Christmas Morning

6:00 am roles around awfully early in the dead of winter. It is nice to get a good sound sleep though. No New York traffic noises. No helicopters. No bumping against the wall. No running up and down the stairs at 3 or 4 in the morning (Lance moved out). When I first moved to New York there used to be gun shots in the night. Not every night but enough nights. I don't put the apartment keys between my knuckles anymore. A good nights sleep, it makes you want to get up and work.

The temperature is around zero and no new snow has fallen. It should begin to slowly melt and the rains are supposed to start on the weekend. Friends are coming over in the late afternoon for Christmas dinner. It will be very relaxed, buffet style, sitting around the living room rather than a formal seating. The fireplace in the living room needs some repairs so it won't be lit and the fireplace in the den hasn't been used for a few years, aah! Only the downstairs fireplace is working because it has a cast iron insert and used regularly over the winter. Well, at least I don't have to cut and split wood on Christmas day.

On this holy and sacred day I have offered up a mountain goat (not a real goat, just called a goat), not for feasting, or sacrifice, but for viewing. This photo was taken on a fall day in October (2005) when I was meditating in a cliff side cave high above my retreat cabin in the mountains. Two goats came by to check on me and make sure I was O.K. Maybe he is checking in on you too! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everybody!

Winter Wonderland in Vancouver

It is still snowing. It was snowing when I left New York. It was snowing when I arrived in Vancouver. And aside from a day or so of clear blue sky, it is snowing again. The streets are a mess, although a beautiful mess. We may get another 5 to 10 inches on top of the nearly 2 feet that's here already.

The HAR and SRG Blogs have been updated with the latest news or subjects of interest. The snow is conducive to staying inside and working in a very easy and relaxed fashion.

Additions & Updates

I did a quick re-working of the main Sakya Outline Page on the HAR website. To this I added at the bottom, as you already saw, the Sakya Protectors Outline. Linked to that is a new outline page for Panjarnata Mahakala. I still have more work to do on this and I am not sure if I remembered the Five Lineages of Panjaranata accurately. I have a feeling that the Mal Lotsawa and the Rinchen Zangpo lineages are the same which means that I have forgotten one. I can look it up when I am back in New York next week.

Also new to the Sakya Outline Page is the Monasteries & Branch Schools outline . This new page will become more meaningful and develop as I upload all of the images from my various trips to Tibet and hopefully the images that the students also took at the various locations.

Back To New York

After a week on the road visiting art collections in Chicago and Ann Arbor I'm finally heading back to New York in a few hours. Some of the art in these out of the way museums is extremely good, some peices are of historical importance and others are iconographically rare.

Chicago

I'm here in Chicago to look at art. The first stop is the Chicago Art Institute where they have a amll but very good collection of art. Their strength is in sculpture but they also have some very good Tibetan and Nepalese paintings. The second place of interest is the Field Museum where they have a very large collection of art, mostly Chinese Himalayan and Mongolian art, paintings, sculpture, book covers, and ritual objects.

First Post

Well, here we are again. Different venue but still here. If you know what I mean. This web blog is intended to be a venue to say exactly how I feel about a number of different topics especially about Buddhism and Himalayan art.