Vancouver Bound for American Thanksgiving

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday Night and the Makye Ami Restaurant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!!!

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

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!!!!

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?

Vancouver Bound!

It is time again to return to Vancouver. One can only stay away so long. I haven't been back since May. New York has been busy with many new projects from earlier in the year coming to completion and friends and colleagues leaving town for new adventures, employment, or school of one sort or another.

The HAR website has been a flurry of activity with the new sets gifs and maps of Central Tibet along with so many new outlines, thematic subject sets and of course NEW collections. It is time to sit back and take in a panoramic view of what there is. What there is that has been accomplished, what is working and is not working, and what is in the queue to be uploaded next. Did I forget to mention the new Mandala Technical Glossary?

With all of that said, the SRG has floundered for several months and is in need of some serious attention and content uploading. I think that will be possible in the next couple of weeks. I have been doing a lot of work on Virupa recently based on a tremendous amount of work in the 80s and early 90s. Some of this will go up on SRG and the rest will stay in an unpublished manuscript for the time being. Hopefully not too long.

Back in New York......

They say it snowed in New York this morning, April 8th, in April! That's a far cry from the 90 degree weather in Delhi. I do prefer the snow rather than the Delhi heat with the dust, dirt and bugs. Arrived back in NY just after 1:00 p.m. today and cleared customs and the Delhi-like taxi ride into Manhattan around 3:00. A good friend told me about a natural (yea right!) sleep regulator that is good for jet lag and adjusting to time changes - melatonin. It is available from any health food store. Well it seems to work, not always, but often enough. It helps. Take it with caution. It appears to effect people differently. I have never taken more than two small capsules once in a 24 hour period just prior to sleep.

Thursday Morning: Well, it doesn't all seem quite like a dream just yet, although it was a very full trip with many meetings. A lot was accomplished and it is now time to try and bring many of the discussions into reality. Off to the office after a small stop at my favourite Belgian breakfast restaurant.......

Leaving Delhi & the Hong Kong Airport Lounge

The rest of Tuesday went as planned and we left for the airport at 7:30 with our favourite driver. Delhi can be a confusing city. Sometimes it is best to hire a driver to take you around in your own car, especially at night. The airport was a little frantic and the passengers boarded buses to get out to the plane. There was no reason offered for this lack of a modern ramp side gate. At the gate I was given an upgrade to Business Class. On an older plane it doesn't always make that much difference. There are three Cathay Pacific Business Class lounges in the Hong Kong airport. All of them have free food, wi-fi, showers and more.

The image above is of the Yamuna River running behind the Tara Guest House in Majnukatilla, New Delhi.

Delhi & Prof. Lokesh Chandra

It has really warmed up here in Delhi. The dust and smells have also increased. You simply cannot walk with your mouth open or you will literally be feasting on luscious fat flies.

Yesterday I had a very long and successful meeting at Tibet House. I finally had to say that I needed to go. I was tired and mentally worn out. After that the three of us, Tsedor and Jamyang Lekdrub, went to Cannought Place and found a a restaurant named Becor's. It is primarily Thai and Chinese cuisine. One of the juniour chefs is the nephew of my hosts and travelling companions. The food was very good and I recommend the restaurant to anyone travelling to Delhi.

Last night was probably my worst night in India. I had become tired during the day because of the heat and also I think because of a slight salt deficiency. I had a heat fever throughout the night and worse, the mosqitoe repellent that plugs into the electrical outlet did'nt work. It could be that the chemical chip was old, but that wasn't the worst. Sometime after 2:00 a.m. my right arm was attacked by bed bugs. In the Tibetan language these creatures are called 'dre shig' which means demon lice. They are really awful and itch like hell. Generally by morning the itching stops unlike the milder mosquitoes bites.

This morning, Tuesday, we had breakfast at 8:00 and then left at 9:00 with a driver to go to my last appointment with Prof. Lokesh Chandra. We had a very good time. The uncle of my two companions was hired in the sixties to re-draw many of the block print images published by Raghu Vira (the father of Lokesh Chandra).

