Jeff's Travels

Flying Out of New York, What Do the Lamas Do?

2011-12-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

You know, there has been some talk lately about which electronic devices can be used on a plane and which devices cannot. There has also been some talk about turning all electronic devices off during take-off.

Well, I don't know what the true story is and if there are any universally adhered to policies for electronic devices on planes. I have however flown regularly for the past 12 years. And, I do try and always fly with Cathay Pacific or one of its partner airlines. There are two reasons for this. The first, Cathay flies most of the routes I need to travel. Secondly, Cathay offers great, GREAT, service, as do most of their partners. But, back to my initial point which I haven't yet even started to make.

So, I have used a set of Bose headphones, electronic headphones, for years. They were purchased exclusively for air travel. I'm sure they will work perfectly fine off the plane as well. For me they work great! A friend tells me that the Sony also work well. Regardless, I recommend them to anybody that does a lot of air travel. How they work is - aside from reducing background and foreground noise - they reduce the airplane buzz in your head which more importantly reduces jet-lag. That is the unofficial scientific explanation.

However, back to the point. I have never been asked on Cathay Pacific to turn off my headphones during take-off or landing. On one occasion flying on American Airlines between New York and San Fransisco, prior to take-off, I was asked to both turn them off and to take them off my head.

Now, what is most interesting is that on my most recent flight, which I am writing about now at over 30000 feet, I was not asked once to turn off my Ipad which I was using right up until the end of final taxi immediately prior to gunning the engines and taking-off. I would have continued to use the Ipad but I opted to close the cover and put it down simply because of the shaking of the plane. I was of course still wearing the Bose headphones. So, there you have it, my point. Rules are rules as long as they are enforced or people continue to believe in them. That is the substance of it - my point.

Now, with safety aside, on another topic of some importance, it is nice that Cathay has brought back the beef tenderloin for one of the meal choices in business class on the New York to Vancouver flight. For awhile, and I can't remember for how long, but, they were experimenting with food all too much for my liking. I was fortunate tonight. They bumped me from coach seating up to business class. A class to which I am not completely unaccustomed, yet not guaranteed.

I'm sure there are ways to guarantee business class seating. Aside from money of course. I have a friend who would likely know the particular Catholic saint responsible for arranging such things. Unfortunately Tantric Buddhism does not upgrade and modernize their deities as quickly and as efficiently as the Catholic Church modernizes their saints.

For Tantric deities, if I was to take a guess as to who could assist with business class accommodation, then it would likely be some form of a wealth deity, probably peaceful, but with the added feature of a red body colour - adding a little expediency to the mix - as colours have meaning in Tantric Buddhism.

To their credit, the Catholics have books which describe all of the different saints and especially which particular saint is best suited for each and every special human need and condition. Tantric Buddhism, however, does not. In the interests of keeping up with the Roman Catholics and modernization in general, Tantrics should upgrade and offer deities, cataloged and organized, assorted for all daily human needs and conditions. Towards this common good, surely there must already be a 'Terma' out there, hidden or discovered, that addresses such things as air travel.....what do the Lamas do?

(Written Tuesday night, 20th of December).

Lecture, Leaving Chengdu, Hong Kong

2011-11-24T21:25:00.000-08:00

The last lecture was Thursday night. It was on Tibetan Painting Styles. There were 60 + students and teachers. It seemed to go quite well with many questions at the end. There definitely needs to be a system developed for teaching Tibetan styles. There isn't anything right now that is suitable and useful.

I never like to leave Chengdu. It is a city that is comfortable for me. However, I was up at five and to the airport by seven. The flight was delayed an hour but that didn' t prevent me from getting to Hong Kong with plenty of time to catch my next flight. I had a comfortable exit row seat and a perfectly adequate breakfast on the flight. Dragon Air is not as good as Cathay but they try. Because of that extra marks are awarded.

Fortunately for the HK to JFK portion of the trip I won't be traveling in the cattle car. This will allow me to nap as well as get a little work done prior to landing. The ipad is very useful for writing without the cumbersome and large folding laptop. I am now a firm believer in ipad, or similar, technology. It made me more productive and more adaptable to changing work situations and spaces while in Chengdu. It also allows me to carry a virtual Tibetan and English library with me where ever I go.

iPad Purchase

2011-11-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

Well it is coming on to nearly four months since I bought an IPad. It has taken a lot of getting used to because it is not very intuitive in so many ways. So far it is well worth while because I use it as a Tibetn text reader and have it loaded with all the most important collections of texts that I use frequently. It is also filled with thousands of images from collections that I am working on. It is certainly the technology I have been waiting for for a number of years. I certainly recommend it for all those people that need quick access to large collections of Tibetan texts and images. What is certain is that in the near future the features and large memory that is found on the iPad will be available on a number of other technology brands at a half or a third the price of the iPad. So far it has been my second most useful technology purchase after I upgraded to a Blackberry from a standard cellular phone.

Chengdu in November

2011-11-14T00:13:00.000-08:00

The weather in Chengdu in November should be around 15 or 16 degrees during the day. That means Celsius of course. I hope to be able to complete the survey of one large museum collection and also spend time with at least one other collection. The museum collection was partially surveyed last year but not completed. The wonderful thing about Chengdu aside from the mild climate and great food is that there is always more art to see. As everyone knows, Blogger isn't accessible in China. I will be using the alternate Blog site for occasional updates on activities: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Jeff-on-the-Road/page-1.html

Mild Earthquake in New York

2011-08-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, I felt the earthquake up on the 9th floor of the office building where I work in midtown Manhattan. Once I noticed it the duration seemed to only be for maybe a few seconds and then it came back and lasted 7 to 10 seconds. It was the gentle swaying - like rocking a baby - that I noticed.

Pema Rinzin at the Joshua Liner Gallery

2011-08-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

Summer Group Exhibition 2011, from August 4 to August 27, 2011.

Pema Rinzin is once again at the Joshua Liner Gallery for the Summer Group Exhibition. He is only showing a single large painting from the 'Water Series' he began several years ago - the third and last painting in the set. To really experience the gold work in the composition you really have to bend or kneel down below the painting and look up. Only from this angle does the gold become electric and magnify the vitality and feel of the painting. The work is stunning and the enormous number of hours put into the creation of the work really pay off when viewed in just the right way to see all the detail and layers of the textures and colours. Don't be afraid to get close up or to get down on one knee and look up.

Back to the Regular Old Blog

2011-07-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

Now that I have arrived in Hong Kong I can resume the regular Google blog for occasional news updates. The China Travel Blog will be put on hold until the next trip.

Hong Kong Airport - Heading to Chengdu

2011-05-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

I have a few hours to wait for my flight to Chengdu so I might as well just relax. My first choice was the 'Cabin' Cathay Business Class lounge but it was very full because they are renovating the 'Wing' lounge. I moved over to the Dragonair which is a lot quieter and less humid. If I get bored here then I can move to the Quantus lounge which I have never been in.

The flight from New York was as expected except they bumped me to Business. You know I have a love hate relationship with Business Class because the coffin seats are a little short. I did catch up on movies and the food was good. The fifteen or so hours just fly by.

Well, as the five of you who read this blog know - Blogger doesn't work in China. Therefore, after today I will be using the Travelblog: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Jeff-on-the-Road/page-1.html

I arrive in Chengdu at about 11:00 tonight and have a friend picking me up at the airport. The weekend is free and I don't have to be at the Sichuan University until 10:00 Monday morning. The jetlag will not be over by then but will definitely have lessened. I don't need to do very much prep work for the first few classes. The detailed outline was all prepared in New York and translated into Chinese. All further outlines will be based on that original model along with input from the students.

Back to China

2011-05-26T04:50:00.000-07:00

Today is a travel day. I am heading to Chengdu via Hong Kong to spend time at the Sichuan University. Unfortunately Cathay did not bump me up to Business Class for this leg of the trip. That's O.K., sometimes it is more comfortable in coach sitting in the exit row aisle seat. I've noticed in the last few months that Cathay has downgraded the food in Business Class. I don't know if that was just for that flight or whether it is a new trend to save money.

The Sichuan University has invited me to come and teach on he subject of iconography in Tibetan art. It is not an easy subject and even more difficult to try and teach. Up until now there have been no systems, course curriculum or publications that teach a systematic and intelligible method of learning Tibetan iconography. I have spent many years thinking about a system and worked through many course models. Some failed miserably and others had moderate success. Through trial and error I believe I now have a model that will work - it just has to be proven in the field - a classroom with interested students. The graduate students at Sichuan University will be the test case.

SRG Site Up and Running Smoothly

2011-05-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

The SRG site was down for a few days in mid April but was then back up without any problems. I dislike any down time with websites because it usually indicates a bad service provider or sloppiness on the part of the web master. I will try and do some updates on the site in the next few days - god only knows - I have the material.

Sakya Resource Guide is Temporarily Down

2011-04-15T21:10:00.000-07:00

The SRG is down because the hosting company is doing some major changes to their infrastructure. Unfortunately I do not have a mirror site, so, that means SRG is down for up to a few days. They say maybe up to five. For those avid SRG viewers all I can recommend is that you spend a little time with the HAR site. I know it is a meager substitute but it is all I can suggest. On HAR look especially to the News page because this month, April, and it's only the 15th, there have already been thirty-four (34) news items uploaded. If you can get through all of those in the next few days while SRG is down then I will be impressed. Because, it is not just that there are 34 items, it is because there are numerous new pages added for each of those News items. It really is a lot of material not to mention the hundreds of new images that have gone up to accompany the News items.

Now, the reason for the goat? Well, the mountain goat picture was taken some years ago outside of a small cave that clings precariously onto a cliff a few hundred feet above my cabin in the mountains. You can tell by the beautiful white fur that it was the fall. I am actually going to the cabin tomorrow. If I see anymore mountain goats then I will surely take a photo. Usually at this time of year I see more moose and elk. I hope a bear hasn't gotten into my supplies. Usually they are too quick to photograph especially if you come across one on a path - they usually bolt for the cover of underbrush and forest. The bears at the cabin are quite wild and not as familiar with people.

Resolving the Dalai Lama resignation crisis: Jamyang Norbu

2011-03-30T09:20:00.001-07:00

Read Jamyang Norbu on the Dalai Lama resignation........

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=29312&article=Resolving+the+Dalai+Lama+resignation+crisis%3a+Jamyang+Norbu

The Dalai Lama Abdicates

2011-03-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

The Dalai Lama abdicating his government role and abdicating future
Dalai Lamas from the role of leader of Tibetans should be received as big news and a big step towards the Tibetan culture in exile entering the 21st century.

This is a must read..........

http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=29310&article=The+Untouchables+of+Dharamsala

--- Jeff

"His Holiness the Dalai Lama has done the opposite: he’s decided to
abdicate his political powers to an elected leadership, committing the
400-year old institution of the Dalai Lama to history. At a time when
street revolutions are afoot and despots are fighting to retain their
last bastions, the Dalai Lama and his people are engaged in a polite
pingpong exchange. He wants his people to choose their own leadership
while they — unable to rise above their emotions — are pleading with
him to continue."

"As a child, my first image of the Dalai Lama was on a postage stamp.
He was holding a child, so we were envious and our parents said we
were the unfortunate ones. For Tibetans, he is the reincarnation of
Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva who vowed to be with us until we all
achieve nirvana. So when he’s making fundamental changes — terminating
the Ganden Phodrang government that’s existed since 1642 — it’s a
deeply emotional moment and the change is unlikely to be easy." (www.phayul.com)

Gene Smith - Memorial Service: Feb. 12th, 2011

2011-02-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

Public Memorial

A public memorial service for E. Gene Smith will be held at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, at 1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St., New York, NY on Saturday, February 12, 2011 at 2:00 pm.

See up to date information on the TBRC website.

Pema Rinzin - Opening Tonight

2011-01-27T11:09:00.000-08:00

The First Tibetan Contemporary Solo Show in Chelsea, New York.
Opening: Jan 27th 2010 ( 06:00 PM to 09:00 PM)
Location: Joshua Liner Art Gallery
Artist: Pema Rinzin
Title: Compassion Transformed.

This is it! The opening is tonight at 6:00. I am looking forward to seeing a number of paintings on exhibition that I have not yet had a chance to see and enjoy, also the set of three abstract portraits.

Tuesday in Hong Kong

2011-01-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

Tuesday morning was a good opportunity to sleep in and relax. We didn't really get motivated until after breakfast and then in the early afternoon took the ferry from Kowloon across the water into Hong Kong. A few hours were spent meeting with art dealers and looking at various objects. Later in the day we met up with some good friends and then went for drinks followed by a late leisurely dinner at an Australian steak house in the heart of Hong Kong's bustling nightlife district. It was a good time with lots of laughing and joking. We arrived back to the hotel before midnight and were asleep almost minutes later.

Wednesday Morning: It was easy getting up at six in the morning and packing. On short trips luggage and packing is so easy. Unfortunately Cathay was not able to upgrade us to Business Class but still we have good seats anyway. With luck the flight won't be too busy.

Taipai on a Grey Cloudy Monday Morning

2011-01-23T18:34:00.000-08:00

The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity from looking at collections on Friday and Saturday, a music recital on an ancient Chinese table top stringed instrument, and viewing another large collection on Sunday morning and two more in the afternoon. Today we will relax a little and then head over to the Palace Museum after lunch. There is a Gesar exhibition on display.

A friends flew in from Beijing via Hong Kong last night. He is supposed to come to the museum with us - although also known to be a late sleeper.

My head cold didn't get any better and I have been suffering with it. The nose has stopped running - possibly re-charging

Tonight we leave for the airport at 5:30 and fly out at 8:20 for Hong Kong.

Taipai - Saturday Morning

2011-01-21T18:21:00.000-08:00

It is unusual for me but every once and awhile I wake up with, or come down with, a cold. That's what I feel I have right now and since yesterday. It started off with a slight cough and turned into a kind of headache. I broke a fever in the middle of the night and have been gradually feeling better ever since - although it is only ten in the morning and the activities of the day haven't started yet.

Yesterday we left Hong Kong early and traveled uneventfully to Taipei. The flight was only an hour and a half and served breakfast - a ham and cheese sandwich - surprisingly good (compared with excessive congee). We made our way to the hotel and got settled before going out for what might have been the best Chinese organic vegetarian lunch ever. There were several dishes that were just outstanding. The little shop off of a side street or ally only had about eight tables with four seats for each - not a restaurant one would naturally choose. Bourdain is unlikely to have ever been there.

