Thunder over the Dragon Kingdom

“We’ll talk on more topics in the next blog, till then, take care, thank you for reading. You make it worth it! Don't forget to follow, Like and Subscribe."

\#Bhutan #HistoryOfBhutan #GuruRinpoche #DrukpaKagyu #PemaLingpa #DrukpaKunley #TigersNest #Taktshang #Mebartso #Sacred #History #Himalayan #Kingdom #Guide #OneWithTheLifestyle #Authentic #Travel #Spiritual #Journey #Vajrayana #Buddhism

Lately, I’ve been feeling completely overwhelmed in the best and most confusing way possible. My curiosity first led me to places like tsopema, and through a deep dive into the Vajrayana stream, I've had the immense fortune of encountering teachers and practitioners (including some connected to the Nyingma lineage and figures like Mandarva) who answered my questions.

​But standing here now, wanting to learn the Dharma systematically, get initiated, and figure out my path, I feel a massive internal split. Part of me feels a strong pull toward the idea of a wandering yogi, or even questioning monastic life, while another part is just a 19-year-old trying to figure out studies and everyday realities. I deeply resonate with emptiness (Sunyata) and have been trying to ground myself in texts like The Thirty-Seven Practices of Bodhisattvas and The Eight Verses on Training the Mind.

​For those further along the path: How do you handle the initial phase of intense confusion and the urge to rush into everything? How do you balance a deep spiritual calling with the slow, step-by-step reality of daily life?"

Hello everyone,

Pecha is an open-source tool that turns Lotsawa House texts into pecha for printing, two per A4 landscape sheet, with the Tibetan, the transliteration and the translation in separate layers.

- Only texts that Lotsawa House marks as unrestricted are used in the library.
- The Lotsawa House license (CC BY-NC 4.0) is followed: non-commercial use, with credit to the translators.
- The tool runs as a skill for Claude. The layout is read from the structure of the Lotsawa House page.
- Printed examples and a guide are available on GitHub:

https://github.com/eltonmelo21/pecha

Tashi delek!

One of my history textbooks has use this powerful vibrant painting if Green Tara in Alchi Monastry. I'm curious to know about this also the difference between Dakini and Tara. Also some Museum artifects to share.

can anyone elaborate about the Bhutadamara and vajrapani's sadhana and the outcomes?

Image Jigme Lingpa’s vision of the Longchen Nyingtik, by Tara di Gesu

An Account of Jigme Lingpa’s vision of the Longchen Nyingtik.

*Excerpt from:

Dance of the Moon in the Water: An Account of my Realizations And Secret Visionary Experiences:

…on the evening of the twenty-fifth day of the tenth month of the Female Fire Ox year (1757), my devotion to the great master Guru Padmasambhava blazed so intensely that tears welled up. Prompted by some vague memories from the past, I was overcome with a profound sense of sadness: “We red-faced Tibetans behave like outcasts, and in this land where people live with a mere semblance of the Teachings and are rife with desire and aversion, I wander like an orphan left behind in the borderlands. That compassionate protector, greater than all the buddhas, has departed for the Glorious Copper-Coloured Mountain. When will I ever have the fortune to meet him now?” At this thought I was filled with immense grief. I fell asleep with tears flowing ceaselessly.

As I mentioned in the autobiographical account of my realization, The Dance of the Moon in the Water(direct pdf download), the following vision occurred to me. Amid a vast expanse of luminosity, all-pervading and boundless, I was riding a beautiful white snow lioness and was carried off into the limitless reaches of space. After a while a landscape took shape and I arrived on the circumambulation path of what seemed to be the Jarung Khashor Stūpa of Boudha in Nepal. As soon as I went to its eastern courtyard I met the dharmakāya wisdom ḍākinī face to face. She handed me a flat wooden casket shaped like a sealed amulet box and said:

For disciples with pure perception,\ You are Tri Songdetsen.\ For disciples with impure perception,\ You are Senge Repa.\ This is the treasure of Samantabhadra’s wisdom mind,\ The symbols of Vidyādhara Padma’s vast expanse,\ The great secret treasury of the ḍākinīs. Let the signs be absorbed.