Saujanya Books has a new outlet in Majnukatilla. I spent some time with the sisters that own the Saujanya book shops and purchased a recently published set of the Collected Works of Dagchen Kunga Lodro. He is one of my favourite authors and many of my translations from Tibetan are of the texts of Kunga Lodro.

I'm off to pack and tidy up some loose ends like hotel bill, etc. If I'm lucky I can get a short nap in as well. We leave for the airport at 7:30 and my flight is at 11:30 p.m. The Hong Kong Airport offers free wi-fi throughout the complex so I will e-mail from there.

New Delhi & Tibet House

It is Monday morning in Delhi. The sun climbed through a dusty haze which will probably stay for the day unless a big wind comes up and sends the dust to the east. I had a relatively mosquito free night although it was warm even with all the windows open and the overhead fan spinning. We are off in a few minutes to go to Tibet House. If we have good luck we will even be able to arrange my second meeting for the afternoon. Dinner is already planned with my good friend Pema Wangchuk. He is Bhutanese and always brings a fresh perspective to Indian and Tibetan cultural life. You are guaranteed to be laughing at his irreverent observations of the various quirks and customs he observes.

Pema Wangchuk and I spent August 2004 together in Eastern Tibet documenting all of the art of an entire monastery. For relaxation we hiked the high mountains above 14,000 feet that rose behind the monastery. We were looking for caves and special places associated with Tertons and Padmasambhava. We found one cave. We stopped for a little while to let our clothes dry after a torrential mountain down pour caught us out in the open. I had to scramble to keep my camera equipment dry. (The image above which I had already posted earlier is from that rainy trek in 2004 with Pema Wangchuk).

Anyway, off to Tibet House......

The Day That I Ate Delhi

Arrived in Delhi after 7 and a half hours on the road. It was a good ride until we hit the northern edge of Delhi and there were two large traffic jams. Each took one hour to get through. What about that wind and dust storm? That was something else. At times you could only see about a 100 yards. I swear there were sand dunes forming vertically on the sides of cars and then just as quickly as they appeared they were blown away by another gust. It is safe to say that this is the day that I ate Delhi. Aside from these minor inconveniences, and clearing the dust out of the throat, it is important to know that horses, cows and buffaloes are the kings and queens of the road here. They can block traffic anywhere they please.

After that and during lunch we learned that there is a new short cut through Sahrahanpur that cuts the trip down to three hours. We asked the directions but were told you had to know the road. That was a lot of help. Jamyang Lekdrub will look for the short cut on his way back to Dehradun later this week. I had lunch with the younger Dungsay Rinpoche yesterday and he is now staying in the same guest house as us. In fact the guest house in owned by the Drolma Palace of Sakya and it is where the Lamas usually stay when passing through Delhi. It is called the Tara Guest House. The Ngorpas also have a guest house as does the Chu Shi Gang Drug and many other Tibetan religious and cultural organizations. The area is in the extreme north of Delhi and called Majnukatilla. The Indians tend to stay away because it was once a cemetery of sorts, rather a charnel ground. It also figures very much into a Muslim love story akin to Romeo and Julliet. Needless to say it didn't end well. The Hindus especially never populated this area. It borders on a tributary of some river which I don't know the name of. Mosquitoes are the largest cash crop. Dirt and bad smells are the runners up.

I will be meeting again with Dungsay Rinpoche later in the day and then plan a quite dinner with Tsedor and Jamyang Lekdrub. The meetings for tomorrow and Tuesday I will also set up by phone later in the day after a nice long nap.

Leaving Dehradun & Manduwalla

I had a wonderful time today with Sakya Trizin and the two Dungsay Rinpoches. We spent a lot of time talking about art and some other subjects. After that I left Rajpur and went back to Manduwalla to meet with Luding Khenchen Rinpoche. This meeting also went very well but it was a social call to meet one of my old teachers. We did not talk about art, only of the past and when we would meet again. He is basically retired now and travels very little.