After lunch we had time to visit a Dharma Mart, Buddha Bazaar, Dharma Mall catering to all of one's Buddhist needs - notions, potions, images, mock offerings and torma, Dharma texts, sadhanas (with Chinese translation), household goods, furniture, soap, oil and of course prayer wheels - solar, electric, battery, wind and hand powered. It was an adventure.

The main event for the day was meeting with a Chinese dealer with a large collection of sculpture and paintings. It was an amazing time. There were many works that I had never seen before and some were very good, very interesting and captivated the mind for long periods. We were there most of the rest of the day and well into the night. We were able to grab some dinner at the hotel lounge before retiring for evening, and me into a feverish state.

The two images above are of the beautifully manicured Buddhist Nunnery in Hong Kong (quietest place in the city). The second image is attempting to show some of the dozens of miniature trees on the park grounds. The remaining leaves (remember it is winter here) do not appear clearly in the photo. The trees could easily have been props in either the movie Lord of the Rings or Avatar.

Friday Morning on the South China Sea

2011-01-20T13:30:00.000-08:00

If it's Friday it must be Taipai. Well, not quite yet. We still have to get to the Hong Kong airport which is about 25 minutes from the YMCA Hotel in Kowloon. After that the flight to Taipai will only be about an hour and a half.

Yesterday afternoon was spent looking at some interesting pieces of art followed by a leisurely dim sum lunch. Following lunch we spent the afternoon in the Chi Lin Nunnery and temple compound. It is very quiet there - a hidden part of Hong Kong so far unknown to tourists. The nunnery also has a beautiful park in front with ponds and waterfalls, a tea house (literally the quietest place in Hong Kong) and a vegetarian restaurant where we enjoyed a delicious dinner before returning to the hotel.

No images yet - I didn't have time yesterday or this morning to download the files from the camera to the computer. In Taipai there should be more time for downtime and details - unless of course I am completely mistaken!

YMCA Hong Kong

2011-01-19T16:11:00.000-08:00

Cathay Pacific was nice enough to upgrade the two of us to Business Class yesterday. Arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday afternoon after losing a half day because of the international dateline. It is actually Thursday morning here now as I write this entry.

We had a coffee in the lobby of the YMCA Hotel yesterday and then ran into a friend from Kathmandu as he exited the elevator in the hotel. He was in Hong Kong on business and the last time I saw him was in a restaurant in Kathmnadu three years ago. The world is becoming ever smaller.

Later, after a short rest, we met up with our host and went for a traditional dinner at an upscale Shanghai restaurant. Needless to say I don't think I like the food that much. I have become very picky about my Chinese diet especially when I can't recognize it out of a line-up. I also enjoy taking my food from the plate and putting it into my mouth directly rather than having to pick out all of the bones, skin, bits of shell, etc., but most importantly I want to know what it is. Is that really so much to ask?

The weather is cool here with mostly 60s during the day - somewhat cloudy. It is winter after all!

We are only here today and then leave early in the morning for Taipai. The flight leaves at 9:00. For the next few days we have all of the recommended restaurants reserved (by our host) along with the meetings lined up. Basically we will be hitting the ground in Taipai running until arriving back in the Hong Kong YMCA late on Monday night. Tuesday will be a full day in Hong Kong to finish up any last minute work before flying back to NY on Wednesday morning.

With luck I will have better images for the next entry.

Later...

--- Jeff

Taiwan Bound

2011-01-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

I am off to China again, but this time I'm heading for Taiwan to check out the Himalayan and Tibetan collections at the Palace Museum in Taipai, Taiwan. There are many collections of Tibetan art in Taiwan both private and museum. Hopefully I will see as many as possible in the short amount of time that this trip allows.

2011-01-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

I liked this saying:

"THOUGH A MAN BE LEARNED
IF HE DOES NOT APPLY HIS KNOWLEDGE
HE RESEMBLES THE BLIND MAN
WHO WITH A LAMP IN THE HAND CANNOT SEE THE ROAD."

A friend told me this one over Christmas:

"Nine tenths of belief IS reality."

Khenpo Appey (1927-2010)

2010-12-31T05:51:00.000-08:00

It is again, within two weeks, with a very sad heart that I announce that Khenpo Appey has passed away, December the 28th, 2010. I first met Khenpo Appey in 1975 in Rajpur India during the Lamdre Tsogshe given by Sakya Trizin. It was there that I had an opportunity to spend time with Rinpoche, ask questions and learn that he was truly one of the great living Sakya masters - a Dzongsar Khenpo in the true spirit of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and Chokyi Lodro.

It is also fair to say that of all the great Tibetan teachers to come out of Tibet it was him that I found most intimidating - it was in front of him that I felt I always had to be on my best behaviour.

Gorampa himself would be proud of the accomplishments of Khenpo Appey - Sakya College, Rajpur, India and International Buddhist Academy (IBA), Kathmandu, Nepal. He was the foundational rock for Sakya scholarship for the last 50 years and has tirelessly prepared the way for innumerable scholar practitioners of the future. Bravo to a life well lived in the service of others.

(See Khenpo Appey at International Buddhist Academy)

(See Khenpo Appey at Rigpawiki)

(See Khenpo Appey at Tsadra)

New York Times - Gene Smith

2010-12-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

See the New York Times article about Gene Smith.

Compassion Transformed - Pema Rinzin in Chelsea

2010-12-27T20:35:00.000-08:00

The First Tibetan Contemporary Solo Show in Chelsea, New York.
Opening: Jan 27th 2010 ( 06:00 PM to 09:00 PM)
Location: Joshua Liner Art Gallery
Artist: Pema Rinzin
Title: Compassion Transformed.

For those of you who were at the first showing of Pema's work at the Joshua Liner Gallery in March of 09 and those who were also at the Rubin Museum of Art for the Tibetan Contemporary exhibition in the Spring - Get Ready! This new solo exhibition will blow the roof off. It is a must see. Mark it in your calendars and tell your friends. It will be a happening not to be missed. See you all there.

--- Jeff

The text below is copied from Artlog:

"Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Compassion Transformed, an exhibition of new paintings by the New York-based Tibetan artist Pema Rinzin. Making his solo debut in New York, this is Rinzin’s first one-man exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery. A master in the art of Thangka painting, Pema Rinzin has adapted... Read more

Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to present Compassion Transformed, an exhibition of new paintings by the New York-based Tibetan artist Pema Rinzin. Making his solo debut in New York, this is Rinzin’s first one-man exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery.

A master in the art of Thangka painting, Pema Rinzin has adapted the techniques and mystical motifs of this centuries-old Buddhist tradition to create spellbinding abstract works of contemporary art. Originally used in scrolls that depict the life of the Buddha, other deities, and religious figures, traditional Thangka featured the use of ground mineral pigments and gold applied to paper or silk cloth, as well as works in embroidery. Thangkas were objects of meditation, stimulation and religious education. The imagery is characterized by great intricacy in decorative pattern and brilliant color, which serve to advance the spiritual objectives of enlightenment and transcendence, while also conveying the artistic vision of individual master painters through unique expressions of style and composition.

In his stunning abstractions, Rinzin demonstrates how the individual artist can place his own stamp on a traditional form—he both transforms and transcends classical Thangka, while preserving its ancient artmaking techniques. His Peace and Energy series includes four large works on canvas that present a compelling image for contemplation: in each, a dynamic embolus of layered “handkerchief ” forms hums at the center of each picture against a traditional monochromatic background of bright orange, purple, white, or yellow. The fluttering, interlocking forms are thoroughly contemporary, but each carries a unique pattern derived from the ancient Buddhist traditions, and the whole is shot through with pulsing striped flames of blue, white, black, and gold.

In Rinzin’s Water series of four large works, these flames become an intricate network of liquid-like wave forms. This design is oriented vertically to carry upward an interpenetrating pattern of elaborate decoration, itself suggesting both sea foam and the blossoming of cherry trees. Rinzin’s Lost Portraits, however, take an entirely different tack.This series of three large works foregrounds the contemporary in hard-edged abstractions of classic Buddhist figures, each rendered in hot colors and spattered with sumi ink. Up close, the shattered facets comprising the figures reveal delicate patterns from both traditional Thangka and contemporary design. Compassion Transformed will also feature a variety of smaller works on paper.

As a young painter growing up in Dharamsala, India, Rinzin studied with Kalsang Oshoe, Khepa Gonpo, Rigdzin Paljor, and other master artists, but his work is equally inspired by Western art history, including such influ- ences as Gustav Klimt, Wassily Kandinsky, and William Blake. During his residency at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, Rinzin gained notice with his inclusion in the Rubin’s 2010 group exhibition Tradition Transformed, the city’s first museum exhibition of contemporary Tibetan artists.

“After moving to New York, I was immediately exposed to street- and former graffiti artists,” says Rinzin.“They inspired me in their works with everyday life and raw emotion. Now, my art is really about my own life journey, which I strongly express in my compositions and abstract forms.”

Born in 1966 in Tibet and raised in India, Pema Rinzin received a degree in Tibetan Traditional Thangka Painting and Fine Art from Tibetan Children’s Village (TCV) Painting School in Dharamsala, India (where he also taught) and was twice honored “Best Tibetan Thangka Painter” (1979 and 1981); he currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Solo exhibitions of his work include: Tibetan Fine Art Exhibition, Villa Dessauer, Bamberg, Germany (2005); Photo and Color Exhibition, Tibetan Art and Color Studio, Wurzburg, Germany (2001); Tibetan Fine Art Exhibition, Hobbit Theatre, Wurzburg, Germany (1999); and First Tibetan Fine Art Exhibition, Alexander- Schroeder-Haus, Wurzburg, Germany (1996). Selected group exhibitions include: Tradition Transformed, Rubin Museum of Art, New York and The Barnstormers, Joshua Liner Gallery, New York (2010); and Big! Himalayan Art, Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, TX (2008) and Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2007). His Sixteen Giant Paintings are on permanent display at the Shoko-ji Cultural Research Institute, Nagano, Japan. From 2005 to 2008, Rinzin was artist-in-residence at the Rubin Museum of Art, and in 2007 he founded the New York Tibetan Art Studio, the only studio in the Western Hemisphere dedicated to the teaching and preservation of Tibetan art in both traditional and contemporary forms.

Joshua Liner Gallery, located in New York City’s Chelsea arts district, presents an exciting roster of established and emerging artists from North America, Asia, and Europe."

For more information, please visit www.joshualinergallery.com, or contact Tim Strazza at 212.244.7415 or tim@joshualinergallery.com."

Joshua Liner Gallery
548 West 28th Street,
New York, New York, 10001
Phone: (212) 244-7415
Email: info@joshualinergallery.com
Hours: Tuesday- Saturday 11-6PM

Gene Smith - Icon & Legend

2010-12-16T22:50:00.000-08:00

It is with a very sad heart that I announce that Gene Smith has passed away, Thursday, December the 16th, 2010. I have known of Gene through his writings and publications since 1973, visited his home in New Delhi, India, in 1980 and worked closely with him since 2001 to the present in New York City.

What always struck me most about Gene was his drive to not have students undergo the difficulties that he went through in learning and studying Tibetan literature and associated subjects. This is what was close between us and came up most often in conversation, the next generation - the future - making the literature and tools accessible. Gene and I shared a very important teacher, Dezhung Rinpoche Lungrig Tenpai Nyima. Dezhung Rinpoche was maybe the most important influence for what was to become the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, the second crowning jewel of Gene's career. The first great accomplishment, the first great crowning jewel, was of course the publication of thousands upon thousands of rare Tibetan texts and manuscripts while he worked in the New Delhi office of the U.S. Library of Congress.

As just one individual, Gene has been the most important single figure in the last half century working for the preservation of Tibetan literature. Gene has been the singular figure to galvanize the most important Tibetan scholars in the last 45 years in the preservation of Tibetan literature. In a half century, again, Gene has been the most important single figure to tirelessly work for the literary culture of Tibet and the Himalayan regions - to publish, to modernize, to digitize and to electronically archive for the present and future generations. Gene was truly a man suited for his time, an individual that accomplished what he set out to accomplish, responding to the needs of others. His passing is not a time for sadness but a time to celebrate the truly enormous accomplishment of his life that has benefited so many of us and in so many ways.

San Francisco, Berkeley to be Exact!

2010-11-17T17:10:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in a very nice room in a university guest house here in Berkeley and trying out Open Office software. So far I have only tried Presentation but it seems to work just as well with just as many features as Power Point from Microsoft. I'll continue to play with it and give it a test drive.

The weather here is great, sunny, warm, fresh. They say it will begin to turn for the worse tomorrow with cooler weather and rain by the weekend. Oh well, it still feels good to me.

All About Bhutan!

2010-11-17T15:49:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are in the New York area and not too busy this Friday afternoon. Upcoming event sponsored by the Columbia University Bhutan Studies Initiative (CUBSI). On Friday, November 19th, 3:30 - 5:00 pm, Ariana Maki, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University, will give an informal talk about her ongoing research on Bhutanese art and architectural history in Room 918 of the International Affairs Building, which is located on the Morningside campus of Columbia University. Ms. Maki is a former Curatorial Fellow at the Rubin Museum of Art, and has been working as part of the curatorial staff of the National Museum of Bhutan since 2009.

Jet Lag

2010-11-14T01:00:00.000-08:00

It is 4:00 in the morning and I can't sleep. I did manage to get about 15 minutes a couple of hours ago but that was it. The image above is my idea of jet lag and sleeplessness.

I would have turned the TV on to use that to try and lull me to sleep but alas the box works but the cable has shut off. I fear the bill has not been paid. In the past this was a regular occurrence here in New York up until about three or four years ago. As many as three or four times a year the cable would go off because of lack of payment. No, I don't pay the bill. The cable comes with the apartment. I will have to check into it - pardon the pun. Hopefully the internet won't stop working as well. It and the cable are bundled together. However in the past only the cable TV would go down and the internet would stay running. How curious!

Now I am up and typing. I did a little work already and plan to do more - a few outline pages for HAR and then some cataloguing. I also put up two postings of updates onto the HAR News page this afternoon.

