Holidays and Holy Days

Tuesday was March 10th - a Tibetan Holiday. Wednesday was Holi - an Indian holiday. Thursday is Tibetan Women's day - a holiday again. It can be very hard to see people here when they have so many holidays. Yesterday I ate lunch in one of my favourite restaurants in the Defense Colony. Sagar, they specialize in vegetarian South Indian food. The obligatory and necessary nap was soon to follow. Today I move to a central Delhi hotel and meet up with the main conference group. Jamyang Lekdrub's wife arrives from Mysore today and then they travel back to Manduwalla tomorrow.

I can't say that it will be sad leaving Majnukatilla. I have many friends here but it is so dirty, smelly and with lots of mosquitoes. The food is certainly affordable and the guest houses are reasonable to the point of being down right cheap. When I first came to India in the 1970s the $ was worth about 10 rupees. Now the $ is worth over 50 rupees. It is 5 rupees a minute to call Canada or the States. What does Verizon charge for overseas calls?

Sunny, Windy & Dusty

Dirty, windy, dusty, mosquitoes, smelly, but still preferrable to elsewhere. I have met so many people today that I know from the past that I can't keep them all straight. I couldn't keep them all straight in the past either. Slowly plans are being made, the conference topics are becoming clear, and the invitations to visit various places and spend time with specific people are starting to arrive. Delhi is such a bustling crossroads of people and activities. If you want to meet somebody then you just have to pick a spot and sit. At some point everybody will walk past.

Arrived in New Delhi

It is a bright warm sunny day here in New Delhi. I have made contact with everybody I need to contact and everything is proceeding as smoothly as possible for India. I have already run into several people I knew from nearly forty years ago. I am staying in Manjukatela but move on Friday to a more central hotel closer to the main group of translators. On Saturday we meet with the Gyalwa Karmapa before leaving for Bir and the beginning of the one week conference. The morning has been spent talking to old friends and discussing art and looking at many paintings some of which were painted by the uncle of my friend Jamyang Lekdrub. I will try and document as many traditional paintings by known artists as possible.

Hanging Out In The Hong Kong Airport

Well, the 14 hour flight is over and I have a 3 hour gap here in Hong Kong before I get onto the 4 hour flight to Delhi. The Business Class Lounge is a lot bigger here than in New York. They have two bar/restaurants (free) along with showers, internet and a secret door that leads to the First Class Lounge. I have some e-mails to write but that will probably go much easier with a glass of red wine.

The picture above is of my friend Jamyang Lekdrub. He and I were monks together back in the 70s in Rajpur India. This photo is of the newly built Ngor Ewam Monastery in Tibet. In 2007 JL and I traveled to Ngor, Jonang, Bodong, Narthang, Gongkar Chode, and then spent a week at Sakya Monatery, Tibet. The reason for showing this picture is because he is picking me up at the Delhi airport at 2:00 am in the morning. Now that's a friend.

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.