We are up at 5:00 tomorrow morning to be on the road for 6:00 to try and beat the traffic, heat and dust, so that we can be in New Delhi early to enjoy the heat and mosquitoes. Apparently the temperature has been hovering around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Jamyang Lekdrub's mother insists that I get up early enough to go to the local stupa (see earlier blog about Gega Lama) and say prayers to the Padmasambhava statue inside before leaving. Tsedor, JL's older brother, has already booked rooms for us at the Tara Guest House in Majnukatilla. He is there now attending an annual Chu Shi Gang Drug meeting (Four Rivers Six Mountains). I have mentioned Tsedor before, he used to be a well known painter and his photograph along with his teacher (uncle) are in David Jackson's publication on Tibetan Tangka Painting, or some such title.

After two days of Delhi I may be desperate to get onto an air conditioned airplane. I have two appointments to keep and people to see. Delhi is a big place and I may not be able to do both in the same day but I will try and do as much as possible. There are also some bookstores worth checking out.

The image above is of the family dog named Jangsem. We became good friends during my stay in Manduwalla. During the day he is chained up so that he won't bite the Nepalese workers that make the vajras and bells, etc., and at night he is allowed to run free in the compound.

Dolanji Bon Centre

This is an image taken from across the valley to the south looking back from the road to the Bon complex. You can see just how big it is. There are still many buildings that can't be seen in this photo such as the Ani Gompa which is also on our south side of the valley from where the picture is taken.

Morning Images From Dolanji

These are some early morning images taken by Jamyang Lekdrub from the lower patio of the Bon Guest House in Dolanji, Solan. The morning mist and clouds are reminiscent of Chinese style landscape paintings.

Too Many Places to See!

The top image is looking across at the back of Sakya Center in Rajpur. The photo is taken from the road that leads to the Sakya Nunnery in the Dekyiling community. It is not more than an hour walk from Rajpur and 10 minute drive. The image in the middle is of the new Ngor Tantric College built in Manduwalla under the supervision of Luding Khen Rinpoche. And the bottom image is of the famous Drigung Songtsen Library. Tenzin D. and I visited the library when we were in India in 2005. I will not have an opportunity to visit this time, nor will I be able to visit Sakya College and Khenpo Gyatso, Gongkar Chode, Sa-Magon Puruwalla, and a host of other sites. It would take at least a month in Dehradun with a serious schedule prepared to be able to see most of the sites. For the Sakya alone there are twelve or thirteen monasteries, colleges and retreat centres in the Dehradun area. The Hindu holy places of Rishikesh and Haradwar are also a short drive down the road. On Wednesday the Dalai Lama flew into the local airport and then spent the day in Haradwar with a famous Indian Sadhu. He then flew back to Dharamsala in the afternoon. One of my hosts had to be at the airport to officially welcome the Dalai Lama and give a formal greeting representing the Lingtsang community.

Looking at Art

My meeting with Sakya Trizin was postponed until tomorrow morning because of the lengthy preparations for the seven day Vajra Nairatmya ritual at Sakya Center, Rajpur. That however didn't postpone my lecture this afternoon. It was strange to be lecturing to over 120 monks in a place that I used to call home. I have lectured to monks before but not that many. Their ages ranged from kids to adults. I had to vary the lecture so as to include everybody equally as the targeted audience.

The first image above is of Avalokliteshvara belonging to the RMA. The second image below is from a set of nine paintings sometimes thought to have been originally created or commissioned by Situ Panchen Chokyi Jungne. The painting is in a Chinese style although almost any painting associated with Situ Panchen is incorrectly said to be in a Karma Gadri style. There are many reasons for this, too many to discuss at this time. This second painting is a recent Tibetan copy of an older painting located at a monastery in Eastern Tibet. The only other known painting (photographed) like this is in the Rubin Museum of Art (see first image). Don and I purchased it specifically for the Situ Panchen exhibition which is currently showing. It will be interesting to carefully compare the two images.