Art Lecture: San Francisco, November 18th, 2010

2010-11-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

In conjunction with Himalayan Pilgrimage: Journey to the Land of Snows, on view through April 24, 2011.

- Lecture: Traditional Tibetan Art - Beyond Iconography and Religion
Confusions & Conflicts Regarding Late Tibetan Painting Styles
- Jeff Watt
- Thursday, November 18, 5 p.m.
- Museum Theater: UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
2625 Durant Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720-2250

(Image: Unidentified artist, Tibet: One of seven in a set of thangkas of the great fifth Dalai Lama and his lineage, c. 1815; from the Collection of Veena and Peter Schnell).

"In this illustrated lecture, Jeff Watt, leading scholar of Himalayan art, provocatively proposes that the study of Tibetan and Himalayan art rely more on art history—on artists and critics as well as art historian—than on iconography, religious studies, and even Tibetology. According to Watt, “Cultural objects can be religious icons when looked at as religious icons, ritual objects when viewed as ritually related, and art objects when viewed as art. The subject of Tibetan religion will still remain the domain of religious studies. The study of history will remain the domain of historians, and iconography will remain the domain of iconographers. None of this will change, but to move forward, the study of Tibetan art must change."

"Jeff Watt was the founding curator and leading scholar at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York — one of the largest collections of Himalayan and Tibetan art in North America — from 1999 until 2007. He is the director and chief curator of Himalayan Art Resources, a website and virtual museum that constitutes the world’s most comprehensive resource for Himalayan art and iconography. Watt acquired his prodigious knowledge of Buddhist, Bon and Hindu iconography from a longtime study of Buddhism and Tantra."

Back in New York City

2010-11-10T14:10:00.001-08:00

Here we are once again in New York. The flight seemed a little long this time returning from China. The movies on the flight were good. A number of them were new releases that I hadn't yet seen. I really have to space out my flying so that they have time to change the movies. No, I don't sleep well on airplanes. My head stands above the headrest and if I stick my legs out too far then people trip over them and wake me up.

There was a lot of turbulence during the crossing of a certain section of the Pacific. A flight attendant asked the cabin crew about it and was told it was a patch of very high cloud that caused the shaking. I don't mind flying but violent shaking will scare the hell out of anybody. Aside from that it was a smooth flight.

Back from Chengdu - Hong Kong Airport

2010-11-08T22:20:00.000-08:00

Well the trip is over. I could have stayed much longer. I had a place to sleep, roof, hot water, food and good company. The China Travel Blog has now been illustrated with some snap shots from here and there. I did very little in the way of photography on this trip - some art. Many collectors didn't want their pieces photographed. There was a lot more conversation on this trip than there was quick action camera play.

I am currently sitting in the Hong Kong airport - Cathay Business Lounge "the Cabin" - watching the planes come and go while I catch up with e-mail and uploading the decorative images to the Travel site. They have three Cathay Business Class Lounges at the Hong Kong airport.

It seems I am flying coach back to NY. I tried to upgrade with air miles but they don't have any openings. Oh well, it will be fine. The exit row aisle seat is actually very comfortable and allows me to stretch my legs out and trip all who walk by - especially after they turn all the lights out.

The image above is one of the buildings within the large Taoist Temple complex in Chengdu. The Panda photo is not mine but rather borrowed from the web. Chengdu is the main city closest to the Panda sanctuaries and also the gateway to Tibet.

Hong Kong Airport

2010-10-27T00:59:00.000-07:00

Here again, relaxing in the Cathay lounge known as the 'Wing' listening to Louis B. Armstrong piped through the wall speakers. Just finished my first Dan Dan Noodle of the season. I don't know if Dan Dan Noodles have a season, but when I am traveling in China then that is the season. The first thing I did when I arrived was have a hot shower to freshen up, then eat, check e-mail and telephone. Yes, it is a routine.

The food on the flight out of NY was good and the staff wonderful as usual. However, one of my fears was realized. I had seen most of the movies that were offered. I found some things to watch and was pleasantly surprised by some and had to turn off others. All in all it worked out. I am still not used to the new business class seats and didn't really sleep much at all. The coffin space is really confining and completely unforgiving if you are not of a certain body size range. Outside of that range and you are screwed.

As of tomorrow I will be using the alternate Travel Blog while in China. You know, because of those Google issues: Jeff on the Road.

P.S. So far I have not had any bites from bed bugs. What a refreshing change in quality of life.

Hong Kong Bound

2010-10-26T05:08:00.000-07:00

It is time once again to travel east (actually north over the pole) to Hong Kong. I have upgraded my standard coach seating with Asia Miles and will be flying Business Class. The seat will be larger although my shoulders will touch the walls of the coffin like designed cubicle. The seat fully reclines into a horizontal configuration allowing me to extend my feet into the aisle tripping the flight attendants in the dark - oh yes, it gets very dark on those flights. The monitor will be bigger, the food will be noticeably better than coach, and the attendants are very pleasant and willing to get you what ever is needed. It is very important to bring your own noise reduction headphones. This is even more important than flying business class. Once you have tried flying with them you will wonder why you didn't do it before. The greatest invention since flight itself. I use Bose headphones but there are others.

The only real fear (other than the obvious) is that the movies offered for viewing will be films I have already seen on other recent flights. Cathay does try and show some films only on east bound flights and other films only on west bound flights. I do intend to sleep as much as possible, something I don't do easily on planes except if they are sitting on the tarmac or taxing prior to take-off. I do like to sleep through the take-off. Jolted from a sound sleep I realized I was just paged by the front desk at the lounge and that I had been fast asleep. Actually I had been sleeping for a full hour with the computer in my lap. Last night was a late one with only an hours sleep. This was done on purpose to help get into the Chengdu time change as quickly as possible. It is likely that I will sleep right through breakfast on the plane unless I tell them to wake me - which I will.

Boy Believed to be Next Reincarnation....

2010-10-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

I thought this was really fun: Boy Believed to be Next Reincarnation.....

Whenever great cultures of the past, for example, Egyptian, Roman, or European Monarchies, start to look towards 'special' children as the divine answer for leadership and cultural guidance then more often than not that culture is heading towards decline and failure.

The increase and frequency of young children from Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhist backgrounds (not to mention Western countries) - recognized as the supposed incarnation of so and so - is surely becoming alarming.

The Tibetan Buddhist phenomenon of tulku or trulku appears to have really become common place and widespread in the 17th century. The practice of recognizing a lama of the past as reincarnating into numerous individuals (splitting) appears to be a late 19th century phenomena - embraced and welcomed in the 20th century - popular today.

I think it is time for a level headed, measured, sociological study of the Tibetan practice of 'reincarnate teachers' known as tulku - literally 'emanation body' - the same word used for the Sanskrit word nirmanakaya.

1. What are the statistics showing the number of recognized incarnate children growing up to be educated Buddhist teachers?

2. What are the statistics showing the number of children that grow up to be teachers?

3. What are the statistics showing the number of children that remain Buddhist?

4. How many renounce their 'reincarnate status'?

4. How many take up business, or other secular occupations, as their life path?

5. .....convicted of crimes, etc.?

These are just a few of the basic questions which I think are fair game and worth asking.

The most interesting publication I have ever read on the subject of reincarnate Lamas was by Daniel Barlocher. I recommend it highly. The most interesting interviews come from the most unexpected Rinpoches. Testimonies of Tibetan Tulkus; A Research among Reincarnate Buddhist Masters in Exile. Daniel Barlocher, Opuscula Tibetana, Rikon-Zurich, August 1982.

From the dozens of interviews see two excerpts from the above publication: Puntsok Podrang Dagchen Rinpoche and another conversation with Drolma Podrang Sakya Trizin both of the Sakya Tradition. I chose these only because they are currently available on line.

Back to New York!

2010-10-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

My work here in Vancouver is done, Thanksgiving, closing up the cabin for the winter and attending my brother's 20 year clean and sober celebration - in the company of a hundred others. There are no upgrades tonight. I am in coach on Cathay Pacific which is equal to Business Class on any USA carrier in the continental US. It's not a criticism, just an observation.

Monday will be a busy day in New York. There are visitors from China that I need to meet and entertain. It is the last day of the Tibetan contemporary exhibition at the RMA, and, I also have a craving for Basta Pasta. The flight gets in early and I generally try and get a little sleep before going into the office. It will definitely be a long day.

Refuge Field Paintings Anybody?

2010-10-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Check out the Himalayan Art Resources News Page. There are plenty of new items - provided you have a slightly unnatural, overly curious, interest in Refuge Field paintings. These paintings are informed by religious texts, liturgies to be specific, but, and it is a big but, how they appear as paintings is entirely the result of the artists interpretation. What we see as the finished composition does not at all necessarily reflect the description in the liturgical text. That is certainly one reason why these paintings are so interesting.

Home for the Holidays, Thanksgiving!

2010-10-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

Once again heading West to sunny Vancouver for the holiday. During the 80s and 90s I generally spent Thanksgiving up in the Thompson Plateau enjoying the cabin and getting ready for winter. The best time of the year in the mountains is April thru June and then September and October. The summer months can be very hot and not conducive to meditating or translating. Mid November is the average point for the first real snow and then after that it can accumulate pretty quickly. I remember one night going to sleep with the outside temperature at 25 F and waking up in the morning thinking the door had somehow come open. The outside temperature was -5 F. A nasty cold front had come through and stayed. Although usually the weather turns cooler and the winds start to come from the North in mid October - watch out past mid November. Thanksgiving is guaranteed good weather - global warming considered of course.

I hope to head up to the cabin on Tuesday or Wednesday morning and spend at least one night with a roaring fire, a gently splashing creek and a big wide starry sky. With luck I will be woken in the night by the howling of wolves or coyotes, maybe the nocturnal visit of a bear foraging in the dark. The water will be cold, there are 11 crossings. At this time of the year some of those crossings are shallow and there are enough large dry rocks to jump onto and cross without getting wet. If it is raining on the way up it is better to stay in the water for the crossings and avoid the slippery rocks. The last crossing is the most treacherous because it is the narrowest and therefore potentially the deepest water. The path must be picked carefully. Past that point it doesn't get any easier as there have been serious rock slides in the last ten years. Steep rock faces on the Western side rise over a thousand feet. Twenty minutes past that and the trail becomes easier although seriously over grown, especially in the last 10 years. The cabin is not so far after that, but if you don't know where it is, it will be very difficult to find.

Yes I have used the Mountain Goat image once before. The first post ever for this Travel Blog was decorated with this photo. I like it, but no it was not taken at the cabin. The largest animal I photographed at the cabin was a female moose and boy was it big. Never get in the way of a moose. The Mountain Goat was photographed several hundred feet above the cabin. I was meditating in a cave when I chanced to look across the gorge and saw a Mountain Goat looking directly at me - probably wondering what the hell I was doing. Snap, I took the photo.

Life in a Plastic Bag

2010-10-09T10:24:00.001-07:00

It is now seven months living out of plastic bags. With no end of the problem in sight.

All Good Things Must Come to an End

2010-10-09T02:53:00.000-07:00

It has been some weeks since I was last bit by a bed bug. That has now ended. I was bit on the leg at approximately 5:30 this morning. It was the normal feeling. Waking up with a slight discomfort from a sound sleep which I had been enjoying for the last week or so since the flood, the discomfort grew. After a few minutes there was the tell tale raised red welt of irregular shape similar to hives. The honeymoon is over. This has been the longest period of time in the apartment this year, since the outbreak, without being attacked in the night. It must be three weeks since a real certifiable bite, but that doesn't mean the paranoia wasn't there, the sleeplessness and the lack of life quality. Bed bugs are a quality of life wrecker.

2010-10-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Do Bed Bugs Drown? Looking for a Silver Lining.

2010-10-01T08:26:00.000-07:00

Well no, I haven't had any bed bug bites for almost two weeks which means of course that I am due any day now. The apartment was sprayed on Saturday the 18th and it usually lasts about two weeks before I start seeing the buggers again and feeling the sting of the bites. They have been spraying my apartment since April and others even earlier.

But, back to my question. Do bed bugs drown? The reason I ask is because I am looking for a silver lining in a leaky roof. I have been up since 3:30 mopping up and placing a bucket where it will do the most good. When your leak is bigger than the bucket there is actually no such thing as 'most good.' It is actually all bad. The roof was replaced over the summer because it was old and leaky - now we have a new leaky roof. The leak last night found a new route and did not follow the paths of the four previous leaks experienced over the previous years and coming to a head (fountain head) in the spring with four simultaneous leaks.

The good news is that because of the ongoing war with the bed bugs all of my belongings are still wrapped in plastic bags. Nothing was damaged in the spring either except for a stained mattress from a leak directly over one corner of the bed. Last night was the same, only wet plastic bags, and a wet floor dripping onto the ceiling of the apartment below.

The worst thing of it all is the not getting any sleep because of either the bed bugs or water dripping noticeably into the apartment. With leaks there always needs to be a concern for electrical outlets, appliances, computers, etc. Luckily there hasn't been a fire in the building for about 6 years. At that time the tenant below me left a pot on the stove to cook and then went and had a nap. The pot cooked, melted, and then caught fire. The entire building was filled with smoke, everybody evacuated. The smoke was later cleared out by the firefighters. It smelled of barbecue for several months. It didn't help with trying to sleep. I slept uneasy for many months knowing I had such neighbours right below me.

The time before that, there was a fire on the 2nd floor of the building next door. The fire was deliberately set by a disgruntled super that had been terminated. That same super had illegally rented the apartment down the hall from me. The tenants took occupancy in the middle of the night. The following day they had surveillance cameras installed and mounted in the hall way. It was nearly a year of drug dealers and hookers up and down the staircase all night long before the illegal tenants were legally evicted.

You know what? It sounds like it is time for a nice trip, or a long restful coma. I think I will choose the trip. China and Tibet sounds good to me.

End of Summer

2010-08-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

(WARNING: the image has nothing to do with the content of the post below. It is merely being used to add colour and a sense of importance. The image is from a few years ago in 2008 (?) when the Karmapa from Dharamsala came to visit the Rubin Museum of Art and I was asked to give him a tour even though I no longer worked there since the prior summer of 2007. It was a choice of this image or one with me and Lobpon Tenzin Namdak. I didn't think anybody would know Tenzin Namdak except for those rare Bon followers and scholars. The Karmapa won the contest of recognizability).

