cloth...
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An Archaic Book of the Dead
Have a closer look at this manuscript page before reading the following sentence. Click on the picture and see if you can enlarge it. What are you seeing there? What does it mean? The manuscript had...
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The Tangut Connection
You could be blissfully unaware there ever was any country, people, tongue or writing system called Tangut, and if you find yourself in that boat you might be in good company, well at least a lot of...
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35 Basic Words in Zhangzhung
The aim in this brief blog is to supply, for the use of Tibeto-Burman linguists in particular, a list of Zhangzhung words that are both [1] ‘basic’ (that could be thought of as somehow ‘strong’ and...
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The Ting in Tingri
Trees beside the Great Pagoda of Koyasan in the nightFor Katia BuffetrilleBeing on top of Mount Koya in Japan was so much like a dream. I kept pinching myself and even every now and then bumped my head...
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New Padampa Manuscripts
Note: What you will find in this blog is a lightly edited version of something with the title you see here. A few days ago it was delivered at the seminar of the International Association of Tibetan...
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The Harms of Firearms
From a Dunhuang mural of the temptation preceding EnlightenmentThere is a lot of talk in recent years in the U.S., as there has to be, over the availability of firearms, their ubiquity in American...
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Magic Water?
“The water is taken from the Divine Spring of Qudanima summit, 5128 metres high by the northern slope of Himalaya. For the past 1200 years, the water is valued highly as sweet dew for all ills. With 17...
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Signs of Shangri-la
Left Turn, Shangri-laI spent too much time in Shangri-la, to tell the truth. Not that even a single day there could not have pushed some serious cynicism buttons. As it is, I’m left saddened and a...
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Tibetan Magic in a Chinese Ghost Story
I was celebrating one of my most hallowed Halloween traditions the other night... trying to get myself a little frightened. Now and then it’s good to crank up the adrenalin. After searching around in...
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For Leonard and Loss
Villanelle for Our Time“From bitter searching of the heart,Quickened with passion and with painWe rise to play a greater part.“This is the faith from which we start:Men shall know commonwealth...
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Padampa Site Sighted in Yunnan
I have to say, I didn’t see any signs of Padampa while I was traveling through central and northern Yunnan, and you can be sure my eyes were peeled for them. Still, someone else did sight him, in their...
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Letter Writing Manuals
བོད་གཞུང་སྦྲཊ་གླ་- "Tibetan Government Postal Fee" - green 4-tamka.stamp (1930's)Clearly today in the internet world where we find ourselves the last thing we imagine we need is a letter writing...
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Channels = Veins, Nerves & What, Sinews?
I was planning a blog about chakras, but something else came up. I was reading Janet Gyatso’s translation and discussion on the typology of channels in physiology that is findable in the Explanatory...
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Embed from Getty ImagesI was perfectly relaxed this morning, leisurely absorbing a fascinating article by Minoru Inaba on the subject of From Kesar (see our blog entry "From Gesar"), a Turkic king of...
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Introduction to Tibetan Book Arts
The Tibetan world has an amazingly impressive book culture, truly different from what you find elsewhere.* I could think of no better way to illustrate it than with a few slides borrowed from His...
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Book Arts, Consecration and Letters
Since the subject is holy books, and the ritual methods for making books holy, let’s first think about booksand briefly look into some of the relevant terms for them. Then we’ll prepare the way for...
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