The lower painting is of the 5th Khamtrul Rinpoche and done in a Cho Tashi style from Khampa Gar in Eastern Tibet. (Cho Tashi was a famous Drugpa Kagyu artist from the 17th/18th century). The colours are rich, thick, applied heavily and the composition makes full use of the entire canvas unlike the paintings from Palpung that are called Karma Gadri style.

The Twenty-One Taras of Jowo Atisha

Some say there were 10,000 people but I think that is exaggerated. There were easily 5 to 7,000, but my number could be off as well. Today was the day of the Tara initiation at the Sakya Nunnery which turned out to be a shortened version of the Twenty-one Taras of Atisha. We arrived at 8:00 in the morning and finally left the Nunnery at 2:00. It was another long day and it was only half over. I returned to Manduwalla and napped. The weather has gotten a lot warmer in the last couple of days.

I will be busy tonight preparing CDs of images to present to Sakya Trizin tomorrow morning. I have also been asked to lecture tomorrow afternoon at Sakya Center. The topic will be Sakya History and Art.

The painting above is from a set of Tangkas depicting all twenty-one Taras in groups of three. This is the only known painting from this set of approximately nine paintings. I only know of one other set in this configuration and again it is only a single painting in the Rubin personal collection.

Gega Lama, Bhutanese Artists & Kalachakra

Awoke to a beautiful morning with clear blue sky and fresh air. JL and I went to the local Kagyu Monastery in the Lingtsang Settlement. It was originally funded by Lama Tsewang Gyurme of Vancouver, B.C. who is also Lingtsang. A large stupa stands to the west side of the main temple, designed and built by the famous Karma Gadri Lingtsang artist Gega Lama. The murals inside the temple were done by Bhutanese artists and the temple although originally associated with Lama Kalu Rinpoche now is a branch monastery associated with Situ Rinpoche. (Images to follow).

The Kalachakra initiation began at 2:30 with a short speech by Sakya Trizin followed by a lengthy history lesson on the various traditions and source lineages of Kalachakra. It was relatively easy to follow the general points because I was familiar with the subject matter but it was still all in Tibetan and the subtlety was lost on me. It appears that the empowerment was originally requested over a year ago by Khenpo Gyatso the head of Sakya College. Sakya Trizin decided to give the empowerment at this time as part of the ceremonies for the opening of the Nunnery. The 'tagon' began at 4:00 and ended at 5:30. There were easily 3000 plus people in attendance. Six hundred were in the temple with a few lay Tibetans and a small handful of westerners not more than 10 or so. The majority were monks from Sakya College and Sakya Centre. The lay people and over flow monks and nuns filled all of the courtyard and completely filled the walkways surrounding the temple and the balconies of the nun's quarters that over look the courtyard.

Khenpo Gyatso looks almost as he did 35 years ago. We talked briefly and joked about the passing years, his spoken English and my Tibetan. Both were not very good. Yontan Zangpo, JL's cousin, is virtually identical to the last time I saw him in July of 1981. The last time I was in India he was either in Singapore or Taiwan. He traveled in the car with us back to Manduwalla so he could spend some time with his elderly mother. His duties for the morning at the monastery were canceled because of the Kalachakra empowerment.

ST will give a follow up Green Tara initiation of Thursday which we will also attend because JL's mother wants to go. ST will then return to the palace (podrang) in Rajpur a 15 minute drive from the nunnery where he has been staying for the duration of the opening ceremonies.

I am happy to say that the most attentive boy at the empowerment was Ani Rinpoche's son who is about 10 or 11 years old. During the 3 1/2 hours he never really took his eyes off of ST nor did he fall asleep or fidget. He also new all the prayers at the beginning, during the initiation, mang ja prayers, and the dedications at the end. I will let his grandmother, Dagmo Kusho, know how good he was so that she can be even more proud of him than I was. Zaya Rinpoche's son was also there and well representing the family but he has not yet had the same training as his younger cousin.