Well, it is nearly the end of August and the end of summer according to a school calendar. It has been a very fast two weeks in Vancouver. The real reason for coming was to attend the IATS Conference - International Association of Tibetan Studies - held at the University of British Columbia (UBC). For me it began on Sunday the 15th and ended on the 22nd. It was long, it was grueling, mostly because of the difficult, over-lapping and confusing, schedule along with the required late night socializing - in modern language called networking. There were many people that I new and many people that new me or either the HAR or SRG websites. During the first few days it was easier being anonymous. HAR is very popular with the younger scholars. The Bon scholars were there in force and the Bon panel was excellent bolstered by the likes of Samten Karmey, Tsering Thar and Marc Des Jardins amongst others.

I was able to acquire some new images for the HAR website along with promises from others to send images. Some of the images have already been put up on the site. Check the HAR News page.

As I return to New York I must of course think about bedbugs. Yes, they are still there. The management company sprayed again on the 18th of August. Apparently there have been more complaints from tenants. I can understand as I have been talking about this since February, officially since March. As long as they think they can deal with a porous apartment building with topical applications of pesticide based on the subjective complaints of tenants then the problem will never be resolved. I return armed with good double sided sticky tape. I couldn't find any good tape in New York. The tape is crucial to my plan of survivability in a bed bug infested apartment building.

There have been a number of issues, topics and news items that have come up in the last few weeks that I have not responded to but they are things that I definitely want to react to - pro or con: the King of Shambhala living in Canada, the very harsh review of the Tibetan contemporary show at the Rubin Museum of Art, and various other things that will come to mind at the right moment.

Pre-showing at the Joshua Liner Gallery

2010-08-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

Today I had the good fortune of viewing the new art show at the Joshua Liner Gallery. They were busy hanging the remaining paintings and making ready for the official opening tomorrow night. I unfortunately will not be able to attend the opening because of another obligation in another city on the other side of the continent. However, today I was able to see most of the works. First of all, it is a much stronger show than the Barnstormers exhibition this past March. The caliber of art is much higher with a high degree of skill and talent immediately noticeable to the eye. Some amount of care has been given to the curating of the show in general and to the specific location and hanging of each piece. Pema Rinzin's two pieces are excellent and fit in very well adding to the over-all quality and the tremendous variety that this show offers. This opening has fewer pieces than the March exhibition and more space provided for each of the works. It is a real treat to move from piece to piece and explore the individual artist's subject, composition and creativity. There are a number of wildly, brightly coloured, and imaginative pieces that draw the eye and don't let go. You will have to experience that for yourself. This is surely an exhibition for the three general groups of people that attend art openings, the interested public, artists and the connoisseur collectors.

Art Opening - Saturday Night - Aug.14th

2010-08-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

Remember, if you live in the New York area, the opening of the Joshua Liner Gallery Summer Group Show is on Saturday August 14th at 6:00 p.m. Pema will have two new works of art on view - abstract fine art. To see three other abstract works by Pema Rinzin visit the Rubin Museum of Art for the Tibetan Contemporary exhibition, closes October 18, 2010.

Joshua Liner Gallery

2010-08-07T12:57:00.000-07:00

Joshua Liner Gallery: Summer Group Exhibition 2010, August 14 - September 4, 2010. See two of Pema Rinzin's new works of art at the summer show.

Hijacking Himalayan Art!

2010-08-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

A response from the Tricycle Magazine Editor's Blog about Looking at Art on the HAR website and "We Live in Hope" on this Travel Blog.

"We Live In Hope"

2010-08-06T03:13:00.000-07:00

What an uplifting article in yesterdays New York Times. I of course never open the newspaper unless a friend recommends an article of importance. Thank you Emma.

Have you ever thought to yourself that some paintings look better than others? I have been waging a personal battle now for several years where I believe that the study of Himalayan and Tibetan art has been hijacked by other academic disciplines such as Religious Studies (and the study of iconography), Anthropology and Ethnography. Here is an article about that exact same fight but in the European art world - data versus aesthetics and connoisseurship. Let the new battle begin.

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs & More Bugs

2010-08-06T02:57:00.000-07:00

Yes the bugs are back. I woke up unexpectedly to a slight itching in the palm of my right hand, the ball of my right thumb to be exact. Not a normal location for a bite but yes there it was. As I was slowly rousing from my dream and entering wakefulness with my attention drawn to my hand, and that feeling that now I recognize so well, my eyes opening slowly, I briefly caught site of something, a speck of darkness, moving across my body at stomach level, highlighted against a white T-shirt. The bug, had moved from my hand and was looking for an escape route across my body to the other side of the bed. I immediately wrapped the bug in the folds of the T-shirt and leaned over to my right side, the side table, to grab a spray bottle of rubbing alcohol kept next to the bed, always, always a bottle of rubbing alcohol. The alcohol kills the bugs on contact - stops them dead in their tracks. One shot, two shots, it was over quick, quickly dispatched to the other world.

The unfortunate thing was that I was having a pleasant dream and there were still several hours of sleep left. The good news, if it can be called news, or really anything to look forward to at all is that they, 'THEY', the exterminators, are coming in to spray the apartment again today.

Artist on Art Talk: New York

2010-07-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

Pema Rinzin "Tradition Transformed"
Date: Friday, July 16, 2010
Time: 6:00pm - 7:00pm
Location: Rubin Museum of Art
Street: 150 West 17th Street
City/Town: New York, NY

Description:
Artists featured in the exhibition Tradition Transformed give a guided interpretation of their work and objects - in the exhibition.

Information about the Artist:
Pema Rinzin was born in Tibet in 1966 while his family was in route to India, where he spent his formative years. He studied with Kalsang Oshoe, Khepa Gonpo, Rigdzin Paljor and many other master artists in Dharamsala from 1979-1983. Rinzin taught Renaissance, Impressionist, cartoon and Abstract Impressionist art for eight years at the Tibetan Children's Village School in Dharamsala. Rinzin worked and taught at the Shoko-ji Cultural Research Institute in Nagano, Japan, from 1995 to 2004. From 2002 until 2005, Rinzin divided his time between Japan and Würzburg, Germany where he was an artist-in-residence at the Brush & Color Studio. Beginning in November 2005 through October 2008, Rinzin was an artist in residence at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York. His paintings have been exhibited internationally and are held in numerous public and private collections worldwide, most notably at Shoko-ji Cultural Research Institute in Nagano, Japan, and the Rubin Museum of Art. He has mounted numerous art exhibitions from traditional Tibetan art to contemporary and modern abstract photography, and lectures on Tibetan art. Rinzin lives in New York.

Fundamentals of Tibetan Art

2010-07-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

Fundamentals of Tibetan Art (9 week long teaching by Pema Rinzin)
Start Time:
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 6:00pm
End Time:
Wednesday, September 8, 2010 at 9:00pm
Location:
Tibet House (Library Room)
Street:
22 West 15th Street
City/Town:
New York, NY

Description
"Fundamentals of Tibetan Art”, a nine week course, will introduce students to Tibetan art and foster an understanding and appreciation of the Tibetan artistic tradition through a series of hands on drawing assignments. The class will also learn about the history of Tibetan painting as well as the traditional techniques and natural materials used to create the masterworks of Tibetan thangka through lectures and discussion.

Intended for all levels.

Individual Sessions:
$20 General/ $18 Members

Entire Series (9 Sessions)
$162 General/ $145 Member

Wednesday, July 14 -September 8, 6-9 pm.

CLASS 1. July 14. Introduction. Historical overview of Tibetan art.
CLASS 2. July 21. Introduction to the different Basic Buddha postures.
CLASS 3. July 28. Discussion of Tibetan mudras.
CLASS 4. August 4. Seated Buddha with 8-10 Arms.
CLASS 5. August 11. Dressed Buddhas: Exploring Drapery.
CLASS 6. August 18. Individual Instruction and Discussion.
CLASS 7. August 25. Nature: Clouds, Trees, Rock, and Water.
CLASS 8. September 1. Composition and space management.
CLASS 9. September 8. Final Class.

List of Required Student Materials:

Sketch Pad (Canson, Classic Cream, 90lb, 14” X 17” Drawing Pad)
One Packet of Mechanical Pencils. (Any brand, 0.5 mm size)
Eraser (prefer “gum” type)
Ruler (minimum 18 inches or 45 mm)
Advanced students will need to purchase a brush, sumi ink and stone at a later date to be announced during the course.

More Bed Bugs

2010-07-04T05:44:00.000-07:00

Abercrombie & Fitch store in New York City closed because of a bed bug infestation. New York City has also passed a new ordinance that requires property owners/managers to inform prospective tenants of any bed bug activity, over the passed 12 months, for all rental units.

Oxford Conference

2010-06-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

I'm still in Oxford but leaving tomorrow for London to spend three days looking at museum and private art collections. The conference in Oxford was one of the best I have ever attended. The model for the conference is new to me but I believe it works. More on that later......and some photos......

On the Road Again......

2010-06-23T14:01:00.000-07:00

Here I am once again sitting in the Business Class lounge at Terminal 7 - JFK. No, I don't fly Business Class. I just fly so much that they always let me use the lounge - free food, free drinks, etc.

London is my next port of call. I arrive at 6:20 in the morning and then immediately catch the bus from Heathrow to Oxford. Most of the conference participants are already there enjoying the Oxford pub life. The conference starts at 2:30 tomorrow which will allow me a few hours sleep before lunch and the opening speeches and lectures. My paper is scheduled for Friday afternoon. The title "Traditional Tibetan Art: Moving Beyond Iconography & Religion." It is actually an updated version of a paper I gave in Beijing this past October. The Powerpoint presentation is full of great art with most of it unpublished. I have also added recently discovered paintings from my last trip to Chengdu and Beijing in March/April.

I don't think I have been back to Oxford since 1970. It has been a long time. The Ashmolean Museum has re-opened and hopefully I will get a chance to see some of their Tibetan paintings. Amy Heller just recently published a book highlighting the Ashmolean's Tibetan sculpture collection. Still, it is the paintings that are of primary interest for me.

A 17th Century Tibetan Contemporary Artist

2010-06-16T12:59:00.001-07:00

Probably one of the most famous Tibetan contemporary artists of his time was the 10th Karmapa, Choying Dorje (1604-1674). It is said that he was trained in a traditional Menri Style and then later studied in a Kashmiri style. What is obviously apparent is that the examples of his work that have come down to us today are in a unique style - the style of Choying Dorje. (The first image is by the current contemporary artist Pema Rinzin of New York. The three images of paintings below are by the 10th Karmapa Choying Dorje).

See other works of art by Choying Dorje.

For the multi-faced and armed deity, note the gate-like halo surrounding the main figure. It is created to appear as if water, manipulated and suspended. Also see the throne beneath the central subject, rendered with the same treatment, and added figures supporting the pink lotus.

Probably the most unique set of paintings created by Choying Dorje is the life story of Shakyamuni Buddha. No explanation should be required, all that one need to do is look to see how special it is. Look at the colours, the forms, the composition, the rendering of the human figures, animals and birds.

The 10th Karmapa was also famous for his depictions of animals and birds. Notice in this painting of a yellow goddess how the sow and piglets beneath the deity figure are rendered far more life-like with a richness of detail than the yellow deity herself.

A capital 'C' contemporary artist, although sometimes trained traditionally, is often somebody that breaks the rules and is innovative. Sometimes the artist is copied and a new style is created and at other times nobody can follow where that artist has gone.

Choying Dorje is an example of a contemporary artist that was not followed by other artists. It can't really be said that he was a traditional Tibetan artist either - he was an innovative contemporary artist of his time. I believe that he had a love of art, and of animals - clearly shown in his paintings and biography - and I believe that he created art for art's sake.

A Review by Art Daily News

2010-06-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Pema Rinzin (1966 - ), Peace and Energy 1, 2009. Ground mineral pigments and gold on cloth, 41 x 61 in. Collection of the artist.

"NEW YORK, NY.- There is no Tibetan equivalent for the word “art” as it is known in the West. The closest approximation is lha dri pa, literally, “to draw a deity.” Traditionally, neither the Tibetan language nor the Tibetan cultural framework has recognized art for art’s sake, and an artist’s efficacy rests in his ability to precisely replicate an established visual language and portray the essence of a particular deity." (Artdaily.org).

All I can say is that the above statement is WRONG. It is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Good artists and great artists all over the world from the beginning of time have created art as a statement, and beauty for beauty's sake, quality for quality's sake, and art for art's sake.

From Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, 1600. Juliet:
"... that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;..."

I don't fault the online magazine for this statement above. It is clearly lifted from the gallery catalogue produced to accompany the current Tibetan Contemporary exhibition. It is unfortunate and sad that all things Tibetan must be looked at through the narrow glasses of religion - and Tibetan Buddhist religion at that.

Maybe in this field of Tibetan art, traditional and contemporary, it is time to rely less on religious studies professors, historians, anthropologists, ethnographers and, yes, Tibetologists and rely more on Art Historians and Art Critics. Maybe it is time to rely on the experts who's job it is to discuss and critique the subject of art: technique, skill, style, harmony, colour balance and beauty. The subject of religion will still remain the domain of religious teachers and scholars. The subject of history will still remain the domain of historians. The subject of iconography will still remain the domain of iconographers. None of this will change.

Some of the earliest and most famous Tibetan contemporary artists of their time were Mantangpa(15th c.), Khyentse (15th c.), Choying Dorje (17th c.), Choying Gyatso (17th c.), Cho Tashi (17/18th c.), and Kangdze Lhadripa (18th c.), amongst many, many others. There is a long history of tradition and change in the Tibetan art culture along with tremendous innovation in technique, style and composition. THIS IS NOT NEW!

Please don't put the Tibetan artist back in the cave just for the sake of preserving a - Western conceived - Tibetan Buddhist attitude and monopoly on how to look at all things Tibetan.

Take off the binding chains of religious orthodoxy and oppression.
Let the Artist Go! Free the Tibetan Artists! Free the Tibetan Artists!

