India

Tomorrow I leave for India. Because of the time zones and international date line I won't actually arrive there until early Wednesday morning. The purpose of the journey is to attend an international translator's conference sponsored by Khyentse Rinpoche. Click on the link to see an old photo of Khyentse Rinpoche and me taken during the Lamdre Tsogshe teachings is Rajpur, India, back in 1975. Khyentse Rinpoche is on the far left, Sakya Tridzin Rinpoche is on the far right and I am in the middle. For those very few people that know this blog address and also care about what kind of trouble I get into I will try and keep everyone informed as often as I am able while traveling abroad.

The photo of me and the Bactrian camel is from last year when I was taking a break from lecturing in Mongolia.

Two New Sakya Publications

Two new publications in the WSTB series (Vienna Studies in
Tibetology and Buddhism).

WSTB No. 68. Jowita Kramer "A noble Abbot from Mustang. Life and
Works of Glo-bo mKhan-chen (1456-1532)" (2008) 334p. ISBN:
978-3-902501-07-3. EUR 26.00

WSTB No. 69. Pascale Hugon "Trésors du raisonnement. Sa skya
Pan dita et ses prédécesseurs tibétains sur les modes de
fonctionnement de la pensée et le fondement de l'inférence" Édition et
traduction annotée du quatrième chapitre et d'une section du dixième
chapitre du Tshad ma rigs pa'i gter (2008) 2 vols; 854p. ISBN:
978-3-902501-08-0. EUR 52.50

Orders can be placed at the WSTB website.

Profile of the Web Author

A new profile has been added to the Himalayan Art Resources website. For those of you who care to know where I disappeared to for the last 10 years then look to the HAR website for a profile. It was primarily written by James Shaheen of the Buddhist Tricycle Magazine.

We are trying to give the HAR website and staff a higher profile so that we can be in a better position for grant applications and fund-raising. We live in difficult financial times and New York, the epicenter of North American finance, seems to be hit harder than other places. This is probably because it is also the center of financial corruption. On a positive note, New York is also the museum capital of the world and probably has more Himalayan and Tibetan art than any other city in the Western world. See the New York City Outline Page.

Christmas Morning

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

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

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

Winter Wonderland in Vancouver

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

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

Additions & Updates

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

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

Back To New York

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