Kalachakra Initiation & Old Friends

I had a very good meeting at the new Sakya Nunnery with Sakya Trizin Rinpoche yesterday. We discussed art, Bon, Mongolia and Kalachakra, and agreed to meet again before I leave for Delhi. Today is the first day, 'ta gon', of the two day Kalachakra empowerment. It is an introduction or preparation prior to entering the mandala which takes place on the second day of the empowerment and called the 'ngo shi'. For more information see the Kalachakra Outline Page and the excellent Kalachakra website of Edward Henning.

Each day I meet old friends, some I have not seen for 35 years while others I have seen more recently in Tibet, China, the USA or Europe. Today undoubtedly I will see many people. I expect several thousand people to attend the empowerment at the new Nunnery (probably the largest Tibetan nunnery in South Asia with approximately 300 nuns).

The image above is a depiction of the world according to the Buddhist Abhidharma system. The world is flat with four principal continents in the four directions with a large mountain in the middle - the flat earth theory. The Buddhist Kalachakra Tantra system on the other hand presents a round earth theory long before the Italian Galileo came up with his ideas.

Bon Monasteries & Temples

Sunday (today is Monday) was spent looking at Bon paintings and murals along with traveling the short distance from Manduwalla to Lama Tenzin Wangyal's (Ligmincha Institute, Charlottesville, Virginia) new retreat (institute) land on the north slope of the Dun valley. The land is very large with some existing cottages and many fruit trees. A single Bon monk lives there as caretaker.

I am eating way to much and not doing enough exercise. Tomorrow and Wednesday I will be in the Tibetan settlement of Dekyiling during the day sitting for hours and hours. Sakya Trizin is giving a two day initiation on the practice of Kalachakra which I will attend. I need to find a cushion to take in case there are none in Dekyiling. The initiation is part of the ceremonies accompanying the official opening of the new temple at the Sakya Nunnery. There will probably be several thousand people in attendance. I don't usually like to do scenes but his way I will be able to see a lot more friends and acquaintances in a relatively short period of time.

I have accumulated so many images of paintings that I need to spend more time cataloguing them into custom folders. I am concentrating on collecting images of tangkas and murals from known artists who claim to paint in well-known styles. Yes, this is a kind of a set up. The key phrase is well-known.

I am already starting to think about which day to leave Dehradun and return to Delhi. My flight is next Tuesday night. I have some business in Delhi to attend to prior to leaving. Probably I will leave Dehradun Saturday or Sunday and on Monday and Tuesday finish everything that is outstanding in Delhi.

The image above is of Jake Dalton, Paldor and me in a small seminar discussion during the conference. The photo was taken by David Kittlestrom of Wisdom Publications. I have also added more images to the previous blog entries.

Clement Town & The New Mindroling Monastery

I spent the day at Mindroling Monastery photographing the paintings and murals of the famous Karshodpa artist Pema Konchog. His photograph and a photograph of JL's elder brother Tsedor appear in David Jackson's first book on Tangka painting. It is JL and Tsedor's home that I am staying in at Manduwala. Everybody in the family is an artist although they have all given up art as a profession. Only JL still does some painting. He was the personal artist to a Gelug lama in Taiwan for nearly ten years. Although a Gelug Tulku the lama maintained that Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro was his principal teacher.

I have added images to some of the previous entries where images were lacking such as the group photo of all the conference participants and the group photo with the Dalai Lama. The kids that randomly appear with me on various entries all belong to JL. The youngest boy is missing from the photos because he goes to a private school in Mussorie. We will try to visit him in the next week or so.

Manduwalla, Ling Tsang Settlement, Dehradun

We awoke to a beautiful sunny day in Dolanji, ate a simple breakfast and then proceeded to see Menri Trizin. There were many people, both monks and lay, along with hordes of small school children all massed in the temple courtyard awaiting Menri Trizin's entry into into the main shrine hall to bestow the initiation of Mawe Sengge, a Bon wisdom deity. We were able to see Rinpoche before the ceremony. It was quite a surprise because none of the monks had told him of our arrival. It really was a surprise. We talked for about 40 minutes and then said our goodbyes and watched Rinpoche as he made his way towards the temple wearing his traditional lotus hat and led by two gyaling playing monks dressed in their best and wearing ceremonial hats.