A Beautiful Day In Vancouver

2010-06-12T20:33:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful clear day with a bright - deep - blue sky and flowers everywhere, summer flowers, and a bumble bee going about its business. The variations of green were especially soothing to the eye and healthy for the mind.

A Temporary Escape - Vancouver

2010-06-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

I have made a quick exit and vacated my apartment while the workmen begin to replace the roof over head. On Friday they installed a temporary plastic ceiling in the apartment to try and catch all the falling debris, dirt and dust. It is not very attractive but hopefully will do the job it is intended for. In the process of closing up the apartment for the week or so that I will be away as they busily work, I noticed new brown water stains on the southern wall above one of the two windows on that side. I now have four known leaks. I have not been visited by any of the small pests since returning from Paris. I did have a red mark on my right arm the first night back, Wednesday, but can't say for sure that it was one of the nasty pests - known in Tibetan as 'demon lice.' I need a break, that's for sure.

The Christie's Auction in Paris on Tuesday was a mad house of activity and I have not yet landed - mentally - enough to begin to talk about it. After my Wednesday night sleep listening to the water drip from the ceiling into a bucket - not much sleep at all - I enjoyed the opening of the Tibetan Contemporary exhibition at the RMA. By the way, in my life, I have never before slept on a wet mattress because of leaks from the roof or ceiling. There was an after party at Merchant's restaurant with over 30 people in attendance. I hesitate to mention any names for fear of getting anyone into trouble. It was a good, no, great time, good friends and good conversations. Any opportunity to spend time with good friends is time well spent.

Tibetan Contemporary Art Exhibition - The Opening

2010-06-10T08:28:00.001-07:00

The Rubin Museum of Art is having its 'members opening' tonight, along with invited guests, for the new Tibetan Contemporary Exhibition. This is a perk for members of the museum. For the general public the show opens tomorrow at 11:00.

Why do I care? Well, I have many issues with how Himalayan and Tibetan art is presented and understood in the West and I believe that by also looking at - what is called - Tibetan contemporary art there can be an actual dialogue about art, both old and new. Generally, almost always, any discussion of Tibetan art centers on iconography and religion, or Tibetan-Chinese politics. There is very rarely any discussion about the art itself, the aesthetics, the uniqueness of Tibetan art, brush stroke and colour, let alone the poor forgotten artist that is completely free of ego yet always told what to do by a Lama. Alas, the poor artist, ignorant of what he is doing, yet humble and egoless. That is the traditional Western model of a good Tibetan Artist.

The fact that people still believe this old tired religious model of Tibetan art, teach it and publish it in art & gallery catalogues is amazing yet sad. All of this must change! The field of Himalayan and Tibetan Art History must move into the 20th and 21st century and begin to look at art the same way that art from other great art producing cultures is looked at - uniqueness, beauty, harmony, technique, and aesthetics - not just from a narrow one sided religious perspective. All of this must change.

For those of you in New York the after party to celebrate Pema's first museum exhibition will be at Merchant's around the corner from the RMA at 8:00 in the downstairs room (with the fireplace).

Back in New York

2010-06-10T08:16:00.001-07:00

The flight from Paris to New York was pretty good considering the airline I flew only has business class seating. It is called Open Skies. I know, I hadn't heard of it either.

I didn't sleep too well last night in the apartment because of the rain coming through the roof into the bucket right next to my bed, plop, plop, plop. The mattress had already gotten wet by the time I returned from dinner at 9:00 p.m. I pushed the bed away from the new leak making sure to avoid the old leaks. I dried the mattress on the wet side as much as possible and placed a bucket to collect the dripping water. I did not have good dreams.

The workmen come in tomorrow, Friday, to cover the apartment ceiling with plastic sheeting stapled to the walls. The sheeting will hopefully catch and collect much of the roof debris as it falls through. The workers are being told to be careful on the rafters so that they don't inadvertently step and break through the ceiling causing an even bigger mess. Can you believe it! It's like I'm in Bangladesh during a bad year of monsoons - but oh no, this is New York City.

I have booked a ticket to leave NY for Vancouver tomorrow night. Who knows when the roof work will be finished and the apartment cleaned up? Maybe the bed bugs will also leave because it is just too Third World for them as well. Remember, these are not ordinary bed bugs, these are New York bed bugs.

Tuesday in Paris

2010-06-08T00:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Monday, was a day spent looking at art, meeting old friends, making plans and hanging out with regular friends, talking and laughing over a glass of good French wine - red - sitting outside, enjoying the perfect sunny weather and temperature.

In the early evening I spent some time looking at a collection of 18th century Moghul miniature paintings of architectural sights in New Delhi. They were very well drawn and very interesting, but alas not my area of study.

For dinner I went out with one of the worlds top map experts and map dealers, a local, although Dutch. He did the inviting and I did the eating. The food was excellent - the best meal in Paris so far.

Tonight, after an afternoon of looking at art, I hope to meet up with Charles R. and go out for dinner and a drink. I leave Paris at 10:30 tomorrow morning, Wednesday, and should be back in New York by 1:30 in the afternoon.

I am looking forward to the opening of the contemporary Tibetan art exhibition at the RMA on Thursday night. The after party is at Merchants - just around the corner. I have reserved the downstairs room for 8:00 p.m. and expect between 20 or 30 people to attend. The party is to celebrate Pema's first showing of contemporary art, three paintings, in a museum exhibition accompanied by a museum art publication. Many of his art students have become RMA members just so that they can attend the opening and celebrate Pema's art. It should be a good time.

Tibetan Style Tattoos

2010-06-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

Well I'm not into getting tattoos, piercings or brandings but I love Japanese tattoo art, Hawaiian, Maori, Thai, Burmese, Laotian and Cambodian. Yoni Zilbur, an artist as well as an accomplished New York tattoo artist has studied with Pema Rinzin for several years and now designs his own tattoos based on traditional Tibetan subjects, themes and motifs. Some of the images are really quite amazing. Check out Yoni's webpage to see Pema Rinzin's influence on the New York tattoo scene.

If It's Sunday, It Must Be Paris

2010-06-06T01:12:00.000-07:00

I traveled on the airline known as Open Skies, apparently connected or owned by British Airways. The flight was quite comfortable although I always find that there is more turbulence flying to Europe than flying anywhere else. The day is somewhat unscheduled as yet. I need to find out when the Guimet is open and when Christie's is open. I am in a hotel just off the Champs Elysee and can walk to Christie's from here but I don't know where the Guimet is in comparison to the hotel. I will need a map and someone to circle both the hotel and the museum.

The hotel, Rochester Champs Elysee, has wifi internet throughout which is very convenient. Unfortunately the room will not be ready until 11:00. I didn't sleep at all on the plane and am afraid to take a nap as I think that will send a signal to my body and brain to completely shut down for a good eight to ten hours. As some may know, I have not been sleeping very well in the apartment of late. Friday night was also late with little sleep. I was out with a Tibetan painter and and an excellent New York tattoo artist that is a student of Pema Rinzin. I will post pictures as soon as I get some - preferably art, and good art at that.

The entire afternoon was spent at the Mussee Guimet and what a Museum it was. They had an outstanding Gandharan exhibition aside from their world class Cambodian sculpture and the permanent Tibetan and Himalayan galleries.

A Bold Attack & Postponement of Battle!

2010-06-04T02:31:00.000-07:00

Last night was a set back for me. After the previous night with no bites last night at approximately 3:30 a.m. there was a definite attack with some force. I received six small bites, two to each leg, and two on my upper right arm. I looked for the bugs on the bed and under but could see nothing. They are likely to be in the infant stage yet big enough to draw blood. They are very difficult to see at this phase of their development. I have been both spraying and cleaning regularly but apparently to no avail as this second or third nesting of eggs has hatched. My gut feeling tells me they are between and under the floor boards.

Once I know when the exterminators are returning again for the third spraying then I can plan on spreading diamataceous dust throughout the apartment floor completely filling the numerous spaces between the floor boards.

Any good commander knows when it is time to back off and change the strategy. A new campaign is opening on Monday morning which will make it difficult to continue the fight against the bugs. The property management company plans to start work on replacing roof above my apartment, I am on the top floor, making it intolerable to remain here in the apartment. Yes, the roof leaks as well. The work will probably last for two weeks.

The worst part of it is that the ceiling in the apartment is not completely closed in and sealed. The edge of the ceiling that butts up against the brick wall is not flush but rather has gaping openings that go directly into the sub-roof. Whenever someone walks on the roof, or roofers are working, then a tremendous amount of dust, sand, dirt, and rock fall directly into the apartment through these openings creating a huge mess. The same debris also falls down through the chimney and out through the fireplace opening.

In preparation most of my belongings are wrapped in plastic bags already because of the bugs, and the remainder of the possessions such as bed and computer, lamps, chairs, telephone, T.V. etc., will need to be completely covered in plastic as well. Once the roof work is finished and before returning back to the apartment it will require a good professional cleaning with an industrial vacuum and a lot of effort.

So, the battle of the bugs is on hold for awhile. In the meantime I have not been offered any kind of accommodations by the property management company and therefore I am on my own with finding a place to stay here in New York or choosing to travel and working from afar. I will share my experience as it unfolds.

Hallelujah, Bed Bugs Be Gone - Damn It All

2010-06-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

Hallelujah, an amazing thing happened, I, in frustration, sent a strong e-mail to my boss and cc'ed the property management company responsible for the apartment and building, in which I dwell in New York City. I complained of a lack of communication and a lack of any, I repeat ANY, communication with the property management company, other than dealing with the super. I also cc'ed it to many of the other officials responsible for the ownership of the building - which by the way has an un-controlled BED BUG problem - that is, the whole building.

Hallelujah, I sent out the e-mail at approximately 2:00 p.m. today and by the time I arrived back at the apartment (to find a U.S. Census notification of a non-compliance of not responding to the racist U.S. census, I'M SORRY - RACIST, I turned around at approximately 8:00 p.m.), pushed under my door at 8:00, and there it was. There was a correspondence from the management company, the gold, the treasure, a Rosetta Stone, Magna Carta, it was all there - an acceptance, an acknowledgment of a problem, a faint wish - maybe, to possibly wish to remedy the awful situation.

See the image, the document above, see what was presented after several months of discussion, complaining and bitching. A letter, as if they were on top of it, Ha Ha, what a lark, in control, masters of their domain - HELL NO! They have been pushed into a corner by my e-mail and they are simply responding, reacting, appearing competent. Please don't think there is an end in sight. This is New York, there are winners and losers and nobody has time for anybody who stands in between.

Contemporary Tibetan Art - An Exhibition

2010-05-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

I am certainly not knowledgeable nor particularly interested in Tibetan contemporary art but the Rubin Museum of Art in New York is mounting an exhibition that opens in June. An artist represented in this exhibition (with three large canvases) happens to be a very good friend of mine and I would be remiss if I did not take the opportunity to promote him and his art. I think his art is very, very, good.

I for one am quite tired of some contemporary Tibetan art where it is a simplistic tracing of a Buddha image or the overdone juxtaposition of the Buddha and Mao, and I understand that art has always been a vehicle for politics just as literature. However, sometimes I just want to see good art masterfully done, creative, interesting, refreshing and new that makes me smile and engages me visually. I want to see a work of art where the more I look at the piece the more I see, and the more time I spend with the piece, the more time I want to spend - like a visual feast. I want to feel it from the inside and if someone has to explain it to me - then I have obviously missed it, or maybe it wasn't there in the first place. For me, art that has to be explained in order to be understood and appreciated is not great art - it is only a visual-intellectual statement.

Another artist, more familiar with contemporary art than me, I think says it best, "WOW, Pema's painting you included is KILLER! as soon as I saw it (the second one) and started reading your article, I was hoping that it was one of his! A lot of contemporary art I've seen by Tibetan artists is so predictable and lame, if not cheap and exploitative. It's great to see Pema's work - beautiful, thoughtful, and sophisticated! It's so great to see a work of contemporary Tibetan art that doesn't make use of the tired silhouette of the buddha! In fact, there really isn't much in Pema's painting that relates to (or falls back on) his identity as a Tibetan or his Tibetan ancestry. It's refreshing to know there's at least one Tibetan contemporary artist who's moved beyond that! perhaps there's hope after all...." (Currently anonymous).

Pema Rinzin is one of the only Tibetan artists that I know who has trained in the traditional way of 'tangka' and mural painting and that has also successfully transitioned into contemporary painting while still creating and teaching the so-called 'traditional' art.

The first image above is a small detail of a large painting that will be on display at the Rubin Museum of Art. The second two images are from the Joshua Liner Gallery where Pema exhibited in the early spring of 2010. He exhibited three paintings in that Chelsea New York show and all three sold. The second image (above) - that painting sold the first night of the Joshua Liner show. Aside from the RMA exhibition opening in June, Pema has another group show coming up in August - again in Chelsea. There is also talk of a solo show in the near future. (See Artist Biography and New York Tibetan Art Studio. For more information on the RMA exhibition see the link below).

Tradition Transformed, June 11, 2010 - October 18, 2010.

"Tradition Transformed: Tibetan Artists Respond marks the first exhibition of contemporary Tibetan art in a New York City museum. The nine Tibetan artists featured each explore contemporary issues--personal, political, and cultural--by integrating the centuries-old traditional imagery, techniques, and materials found in Tibetan Buddhist art with modern influences and media. (More info)."

Pema Rinzin was an artist in residence at the RMA for three years and produced a number of works during that time. The drawing of Himalayan 'Animals, Foliage and Landscape' was done in the gallery space during the highly successful 'Bon, The Magic Word' exhibition in 2007. The painting (below) of the Four Guardian Kings was the first painting that Pema completed while at the RMA. It was also first displayed in the RMA exhibition 'Big!' also in 2007, followed by the Trammell Crow museum in Dallas in 2008. I believe his three special skills that set him apart from the rest are [1] drawing, [2] composition and [3] colour balance.

The Fight Continues

2010-05-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

The battle is sporadic. Mostly waged in the wee hours of the morning. The exchanges can be brutal and emotionally traumatic but the fight goes on. I have employed a new liquid deployed as a spray against large areas of the room. It is called Bed Bug Patrol and is a completely natural product with a strong hint of clove oil. The ground up sea bug dust, Diatomaceous Earth Dust, has been dispersed to the most important areas in need of defense - cracks, crannies and creases. The idea is to begin to limit the active area where the bugs - little bastards - are able to mount an attack, corral them into a small defensive zone, and then crush them with a final lethal blow.

