Guru Chöwang statue, HAR 73029 In 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 not for the early 11th century up into the Mongol period.  Yes, there are problems with dating with assurance a lot of events during that time whether they have to do with Bon or not. Part of the problem is that back in those centuries it was usually thought enough to supply 12-year-cycle “animal” dates for events without calculating 60-year-cycle “animal-element” dates.** The ..read more

  ༄༅།།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 I received a gift of an article attached to an email. On its first page, I noticed a title that to my mind could only mean it was a work of Padampa or a commentary on the same. And if it were in the last place in the world you would expect to find a work of his, it would have to be the Vatican Apostolic Library. That same evening I typed the call number into the Google search box ..read more

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 make a formal proposal for my doctoral dissertation back in the mid-80’s, I couldn’t make up my mind whether to be a modernist or a medievalist.  One idea I had was to study Kongtrul and the Nonpartisan or Non-sectarian Rimé movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After a lot of thought, I decided to leave the modern world behind, and concentrate on a Bonpo teacher ..read more

Lynn Greyling, ducks added I 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 thought I would search out ways to explain the Tibetan word for it, dgu-tshigs skya-mo, or Lightish Nine Joints. But my imagined explanations seemed to go south if anywhere, so I hope you can forgive me for going off in other directions. My thoughts on the Milky Way may get clear of those squamous clouds another day.* (*In fact an old friend of mine Michael Walter has promi ..read more

Five Seals symbols at end of Menri Manuscript EAP687/1/39 Click to enlarge You might remember last May’s posting addressing my mistake in saying that in Tibet the Seven Seals (or in Bon, the Five Seals) are never represented by symbolic figures. If memory is short, go to “Five Seals of Bon, but with Symbolic Figures This Time.” Then come back here. As if to drive the point even further and deeper into my earlier error, yet another rather different representation of the Five Seals according to Bon has shown up among the manuscripts digitized at Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre or, as it ..read more

Shrî Seng-ha, after the Gting-skyes edition, vol. 4 One thing that has puzzled me about the 1261 history of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism associated with Scholar Deyu is its nearly complete disinterest in Terma revealers. What makes this even more remarkable is that the anonymous author of this and works related to it had Nyingma lineage connections in addition to Zhijé. Other authors with a great fondness for Nyingma teachings share this trait, most prominently Gö Lotsawa and his Blue Annals of 1478. The most celebrated Tertons of the 12th and 13th centuries, Nyangral and Chöwang ..read more

  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 right away later on, his gender identity and preferred pronoun can be an issue, although we’ll follow the grammatical clue of the final syllable and use him. The word king might seem to lend him a governing or ruling function, just that his kingdoms and governments tend to dissolve away. He may look like a creator god, a highly intriguing point for followers of monotheistic ..read more

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 time. You would also know that the main place where this is happening is BDRC (formerly TBRC) and its BUDA website. The title page you see just above with the unusual archway of entry is a great example. Maybe the best part of its story is that, for Tibetan readers of the world, it presents a number of puzzles, puzzles that I haven’t, or haven’t yet, solved to my own satisfa ..read more

Pemakarpo, HAR 65368 Over 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 today’s Places as rooted in the primordial human past, when divine presences began to be enshrined in natural features such as standing stones, cairns and groves that eventually evolved into the towering cathedrals and temples of our time. Simplistic? Well, of course, simple ideas are the most difficult to arrive at sometimes, and to keep things simpler still, we have to ignore the ways hol ..read more

Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 7, Episode 6 — Phantasms Internal conversation, discursive thinking and troubling thoughts. All three are practical synonyms for something that keeps going on when you sit down to try, with all the goodwill in the world, to meditate. Trying to turn them off unleashes the inevitable flood. Seeing the flood inspires frustration, and frustration can give way to surrender.  Understanding what namtok (རྣམ་རྟོག) is is something you can only come to when you try to practice meditative concentration. And meditative concentration, I think ..read more