Geshe Samdrub showed us the completed library which was still under construction the last time Tenzin D. and I were at Dolanji. It is now completed and officially opened during a large ceremony in 2007 headed by the Dalai Lama and retinue who stayed in Dolanji for several days. The most interesting thing about the library was the addition of a Bon museum. I took many photos and walked slowly past each exhibit taking note of things that I had only heard about but never seen before. The most interesting was probably the display of the 'jutig' (knot) divination system along with a rare text of explanation. I took photos. There were also several large thread-cross (namkha) exhibits.

We left Dolanji at approximately 12:00 noon and made our way via the short cut and back roads to Ponta Sahab, the place where Guru Gobind Singh's three sons were killed in battle some hundreds of years ago sparking the militarization of the Sikh religion. This is also the place were I used to swim; always mindful to avoid the poisonous water snakes. It was a beautiful drive through the pine forests. We stopped for a light lunch at a roadside restaurant and had some spicy Indian food. Finally at 5:00 we turned into the driveway of JL's family home and were greeted by his elder brother, wife and mother. Two other brothers arrived later along with numerous other family members that I knew from India years ago, Lhasa, or Chengdu. Of the two younger brothers, both Nyingma Lamas now in Taiwan, I had met up with one in Majnujkatilla, Delhi, on his way back to Taiwan. He was very generous and paid for my hotel stay in Delhi prior to my journey to Bir for the Translator's Conference.

So far I have managed to remain vegetarian but that is likely to end here in the Tibetan settlement of Ling Tsang. Today is a rest day. I have also strained my back which I do about every 4 or 5 years. It is quite painful but should be fine in a day or so. While here I will be photographing some rare paintings and documenting the artists who created them. I may not have mentioned that JL and his family are all tangka painters, or rather used to be. Their uncle was a famous Karshodpa painter from Ling Tsang, Kham, Tibet. Photos of many of these people I have mentioned are in David Jackson's first book that discusses the techniques and materials of tangka painting.

Tomorrow I will pay my respects to the Ngor Lamas at Ngor Magon which is directly across the street from my bedroom; strangely enough so is the local Bon monastery which I will also visit and photograph. The head lama of this temple visited New York during the Bon exhibition.

I spent many hours removing viruses and updating the various software in this computer to make it usable. Hopefully I will be able to add some images to the Blog. This I will try later today.

By the way, it says Thursday at the top of the entry for this post. In fact the blog is set to New York time, or maybe even Chicago time, the location where the blog was first created. For the correct date as of where I am - add a day to that date. It is currently Friday at 12:20 and rapidly approaching the time for lunch.

On the Road to Mandi, Riwalser, Solan and Dolanji

It sounds a little like one of the "on the road" pictures of Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. Am I dating myself or am I dating all of you?

It was an early start this morning from Bir after a night of thunder claps and heavy rain both of which woke me at different times of the night. It continued to rain on and off throughout the day. We left at about 8:00 in the morning and headed for Mandi with the goal reaching Riwalser and the lake miraculously formed by Padmasambhava and Mandarava (Tso Pema). We arrived around 11:00 and proceeded to the nearest tea shop. That is what you do in India. From there we ascended the highest mountain over-looking the lake of 'Tso Pema' to the cave of Guru Dragpo and visited the shrine and the two main caves. We stopped to look down on the lake and take photos. It was cold and wet.

Returning to the town we circumambulated the lake in the car. Yes, a little lazy, but it was raining even heavier. Instead of renting a room in a guest house we decided to head directly towards Dolanji and figured we would arrive there arong 7:00 at night. We arrived closer to 8:00 and had some anxiety negotiating the difficult road in the dark that runs sixteen miles outside of Solan. There are many twists and turns as the road transformed from a nice two lane thourogh fare into a one lane paved road into a dirt track with mud and rock slides at regular intervals.