Yes, I was bit!

2010-05-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Two bites last night around three in the morning. I will have to re-double my efforts. Needless to say I didn't sleep much after that. Have a look at this link about an apartment building in Princeton, New Jersey http://bedbugger.com/2010/04/03/bed-bugs-in-princeton-apartment-building/. It is a good example of the communications, exchanges and lack of them between some landlords, tenants and the health authorities. I am sure that the laws in New York State will be somewhat different from New Jersey. One problem with landlords and owners is that they often think that the regular pesticide company that comes once a month and sprays for cockroaches, silverfish and mice are up to the task of eradicating a bedbug infestation. It is a little bit like thinking that a regular doctor, a general practitioner, can perform complicated heart surgery requiring specialized tools and equipment. Bedbug extermination needs experts. Without recognizing this then the problem just returns again and again and the landlord spends more and more money. More tenants leave and the apartment building has a high turnover. The rent starts to go down and the place is of course already beginning to be rundown. Finally it ends up being a skid row apartment (or house). That is the life cycle of an untreated bedbug infested dwelling.

The Calm Before the Storm

2010-05-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

No bites last night and none the night before, this of course means that they, the 'bugs', have been well fed. I have to be extra vigilante tonight because they are undoubtedly getting hungry 'on the move' and I am the only thing on the menu. Buckle up. It's going to get bumpy.

I have been informed by the building manager that the next bedbug spraying of the apartments won't be until the end of next week - plenty of bug breeding time in there between now and then. I am not yet confidant that the building owners are treating this matter with the seriousness and urgency that it requires. Regardless of that, I am on the offensive and have scoured the internet for reviews and anecdotes of bed bug sufferers and information on various products. I have also ordered a variety of different sprays, dusts and environmentally friendly concoctions - no DDT. I will let you know which items work and which do not. I am taking the battle to the bugs.

Yet, all of that being said, I figure even if the exterminators get the things out of my apartment I still have no control over the apartments of anyone else in the building, and they may be lazier than me, stay infested, and spread the bugs back to my apartment yet again. So, in other words, I am at war with both the bedbugs and with anybody who doesn't have the resolve and strength to get rid of their own damn bugs. To that end I must turn the apartment into a fortress surrounded at the outer edges with a series of ditches and tank traps filled with diatomaceous earth dust. Then, a film of poisonous enzymes - organic warfare - followed up by regular preventative spraying with a variety of lethal cocktails - striking randomly. However, none of this advanced arsenal of weaponry has arrived, as it was just now ordered, and until then I will continue to do battle with the enemy using rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle as my front line weopon. That is the strategy, that is the resolve - let the final battle for the apartment begin.

Constant Vigilance - The War of the Bed Bugs

2010-05-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

Every night is potentially a battle although depending on the infestation the bugs may only feed every three or four days. Depending on their number they might need to feed every night. While waiting for the third spraying of the apartment which is usually five days between sprayings I have resorted to a spray bottle and alcohol. No, not for drinking - for spraying the wooden bed frame and then the area of the floor under and around the bed. This seems to work for a few hours at best. The alcohol kills the bugs, babies and eggs on contact - but only on contact. If they are hiding around a corner then they are safe - the little bastards.

I learned early on while staying in India in the 1970s that neither the Geneva Convention nor the Bodhisattva Code of Ethics need apply to bed bugs. They are a serious health risk and can spread salmonella and other diseases. I am also investigating other treatments such as natural products that destroy and keep the bugs at bay. Let it be said that the 'battle is on.'

My allies, the apartment management company and their hired mercenaries have not been overly successful in the battle but it is still early and there are many more days of fighting before this campaign is done.

In the end either I will be Lord of the apartment or the bed bugs will.

The Inevitable

2010-05-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess it was just a matter of time, inevitable. When you live in a tenement flat in New York City, over a hundred years old, with porous walls and floors, and people coming and going, moving in and out - it had to happen. BED BUGS!!! BED BUGS!!! BED BUGS!!!

The question now is what to do about it and - not too patiently - watch how the property management company deals with it. Will they be aggressive in extermination or laid back and fight the scourge topically. The next two or three weeks will tell the story. One thing I already know for sure is that I cannot live with bed bugs.

All of my New York belongings which are basically clothes and books are wrapped in plastic bags and fill the middle of the apartment in order to facilitate the exterminators and their need to spray the corners of the apartment, walls, ceiling, etc. The wooden bed frame has been sprayed and the entire floor has been sprayed over the course of two extermination visits. Between the first and the 2nd visit (2 days after) I was bitten and after the second visit (2 days after) I was bitten again.

The exterminators are scheduled to return this coming week - Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. Somehow I don't think that will be enough. I was told that in the building on the floor below me there was one filthy apartment that was overrun with bed bugs similar to the image at the bottom of this post. It was said that if you moved any item of furniture or lifted anything at all in that apartment then dozens of bed bugs would scurry in all directions.

Feeding Habits of Bed Bugs (from Wikipedia): "Bedbugs are bloodsucking insects. They are normally out at night just before dawn, with a peak feeding period of about an hour before sunrise. Bedbugs may attempt to feed at other times if given the opportunity and have been observed feeding during all periods of the day. They reach their host by walking, or sometimes climb the walls to the ceiling and drop down on feeling a heat wave. Bedbugs are attracted to their hosts by warmth and the presence of carbon dioxide. The bug pierces the skin of its host with two hollow feeding tubes. With one tube it injects its saliva, which contains anticoagulants and anesthetics, while with the other it withdraws the blood of its host. After feeding for about five minutes, the bug returns to its hiding place. The bites cannot usually be felt until some hours or even days later, as a dermatological reaction to the injected agents, and the first indication of a bite usually comes from the desire to scratch the bite site. Because of their natural aversion for sunlight, bedbugs come out at night.[8]

Although bedbugs can live for a year or eighteen months without feeding, and purportedly up to three years in the case of the species Oeciacus vicarius (the cliff swallow bug),[9] they normally try to feed every five to ten days. Bedbugs that go dormant for lack of food often live longer than a year, while well-fed specimens typically live six to nine months.

At the 57th Annual Meeting of the Entomological Society of America in 2009, it was reported that newer generations of pesticide-resistant bedbugs in Virginia could survive only two months without feeding.[10]

Low infestations may be difficult to detect and in the early stages, victims may not realize they have bedbugs. Patterns of bites in a row or a cluster are typical, as the insects may be disturbed while feeding. Bites may be found in a variety of places on the body."

I will look into some Tantric Buddhist texts to see if there are any special practices, charms, talismans or mantras for eradicating these bugs. Bed bugs were well known to Tibetans who called them 'demon lice'. Mipham Rinpoche had numerous techniques for getting rid of a wide range of pests from mice, to rabbits, body lice, rabid dogs and more.

Introducing Tashi T. Dharlo to the World

2010-05-15T06:50:00.000-07:00

Tashi was born on Wednesday morning, 12th of May. Both the mother and baby are fine. For those of you who know, Tenzin the mother has worked with me on the Himalayan Art Resources website here in New York city since the Spring of 2001. Congratulations to the mother and father and to the proud grand-parents and their new grand-son.

Teaching Prejudice

2010-05-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

Teaching the History of Yesterday might be Teaching the Prejudice of Today

I recently chanced upon a label copy for a Padmasambhava sculpture in a current exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. It was interesting because it was a sculpture that I had purchased for the museum some years earlier when I worked there (between 1999 & 2007) and an object that Samten Karmey and I had used in the first ever Bon art and culture exhibition, also at the RMA - 'Bon the Magic Word.' We used the object as a possible example of the 'legendary' teacher Yungdrung Tongdrol - why not?

Now, to my point, I include in this post the label copy that accompanies the image of Padmasambhava and ask you - does this smack of systemic conditioned and on-going prejudice? Or am I over reacting? I have written a short paragraph below that I think somewhat represents a similar historical prejudice (and racism) that is part of the American experience. For me the two paragraphs are essentially the same and are intended to convey, ignorantly or intentionally, the same basic story. The paragraph below is also something similar to what could be found in American school textbooks up to the 1970s. It is however, now, no longer publicly acceptable in the USA in any way and considered extremely prejudicial. Well, what about the Padmasambhava label and the portrayal of the Bon - especially to a new audience, a non-Tibetan audience, an audience that is currently being molded by educators?

Who out there is researching this topic of Buddhist textual prejudice against Bon? Who actually cares? Who has any kind of investment in this issue? I for one can cite dozens of examples, just from memory, of instances of anti-Bon prejudice in Buddhist literature. Those stories are part of my Buddhist training: Padmasambhava life story, Milarepa life story, Sachen Kunga Nyingpo life story, etc., etc., etc. Are we now ignorantly continuing this tradition of blatant prejudice against the Bon Religion and culture just because it is written in the Tibetan Buddhist 'sacred' texts?

Comparison Paragraph:

"A legendary American Hero, General George Armstrong Custer, was one of the figures that tamed the wild West. Stories abound about his travels through-out the country-side and the sites where he tamed and converted the locals are considered historical. One such episode takes place at a location where General Custer came to defeat the Indian people of the plains and their indigenous religion. When a local Indian chief rose up to resist by force of arms and the aid of their sacred religious drum and ghost dances the chief along with most of his people, women and children, persihed. Now when the thunder clouds rumble, the local Indians say that the spirit elders of that place are beating the sacred drums and dancing." (Written by Jeff Watt as a comparison to the RMA Padmasambhava/Bon label copy).

Padmasambhava Label Copy: (click on image)

(First published on the International Bon Studies website, May 13th, 2010).

Funny English at its Best

2010-05-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Please check out this link from the New York Times.

These Chinese signs are really a lot of fun. Some of the images below are just snap shots I took on my last visit to China while visiting the Buddhist Temple at Dazu Grotto half way between the cities of Chengdu and Chongqing. I don't search out and collect these signs like some travelers I know but they really are fun when you come across them unexpectedly.

Please check out this link.

Heading Back to New York

2010-04-29T21:58:00.000-07:00

Well, the fun couldn't last forever. It was a good but quick stay in Vancouver and even briefer at the cabin. I spent time with some friends and completely missed others. The weather was very nice and it is always nice to sleep in my own bed either in Vancouver or the cabin, although the cabin was a little crowded.

Who knows, I may be back in Vancouver sooner than most think. If the apartment landlords where I stay in New York decide to redo the apartment roof in the next month or so, then I'll be back in Vancouver. I am on the top floor and it was shear hell last year when they did the building next door. I can't imagine actually living in the apartment while they take 2-3 weeks to redo the entire roof. Can you imagine the dirt and debris falling each day from the ceiling? Can you imagine the noise and irregular hours, working through the weekends? That isn't for me, better to be free and travel home to a noise free environment without dust, dirt and bricks coming loose and falling from the walls.

In New York anytime they say a job will take a week or two then it means it will actually take several months. You should hear New Yorkers talk about this stuff - it makes them crazy!

Tough, Wobbly Kneed & Steep to the Step: A Trip to the Cabin for Spring Maintenance & a Little Rest

2010-04-27T05:44:00.000-07:00

We headed up to the cabin last Friday early and with beautiful weather. It didn't take us long to connect with Jeff N. and Shelby. We texted our coordinates every so often and re-adjusted our schedules. Stopped at the bakery in Princeton and picked up some donuts. The bakery has been operating since the 1920s and I have been a customer since the mid 70s.

Jeff, daughter and Kita, the half husky trail dog, were at the trail-head at 1:00 and ready to go. We arrived and parked. Looking at the river, gauging the depth, colour and speed, I on the other hand had not completely said it out loud but new it in my mind - the river was beginning to be in flood. We would not be able to make the eleven water crossings necessary to get to the cabin. Some crossings are easier than others but I knew that some would be 3 feet deep with a high velocity of speed. The general rule is you only cross water that is less than half your height and not strong enough to knock you over. Shelby and Kita couldn't make it let alone the big folks.

After a short discussion it was decided that we would do the over the mountain climb. This approach to the cabin involved driving back out to the highway and backtracking about 5k then turning north off the highway we drove up about 7k into the mountains on a very steep logging road that provided a glorious panoramic view of the Similkameen Valley far below. Using both an old Gps unit and eyeballing the terrain we parked the two vehicles and readied our packs for the arduous hike on unmarked deer trails down a steep two thousand foot slope to the valley floor and the cabin that awaited us. Part of our goal was to avoid the cliffs on either side of the known route.

I first climbed out from the valley floor in the early 80s when I had been staying at the cabin through the beginning of spring run off one year. Again, during the set up for a spring/summer retreat in April of 1994, Jeff N. and I were forced to hike down to the cabin to take in the necessary supplies. We then hiked up two days later for me to retrieve the remainder of the food supplies and to send Jeff on his way back to Vancouver. Returning to the valley floor, two thousand feet below, with a hundred pound pack - I was delirious and close to exhaustion.

However, back to 2010 and this trip, the four of us and one dog headed over the edge of the ridge with a general idea of where we were going and how long it would take to get there. At first we had a tree canopy, but leaving the forests of the Thompson Plateau, it wasn't long before we had to stop for the obligatory snap shot photos of the spectacular views of the entire valley in front of us and the creek far below in the narrow valley below. The hike down the mountainside took approximately 2 1/2 hours. My knees and legs were rubber at the bottom. Thank god for walking sticks, company, and a good trail dog. [In the photo above I am standing with the Thompson Plateau behind me. The cabin lies in one of the many steep and hidden valleys that crisscross the plateau. The Thompson Plateau lies inland from the Pacific Ocean and over the Coast Mountains on the eastern side. Moving west, after the Thompson Plateau are the various mountain ranges such as the Selkirk, Purcell, and Kootenay all on the west side of the Rocky Mountains].

Arriving at the cabin we found it in use. Not by a person physically in it but by somebody that wasn't currently there. We investigated the signs of habitation and determined the squatter had left some days earlier. They had left all of their belongings out, but neat, as if still there, or returning shortly. We carefully packed all of their belongings away and unpacked ours. We were four and a dog, they were one. We needed space to sleep, prepare food and cook.

Using both a camp stove outside and the cast iron stove inside we were able to quickly boil water and prepare some food of pasta, beef jerky, cheese and tea. When traveling to the cabin we always have snack foods of chocolate, trail bars, real licorice, and more. The first night was spent with some tossing and turning as the cabin is not really meant for four people and a dog, three is doable and can be fun, two is great, one is pure pleasure and extremely restful.

Saturday was a day of mixed weather. We ate breakfast, washed, talked, napped, ate, cut wood, watched the weather, talked, finally Gio went out with Kita for a walk down to the last crossing where there was once an old concrete dam built at the turn of the century, small, long destroyed with only remnants of its existence.

Upon Gio's return Jeff and I also felt like a little hike to stretch out the legs from the hill descent of the day before. Shelby was content to stay in the cabin next to the stove and under the blankets. Off we went with Kita in tow as well, for her it was the 2nd time. The walk was fast paced and we made it to the last crossing in about a half hour. The water was high and brown. I knew that I would have tremendous difficulty crossing if I had a pack on my back even if I was using two over-sized walking sticks. The real danger, especially with a pack on the back, is that if you are knocked over in the water while crossing you can not recover - you are taken away by the swift current until you can grab onto a rock or regain your footing - if possible. It is an ugly scenario all round, I've been there, I've tried. The feeling is the same as white water swimming (swimming down rapids) except without the intention of wanting to be white water swimming. On the way back up the trail it hailed heavily. It seemed more like a snow shower.

Dinner on Saturday night was quinoa, my favourite, with cheese, meat, soya sauce, and whatever else we had. It was delicious. Quinoa cooks beautifully on a cast iron stove. When I am alone or we as a group are at the cabin longer then I often cook a sweet curry to go with the quinoa, but alas those days do not come as often now as they did in the past. The second nights sleep was better than the first probably because of some re-adjustment in the bedding and shifting of bodies.

Saturday night we decided to all leave together on Sunday. This was mostly for safety reasons. It would be easier for all of us to hike up the mountainside together knowing that if there were any problems we would all be there to help. Remember, it had been some years since Jeff and I had hiked that route out from the cabin. The mountainside is also known for mountain goats, deer, bears and cute brown rabbits.

The hike was horrendous, long and steep. The day on the other hand was magnificent, beautiful, with clear blue skies and thick sunshine like the clearest honey. Once again we had beautiful views of the mountains, ope meadows, and the valley below as we climbed higher and higher. As an added bonus we had drinking water the entire way up the mountainside. There were pockets of hail every so often in the shade of trees and rocks that were left over from the day before. The pockets of hail continued all the way to the top of the mountain. After that there was the remnants of the winters heavy snow and brackish ponds. Neither of these were to my liking, nor as clean as the hail - Kita didn't care.

The hike from the cabin to the top of the mountain (ridge) and then to the vehicles took approximately 4 hours. I was tired and ready for some serious rest. Packed up and ready to go we drove down the mountain road passing local kids with trail bikes and 4x4s farther along. Arriving in Princeton we said our goodbyes to Jeff N., Shelby and Kita who headed north to Williams Lake via the old Princeton/Merritt Road - the preferred route of bikers. It was about four in the afternoon and we headed straight for the pub to eat and drink. Leaving Princeton for Vancouver the last leg of the trip was relatively uneventful except for the very large numbers of deer grazing in small herds alongside the grassy areas of the highway outside of Princeton. There were also two black bears, not together, in the Manning Park area noteworthy for their beautiful thick shiny black fur.

Blue Sky, Bright Sun & Flowers Everywhere

2010-04-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day with a bright blue sky and cherry blossom petals (sakura) everywhere in the yard and in the house. The five hour flight last night was uneventful although a half hour late. I didn't know any of the flight attendants and it was a pretty sleepy compliment of travelers. I was content to sleep and muse. I skipped the beverage and dinner although they did appear to have changed the three entree menu choices on this New York to Vancouver flight. The movies I also chose to skip. Likely they were the same fifty or so new releases and classics from the previous couple of weeks and my recent flight from Hong Kong to New York. I watched Avatar on the previous flight a week and a half ago. For this flight I just relaxed and dozed in the comfort of the exit row aisle seat.

Waking up this morning was a pleasure with the bright blue sky and cherry blossoms right outside my bedroom window. With luck the weather will hold through the weekend and for the trip to the cabin. Below are some quick images of the flowers growing in the garden outside my window.

I recall some years ago, after a conversation with Nicole while up at the cabin, that I photographed many of the wild edible and medicinal plants and flowers of the dry interior - an area in British Columbia known as the Okanagan. All of the photos were from the trails and meadows immediately surrounding the cabin within a four or five hour hike. I will try and locate these images again. My intention was to upload them to a website and describe their nutritional and medicinal uses and changes through the seasons.

Off to the Cabin

2010-04-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am again in the British Airways lounge at Terminal 7 at JFK heading back to Vancouver and my regular spring trip up to the cabin. This year will be a little different with Gio and me heading up from Vancouver and Jeff and Shelby heading down from Williams Lake. The plan is to meet at the trail head at 1:00 on Friday. We'll see how that goes. Jeff is bringing up the new stove pipe lengths and elbows and I will be bringing the ant banquet. We don't usually go up this late in April because the creek generally starts to rise anytime between the 20th and the end of the month. Full flood is usually in May and can last for several weeks. Our late start is due to the fact that I was away in China up until last week and Gio is only just back from Thailand and Japan.

Tomorrow will be a day of light shopping and buying supplies for the weekend. MEC is top of the list as is Choices Market. I have a craving for good cheese which was not sated at either the Sheraton in Chengdu or the Hyatt in Beijing, both of which had excellent cheeses in the executive lounge every afternoon.

Google, China & 5 Star Hotels

2010-04-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it seems to me that if you stay at a Five Star Hotel in China then the entire China/Google problem is not an issue. I guess it also means, if you have money then politics doesn't matter.

See the 'other' travel blog: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Jeff-on-the-Road/page-1.html

--- Jeff

Hong Kong Airport and the Dragon Air Lounge

2010-03-22T00:46:00.000-07:00

After a 16 hour flight I have finally arrived in Hong Kong. As a general, and usually strict rule, I do not fly on Saturdays or Sundays. For this trip however I am dependent upon the schedules of others and not as free to choose my own flying days. Also, being Asia Week (month) in New York makes it even more complicated. Therefore, for those reasons, I flew on the Cathay Pacific Sunday morning baby run. I only have myself to blame.

While in Chengdu I plan to use both Travel Blogs depending on which one works bets. It is possible that this Google blog will work in Chengdu as the hotel is primarily for foreigners. In the mean time I have been trying to access the alternate Travel Blog but without any success. It could be that it is temporarily down for some nightly maintenance. http://www.travelblog.org/ or http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Yungdrung/. The internet at the HK airport is extremely slow today. More later.....

Sitting at YVR

2010-03-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

Well, once again waiting in the lounge at YVR heading back to JFK. The last time I was here was in January just after Captain Underwear was foiled while attempting his dastardly deeds. Security was tight back then, very tight. The only thing missing in January, aside from no carry-on, was a strip search to accompany the very physical pat-down. But here we are, again, at YVR. I asked at check-in if I had to surrender my small carry-on back. They said no, "no problem" was the response. I approached security not knowing really what to expect. Nothing, nothing was what I got. Disappointed, well yes, I had built up expectations, expectations that I believed were valid, rational and based on prior experience combined with mass media news hysteria - mostly American. Was I wrong to have these feelings and expectations of intensified security and scrutiny? Well, apparently the neurosis is all mine! I was whisked through security quite quickly, there was no line. My bag, which really wasn't that small, seemed to fly through the screening machine and arrived on the other side before me - no double pass, no prolonged examination of the contents on the screen which even the addled traveler can catch a glimpse of. What happened, what did happen? Whatever happened, I don't know! I don't know what it meant when they had the news coverage day and night of the Underwear Bomber. I don't know what the different security agencies were talking about and announcing as official statement after the event. And, I realize now that I don't care and don't want to hear about it anymore. I grew up with the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers. Back then we new it was make believe but I think now a days people can't make those distinctions as easily as they could in the past.

What I would like is that the burden of security be placed on the backs of the security agencies and not on the travelers. If those security agencies can't figure out what they are doing, what tone they are setting, and what instructions they are giving to us, then how are we supposed to know?

Flying into 2010

2010-01-04T19:37:00.000-08:00

Well here we are again at YVR heading to JFK. At least I wasn't shoveling snow everyday like last year at this time. I must say the new flying restrictions for US bound flights had me a little rattled. No carry-on! Are they crazy? Short haul flights are only bearable because of carry-on. Carry-on carry-off, simple concept. At least carry-on is x-rayed, screened, observed and there are some established and understandable rules that are applied almost uniformly across many of the US States, parts of Canada and sporadically across the rest of the world.

I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but, I do believe it is a conspiracy of the transport authorities of various governments to save money by not putting in sniffer scanners, body scanners, and of course x-ray machines for ALL checked luggage. They want to save money. The technology has been out there for years. They quite simply just want to save money. It is like they are wanting to pace the escalation in air flight safety incidents with monetary cost. I think ideally they would like the passenger rules to be for all bags, coats and clothing to be checked. The idea is to have everybody fly naked thus removing the opportunity of a shoe bomber or the new threat - the underwear bomber. Appealing or appalling as this might sound it does leave open the possibility of the suppository bomber. Yes, you read me correctly - the suppository bomber.

Now doesn't it make more sense to have proper sniffer and scanning equipment? Government officials are paid a lot of money, and those politicians, with lobby money and graft, paid even more. Consider all of the time on TV and the news over the last ten years that they have been talking about security, airport security, security in the air. If they would just stop yapping about it and do something about it then all of those people that travel regularly to the US wouldn't be the ones inconvenienced by this lack of Government spending and the victims of excessive government yapping.

Vancouver Bound for American Thanksgiving

2009-11-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

Well here it is again, the American Thanksgiving Holiday. I have spent the previous 10 years in New York City and enough is enough. My boss invited me once to his home for Thanksgiving and then I spent several years going out with Gene Smith to I Coppi, a restaurant in the East Village, for Thanksgiving dinner. But, aside from these highlights it is dead boring here with everything closed on the THURSDAY and me just working everyday all the way through the weekend. Why not go home? What a thought. So here I am about to get on a Cathay Pacific flight out of New York, bumped to Business Class. They are very nice at Cathay. The best airline in the world. On my recent marathon trip to Beijing China in October they also bumped me to Business Class on the NY to Hong Kong portion of the flight. They are truly old fashion and professional. My favourite airline. But enough about them.......

Today the HAR website has moved to a new hosting server that is faster and more secure. It is also more Apple friendly. Although 6% of the computer world that claims to be better than all the rest of us has never been high on my priority list. I have been using a personal computer since 1984 and I have never had a rash of computer crashes due to software, Windows, DOS or otherwise. In the last fifteen years any serious crashes have been due to incompatibility between hardware components because I have built the computer or had someone else build it based on my specs. Obviously wrong.

It is likely that the entire notion of PCs crashing all the time is a marketing creation of Apple. I cannot count the number of times I have sat through a business meeting where an Apple is being used to give a presentation and the user tells me "I don't know what happened it has never done this before". Apples crash, they crash a lot, but the users have been brain washed into saying "OMG this has never happened before." Hogwash, Grow Up, Apple is only in business today because Microsoft bought a huge interest in their stocks so they wouldn't go out of business. The day Apple goes out of business is the day the US Government steps in and divides up Microsoft for being a monopoly. It is in Microsoft's interest, not marginally, but totally, to keep Apple alive and viable. Enough about Apple. Apple is BIG BROTHER technology. With PC technology free thinking computer users can create and work within a free environment.

HAR has changed serves and the upgrade should be marginally noticeable in speed and performance. I say marginally because most people don't pay too much attention to those things. If we went back to the early 90s with the real consumer beginnings of the Internet then YES, we noticed changes in performance. Dial-up modems, what were we thinking. Come on now, what were we thinking? Were we cutting edge? What about cable modems? Wi-fi? Things have changed.

The HAR site for some people will be faster, it might produce results slightly quicker. What is important is that it is a more stable server, not that HAR has had a lot of down time in the last year. The Coldfusion platform is newer and we will be taking advantage of the best that Adobe Software has to offer. Sure, why buy into Coldfusion if you can use Php, free, no charge, open source. Well, can you say crap shoot, maybe you didn't hear me CRAP SHOOT. Php is great, open source and all that - whatever it really means. But, who do you have setting standards? If you build a site then how easy is it to have someone else, after the initial developer, come in and figure out what is going on? What modules and libraries have been used? What are the shortcuts, back doors? All I can say is crap shoot.

Some might call this a rant. Some might call this a rave. I call it a positive release of stress from New York in anticipation of a weeks rest in a civilized part of the world - Vancouver.

The Seventeen Biggest Buddhas in the World

2009-11-05T08:44:00.001-08:00

Here is something I thought was interesting and a little garish. The seventeen biggest Buddhas in the world, Buddha-like, of Buddhist figures.

The Chinese Government & Google Blogs

2009-10-29T23:38:00.000-07:00

For my own travels I think I can get away with using Google Blog and the alternate Travelblog site for China, but for the HAR and the SRG sites I will have to change the blog provider. There are too many people in China using the two sites to have them hobbled by international politics. The HAR team has already had some ideas for changing the blog. One suggestion was to move to a Coldfusion blog application, completely stable and free. The only problem is we have to implement it. It is not exactly right out of the box. This blog accessibility problem will be a priority for the next few weeks.

Beijing Airport Lounge, Friday the 30th

2009-10-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Sitting in the business class lounge at the Beijing airport. They let me through security. Things have sure changed here. Everything gets easier in China. The only thing that doesn't change is the bad food. You can find it everywhere. I have had some great food here but primarily vegetarian. You know me, I'm not into all that ground up mystery meat or unidentified body parts. I also don't like whole chicken heads floating in my chicken soup. Call me boring, call me unsophisticated but that's the way it is. I knew it was going to be a bumpy ride two weeks ago when I was served an entire plate of duck hearts. All I could think of was how many ducks were present on my plate.

See the alternate travel blog for those days when I was unable to access Google Blogs.