We arrived safely and promptly found my friend Geshe Sonam (he was one of two Bon monks that were present for two months during the RMA Bon exhibition) who whisked us away to get a hot meal and a quick catch up on all of the news. He also helped us get or bags into a vacant room at the guest house which was completely booked two days earlier and will be again in two days. Tenzin will be the only one to appreciate that the only rooms available were on the ground floor, or bottom, of the Bon Guest House. It could have been a sad story of 'no room in the inn' but then we're not Christians and there isn't a good Buddhist story that corresponds to that phrase, not even concerning Bon Guest Houses.

After visiting the Menri Tizin in the morning we will likely leave Dolanj around mid day tomorrow and travel to Manduwalla in the Dun Valley.

Drugpa Kagyu & Back at Deer Park for the Night

JL and I left Dharamsala a little after nine this morning. It was a pleasant drive along the road heading east back to Palampur. We turned off the road north heading into a forested area and then wound our way around some low hills and then on to the top of the hill where Dorzang Rinpoche is building a retreat center. Actually it seems that Drugu Chogyal Rinpoche is the one really building it but one must remember protocol and hierarchy.

The forest retreat comp[lex of many buildings and monks quarters is unfinished but magnificent. It is very clean with few people other than an occasional monk and then the Indian workers finishing the construction. It is in the middle of a pine forest with grass underfoot and clean dust free air. Drugu Chogyal met us out front of his residence. We spent two hours talking and then adjourned for lunch. None of us ate very much as the conversation continued over the formally prepared lunch table. We looked at an amazing assortment of paintings both actual and photographs. I managed to copy all of the important images and will return to New York with them and add them to the HAR website. Most are from the late 17th, early 18th century and painted by the great Drugpa Kagyu painter Cho Tashi. I took numerous pictures of the retreat center and surroundings.

Leaving Drugu Chogyal we proceeded directly to Tashi Jong and spent some time in the main temple again photographing paintings of the former Khamtrul Rinpoches. Again, these paintings were in the style of Cho Tashi if not by his very hand. After that we traveled the short distance to Bir and took a room at the Deer Park Institute for the night. This time JK and I were able to meet with his eldest son at the local TCV school and take some photos. On the return to Deer Park we stopped and visited Orgyan Tobgyal Rinpoche at his house that I call a palace. Many of you will remember him from the movie "The Cup" where he played the disciplinarian - the very stern head monk.

Darkness sets in very quickly in India; it could also be that there is a lack of street lighting. I will quickly finish this and then go and get something light to eat. The plan is to get up relatively early and head off towards Tso Pema. If we can get there in a reasonable time and see what we need to see then we will head south-east down to Simla. If that isn't reasonable then we will spend the night in Tso Pema and leave the next morning.

Leaving Dharamsala

It is 20 to 8 and and we just finished breakfast in this very good Kongpo restaurant. After a short walk JL is now going for a massage and I am again at the internet. Since arriving in India I have pretty much remained vegetarian. It is very easy to be vegetarian here and probably the best protection against stomach sickness. I don't know that it is so much that the meat is bad. It is more likely the case that the food preparation for the meat is not as clean as it should be and that is why some people end up with problems. I am not being overly cautious nor am I taking any chances. With health concerns in third world environments it is best to keep to a middle course rather than being extreme on one side or the other.

It is a beautiful morning here with bright sunshine and a clear sky. The mountains are a shimmering white with all the snow that arrived last Wednesday. The mountains rise straight up behind Dharamsala making for a magnificent sight. Anybody that has seen the Canadian Rockies in Banff or Jasper National Park will know what I mean. The snow is not likely to melt soon since it is still March and the really warm weather is yet to come.