I have had no sleep since 7:00 yesterday morning. The drive back from Wutaishan was great because it was daylight. We left at 11:00 in the morning and arrived in Beijing after 7:00 P.M. The last of the three cars in our group broke down with radiator problems. My bag was in that car. So were my apartment keys. The car and driver were later abandoned in a small backwater Chinese village and the passengers rented a taxi to bring them to Beijing. The bag arrived at my hotel at 12:00 midnight delivered by my friend Wayne who was at the Vancouver 2000 Lamdre. He recalled the not so harrowing experience of the car over heating as they approached the pass above the valley of the Wutaishan stupa.

Wayne, Wei Wei and I adjourned to my room where we stayed up talking and sharing stories all night long. The hot water kettle never cooled down. We looked at two actual paintings and also looked at art on the internet and images on our own computers. Both of them are regular users of the HAR website and had many suggestions about improvements and changes. Wayne also checks the SRG site regularly and offered to translate parts into Chinese because of the growing need for Chinese language content.

I plan on sleeping through to Hong Kong, relaxing again in the lounge, and then sleep all the way to New York with a few movies on the way.

Friday Morning, October 23rd - Beijing

2009-10-22T15:43:00.000-07:00

It is either foggy or cloudy this morning. I can't tell. This is the last day of the conference seminar. There will be several papers this morning and then after lunch we get back into the buses and travel up to the China Tibetology Research Center for a lecture by Xiong Winbin. He and I were in Tibet together two years ago for the Princeton graduate studies site seminar trip. His Research Center is in the process of building a museum of Tibetan art and artifacts. They already have a large room in the Institute set up as a gallery but they are in the process of constructing a separate building. I have images of their objects but have not yet had time to upload them to the HAR site.

Palace Doors

2009-10-22T15:28:00.001-07:00

Lines, colours and angles of the palace doors of the 'Forbidden City.'

Thursday Night and the Makye Ami Restaurant

2009-10-22T07:41:00.000-07:00

Here is one image of the restaurant from tonight and the the very comfortable hotel suite. It is just like a two bedroom apartment with a large living room and dining area combined. It has a separate kitchen and two bedrooms. The largest bedroom has a separate bathroom.

The morning was taken up by lectures in the conference space and the afternoon was an outing to the Palace Museum and a lecture by Luo Wen Wa, curator of the Palace Museum. We again visited the painting and sculpture collections that are on exhibit. Where we were, and what we were looking at, is not open to the general public - only to scholars and researchers. I took a lot more photos and will post them when I have the opportunity.

After the Palace we went directly to the Makye Ami Restaurant and had a sumptuous feast of hearty Tibetan food, meat, meat, and more meat, along with song and dance performances.

Thursday Morning, October 22nd

2009-10-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a very full day with the opening ceremonies for the conference (which they are also referring to as a seminar) 'Buddhist Aesthetics/October Seminar.' The idea is for the event to become an annual conference seminar. The well known Tibetan Lama, Gossok Rinpoche, gave the first paper in the morning. The presentation was on mandalas and their meaning. The second paper was given by Ulrich Von Schroeder on Indo-Tibetan bronzes (although mostly made of brass).

We had a boxed lunch which was really delicious and ate it in the presentation room. After that we adjourned to the Capital Museum lecture hall for a paper on Densathil sculpture from the leading curator/researcher on the subject. The hall was very impressive. Although I had been to the museum many times I had never been in the hall which is at the base of the giant ding forming the main architectural element of the building. I tried to find a good link for the Capitol Museum but wasn't able to find anything with images. It was an excellent paper/lecture and after we went upstairs to actually see their Densathil collection which is one of the finest in the world. The Rubin Museum of Art also has a good Densathil collection, not so many pieces but good quality. I remember buying the first piece from Christies and then several more through the years.

(See the Densathil Sculpture on the HAR website).

Thursday morning will follow the same format as the previous day. A Tibetan speaker will go first and talk about ritual objects and hand attributes found in the hands of the figures in painting and sculpture. After that Jane Casey (formerly Jane Casey Singer) will give a paper and then we will break for lunch following which there will be a paper at the Palace Museum in the Tibetology Institute which opened last week.

The image above is a detail from an arhat painting in the Palace Museum. All of the images I took in the museum will be uploaded to HAR site when I return to New York.

Wednesday Morning, October 21st

2009-10-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

My paper was very controversial and made some people mad while other people were very happy with it. Generally people either believed the way I was presenting the information or they didn't. It has become well established in established in China that there are three forms of late Tibetan painting: Menri, Khyenri and Karma Gardri. They can't tell you what the definition is for each nor can they account for any styles that don't fall within the three.

The next few days until late Saturday will be very busy with the 2nd conference. There are several field trips and as you know it can be difficult moving around Beijing because of the traffic and number of cars especially at rush hour which is between 8:30 in the morning to 8:30 at night.

On Saturday I will likely have to find another hotel as I won't be able to afford this place I am in now. On Monday night I am scheduled to give a lecture at the Minzu University (Nationalities University, I think formerly called the Minorities). This is being organized by an old friend of mine, the only Bon scholar that teaches in Beijing. He is now the dean of his school, or sub-school/department within the university. He has 124 PhD candidates under his supervision as Dean. Hey! Maybe I should get an honorary Phd from him?

I already feel that there is not enough time to do all of the other things I want to do. I haven't even been to a bookstore yet (except in the Capital Museum) or a Tibetan restaurant. But during this conference one of the banquets will be at the Makye Ami Tibetan Restaurant. All three of the nights of this conference will be banquet nights at three different locations and with three different styles of food: Chinese, Tibetan and Sino-Mongolian.

The first night, tonight, is a banquet at the Beijing Dadong Roast Duck Restaurant. The 2nd banquet tomorrow night will be at the Makye Ame and the day after that will be Shuan Yang Rou, sliced mutton in a hot pot, by the world famous chef of the same family name and this will be at the same location where the conference is taking place. This sliced mutton is supposed to be some special famous thing. Generally in the West mutton implies an old sheep or lamb past its prime. There will also be Mongolian performers.

It sounds more like a holiday rather than a conference doesn't it? Well its not. It has been a whirlwind of activity and meetings and talking to people and trying to get images for the HAR website. So far I have a number of promises and one proposal of collaboration on a project involving over 300 Tibetan paintings from a Chinese Provincial museum attached to an important university.

The Blackberry cell phone has been working amazingly well here in Beijing, e-mail, text messages, everything.

I will post images for this Blog later today - that is if I'm not to busy feasting, or mentally drained and already asleep.

Posts from Beijing, October 16th to 19th, 2009

2009-10-20T02:56:00.000-07:00

From the 16th to the 19th of October I had to find a different Blog provider. In China it is often very difficult to connect to Google Blog because it is blocked by the government. The reason is likely because of some dispute with Google, probably over accessibility. I normally use Google Blogger. At my new location in Beijing, at the Marriott Hotel, I once again have access to Google, therefore have now moved back to posting on my original travel blog.

To see the Beijing conference posts from October 16th to 19th go to the Travelblog site that I used as a temporary service.

Morning Trip to the Capital Museum

2009-10-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

Again this morning we were up early and out front at 8:00 to go on a field trip to the Capital Museum. Only a dozen or more of the conference participants chose to go. Many had flights back to Europe or the US. There were several new exhibitions at the museum. However, the excellent display of Himalayan and Tibetan sculpture is a permanent exhibit which I photographed on a previous trip to Beijing some years ago. (See the Capital Museum sculpture on the HAR site).

While wandering through the museum I did see some objects that I had not seen before. I photographed them and will add them to the other images on the HAR site. One sculpture that was impressive and already on the HAR site was a Manjushri-like sculpture, the form having three faces and six hands. It was a large format sculpture and very well done with beautiful proportions. The ornate base is unusual for the extant of Nepalese scroll work decoration not typically found on the base of sculpture.

Beijing: Marriott Hotel Excutive Apartments

2009-10-20T02:07:00.000-07:00

I changed hotels from the Ziyu Hotel to the Marriott Executive Apartments where tomorrows conference will be held. The 'Executive Apartments' is a building complex of high rise towers with some designed for hotel style rented rooms and others as monthly rentals and then other buildings as upscale apartments.

At the first conference accommodations and food was all provided for by the conference hosts of which there were three: the Palace Museum, the Capital University and the China Tibetolgy Institute. At the 2nd conference, so far, the host is providing very nice accommodations. I am in a two bedroom suite with a full kitchen and living area. Breakfast is provided in the morning on the ground floor. I don't yet know about lunch and dinner. It should be mentioned that I am sharing the suite with a friend who is also participating in the conference tomorrow.

As I am writing this the sun is setting out the window next to me. There is a large orange ball, low on the horizon, disappearing behind a Beijing cityscape. After several attempts to photograph the sunset and post it here I gave up realizing that the tinting on the window is preventing any kind of clear image. I posted it anyway.

At the Marriott there is internet access to the Google Blog site which is why I am again posting here rather than the Travelblog site that I have been using for the last few days. Marriott must have their own agreement for internet connection with the Chinese Government since the hotel primarily deals with a foreign clientele rather than local Chinese citizens.

Hong Kong

2009-10-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

Due to heavy winds we arrived late in Hong Kong and I missed my connecting flight to Beijing. Flights leave all the time so it was easy to get on another scheduled for an hour and a half later. The brie and cucumber sandwiches in the Business Class lounge are the best. It is sunny and warm here. It would be nice to go into Hong Kong and spend some time, but alas no. I have the thick clouds of pollution and dust to look forward to in Beijing.

JFK to Hong Kong - then Beijing

2009-10-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am again at JFK at 7:00 in the morning. I have been very fortunate today, they have upgraded me to business class for the JFK through to Hong Kong portion of the trip. Several people have already heard that I will be at the conference and are trying to set up meetings. For me a highlight of the trip will be the opening of the new Tibetology Institute at the Palace Museum. On Friday morning (New York Thursday night) a bus has been arranged to pick some of us up at the hotel and take us to the ceremonies. Ed thinks it will be boring, but he has lived in Beijing for many years and been to many official openings and tediously long functions. For me it will be a chance to see old friends and colleagues, and make arrangements to get together over the weekend and following week.

One thing that I like to do while in Beijing is reconnect with the Bon scholars and lamas teaching and studying at Beijing universities. Generally they are from the Amdo region of Eastern Tibet.

I have a long list of things that I would like to try and accomplish while I am there. Finding the original Panjarnata Mahakala temple allegedly built at the time of Chogyal Pagpa and Aniko is high on the list. See the SRG Website Blog for more information on this (left side menu selection).

I will be Traveling to China Soon

2009-10-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

I will be Traveling to China on Wednesday, God willing, and wanted to share a new discovery with you. The discovery is a new Blackberry Tour 9630 cell phone. Previously I have had only one cell phone, simple, reliable and only for telephone calls. I have resisted cell phones believing them to be fundamentally evil, the death of privacy, a new era of interruption, etc., etc., etc. None of this has changed, it is all so very true.

However, I have a new Blackberry phone and since Thursday I have already become more productive in all areas of text and e-mail communication. I now have all of my various e-mail accounts for the different web sites forwarded to one device which I carry with me almost all the time. With this, time is being saved by not having to access so many different accounts on different desk top or lap top computers - at the office or apartment.

A full keyboard on a cell phone is a necessity when it comes to sending text and returning e-mails. Texting, as with a number keypad on most older phone models is Byzantine at best. A keyboard, no matter how small, is a requirement. With all the accounts routed to one unit and a full keyboard (although minuscule by big finger standards) it is easy to deal with communications as they come in, determine their importance, and respond immediately as necessary. Due to these improvements in communications technology and in effect having a computer in the palm of my hand, I am now a believer!

Back to New York - Again & Again & Again!!!!!

2009-10-05T21:46:00.000-07:00

Well it has been a very relaxing stay in Vancouver for the past two weeks. I managed to get away up to the cabin for two nights. That was a great trip. The trail is really over-grown. No wild animals to be seen, but the bears got into my equipment again. They didn't damage very much because they already did that last November. It is making me re-think how I hide necessary equipment - not from the bears - but from people. Nobody had been in the cabin, from what I could tell, since the last visit which wasn't that long ago.

When I say relaxing what I really mean is having the opportunity to get a lot of work done without distraction.

The Biggest Buddha in the World

2009-09-07T10:17:00.000-07:00

I noticed a few days ago a friend of mine had linked a Youtube video to the Tricycle Blog. The video tried to capture the magnitude of the biggest Buddha in the world, something not easily done or often attempted since the original Pali stories of the Bhikshu flying to the limits of space trying to see the top of Shakyamuni's ushnisha, unsuccessfully I might add.

I on the other hand, unlike the pilgrims in the Youtube video, decided to approach the Buddha from below and experience the size from a distance, far out on the turbulent waters of the river, the meeting of three, also on a rainy day. Not many days are without rain on the eastward down hill slope of the Himalayas, the eastern extent of the Tibetan Plateau. (Click on the image).

The story of the origins of this giant Maitreya sculpture, in the article below, is just one of many different narratives. The one I like the best is about the two artists that were approached by the Emperor and asked to carve the statue and how one proceeded and the other did not...

The image above is from my travels in Eastern Tibet and the Chengdu area in the summer of 2004.

"The world’s largest stone carved Buddha is located in Leshan, China. This Giant Buddha (also called Dafo) is a 233 feet (71 meters) tall statue of a sitting Maitreya Buddha. This UNESCO World Heritage Site was carved in AD 713 to calm the rivers that run along the feet of Buddha." (Article).

See the full article about the World's Biggest Buddha.
Youtube Part 1
Youtube Part 2

Back to New York!!!!

2009-08-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

Well, my 2 weeks in beautiful B.C. is over. It feels like I spent half the time in VGH or St.Paul's. Such is life. I did manage to get away for two nights up to the cabin in the Okanagan. The weather was very hot. Swimming in the creek was definitely the highlight of the trip. We cooked outside with white gas. It was way too hot to use the cast iron stove. There is also an outdoor burning ban in British Columbia and I find that wood stoves can send up a lot of embers. I'll try and get back to the cabin in late September or early October. It is much more pleasant when the weather isn't so hot and the bugs are less numerous - black flies, horse flies, mosquitoes, wasps, hornets. You name it B.C.'s got it. Have you ever had a horse fly bite right through your blue jeans and draw blood?