Today is important for me as I will be meeting the Drugpa Kagyu Lama Drugu Chogyal Rinpoche at his monastery this side of Palampur. He and I have always met breifly over the past ten years in New York but I have never been to his monastery. I have been researching Latog and Khampa Gar style paintings for the last few years and he is the most knowledgeable expert in the world on these subjects. (See an example of this painting style - Namkha Palzang). I have a series of questions that I want to ask him and several theories that I want to present to him. With luck and enough time I also hope to see some of the art treasures in his monastery as well as in the settlement of Tashi Jong a few miles away. Tashi Jong is famous for the many tokdens that live in the hills above the settlement. Tokdens are Buddhist yogis and sadhus that keep their hair long and live an ascetic lifestyle.

Dharamsala, Last Night

The meeting with Tashi Tsering went better than I had hoped. I have so much information and he pointed me in so many positive directions for more research on the subjects we discussed. I also came away with some valuable texts and rare images. He now has ownership of my first born.

The LTWA went very well also. We have opened a channel of communications and will hopefully move slowly forward towards their participation on the HAR website.

I met up with Maura M. in the main bazaar of Dharamsala. She has been here for two weeks and leaves in five more days. I don't think I could handle that. JL and I had a nice dinner at the Kailash Hotel (Chu Shi Gang Drug). We leave early in the morning heading back to Palampur so as to meet Drugu Chogyal Rinpoche for lunch at his monastery.

Dharamsala, Day Two

Had a good sleep last night, I was in bed before 10:00 and didn't get up until 7:00. I must have needed the sleep. We ate an early dinner in the Tibet Hotel. The place looks like a typical dive but the food is very good. And as one Tibetan friend says "the chances are very good that you won't be sick from eating here." It is very cool at night. You definitely have to be dressed well. You can't sit outside in the open air cafes too long. The hotel has hot water and it is nice to bathe normally as opposed to pouring cold water over your head or luke warm at best. At Deer Park we didn't always have luke warm water. From Bir to Dharamsala it is only about 50 kilometers but because the roads are so narrow and windy, often single lane with single lane bridges, it takes over two hours to travel the distance. Strange westerners and wanna-be hippies fill the hill station of Dharamsala. Many of them dress like Indians or quasi-sadhus and yogis. I have meeting this morning and then another in the afternoon, otherwise my day is pretty well open. I will go and see the main temple of Dharamsala and a smaller temple for Kalachakra next door.

The mountains behind the hill station rise up sharply and are covered with snow from the big storm that came through last wednesday. The views of the valley a thousand feet below are very nice but I don't think I could find enough to do here in Dharamsala to spend more than a couple of days. The streets are incredibly narrow and aside from clothing and some books, most if not all the shops only sell junk - junk art, junk paintings, Tibetan singing bowls, and more junk. Many of the so-called Tibetan paintings are imported from Kathmandu and painted by Nepalese tourist artists. The open fields of Bir and the Dun Valley, pine forests and meadows, are more to my liking.

Dharamsala, Dalai Lama & Travels

I'm in Dharamsala with my friend Jamyang Lekdrub after spending the day in Bir looking at Temples and meeting old friends. We have a car which makes it very easy to get around. Saw the Dalai lama yesterday at a private meeting with the rest of the conference participants - if you can call that a private meeting. We had a group photo taken but I don't have a copy of that yet. I will post it here when I have it. Arrived back in Dharamsala this afternoon to visit my friends two kids that are in school here. He also has one in school in Bir and the fourth and youngest is in Musoorie because he especially wanted to learn English. I will stay in Dharamsala for two nights. I meet with Tashi Tsering, an important Tibetan historian, tomorrow morning and I then have a meeting with the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in the afternoon. We have to leave early on Tuesday morning to go back towards Palampur to have lunch and spend time with Drugu Chogyal Rinpoche (Drugpa Kagyu, Khampa Gar) at his monastery near Tashi Jong. He is one of the last of the Tibetan Lamas that understands painting and the various traditions. We will probably spend the night in Bir and then go up to Tso Pema the next day. I no longer have Wi-fi and am at the mercy of the Indian internet cafe. The Blog may be updated but it is unlikely that I will be posting too many images.