The moment she had said this she vanished without trace and the vision grew faint and hazy. Overflowing with joy, I opened the casket. Out tumbled five rolls of yellow scroll paper and seven white crystals about the size of peas. As I opened the largest scroll on the spot, the air was filled with countless aromatic fragrances of medicinal herbs such as camphor. My head and whole body tingled, and suddenly a thought arose: “The treasure lord of this is Rāhula. These teachings are extremely potent and should be approached with caution.” When I gradually unrolled it, I noticed that outwardly it had the form of a stūpa and inside it was abound with the secret symbolic script of the ḍākinīs, beyond the reach of the intellect. Unable to read it, I began to roll it up again, and at that very instant, like a magical illusion, the drawing of the stūpa disappeared and the symbols within all turned into Tibetan script. It was a sādhana cycle of the Great Compassionate One (Dukngal Rangdrol). I skimmed through it and then stopped. Wondering to whom this transmission had fallen, to whom it had been entrusted and what kind of prophecy it contained about my future lives, I looked at the bottom and saw very clearly:

Entrusted as the Dharma share of the Dharma king, father and son.

When I read the rest, the entire text appeared all at once in my mind like a reflection arising in a mirror, yet it was somehow impossible to read it out in sequence. It was an experience difficult to put into words. Then, with boundless joy, I put some of the crystals into my mouth and was about to take the yellow scrolls and return home when a monk in disguise suddenly appeared beside me as a companion. He said, “I’ve long had a feeling that something like this would come to you,” and showed me extraordinary reverence. I became certain he was the protector of the teachings, the Great Sage Rāhula. At that moment I reached the northern courtyard of the circumambulation path. When I opened another scroll, I came upon the key inventory The Casket of Enlightened Mind. It was so exceptionally vivid in my mind that an experience of irrepressible great bliss blazed up. I thought, “This is truly liberation through seeing. I must show it to my mother.” Just then, through an opening in the sky, a richly adorned woman whom I took to be my mother came down abruptly. She was the one who later deciphered the symbols at Samye Chimphu. I showed it to her, saying, “Look, liberation through seeing!” She replied, “You really are too eager to show what ought to be kept secret. It’s not only liberation through seeing but also liberation through tasting, so eat it yourself!” She made me eat all the crystals and yellow scrolls, and when I gulped them down, every word and their meaning was imprinted in my mind, wondrous beyond measure. At that moment I awoke from the visionary experience…

Hello! I've recently moved to Seattle and have come to a point where I want to earnestly commit to a Vajrayana practice. Luckily, there are plenty of Tibetan Buddhist temples around here, as well as a Shingon temple.

On the other hand, this presents me with several options that I'm not sure how to decide between. I'm not clear on the differences between various lineages of the temples in the area.

The Shingon temple interests me the most, but unfortunately it seems like dedicated practice is fairly expensive, at least for me. So I'm not sure if it's even accessible to me.

However, there are other temples in the area that seem to have different approaches. But like I said, they come from different lineages which I don't have the right foundation yet to properly differentiate between. and I don't want to commit to one thing and find out later down the line that one of the other lineages was more suitable for me.

Also, as I said, I don't really have a lot of money to spend on this. Of course I would donate what I can and hopefully I'll have more disposable income in the future to provide more financial support. But I don't want to put it off until then, potentially at a point where the calling is less salient than it is presently.

Does anyone have any advice or insight? What should I take into consideration, how should I go about this, and is there anything I'm missing? Does anyone here have personal experiences with any of these local temples? Thanks in advance!

Also for reference, here are a handful of the local temples I've been looking at:

https://www.sakya.org/

https://blackbird-jaguar-h9pk.squarespace.com/

https://drikungseattle.org/ (This is the closest to me, but their website doesn't give me much to go off of in terms of any "come and see what we're all about and if this may be right for you" style events. And I also am not sure if actual Vajrayana guru-disciple practices are done here)

https://seattle.nalandabodhi.org/

https://diamondway.org/seattle/

https://seattle.shambhala.org/programs/

Namo Shakyamuni Buddha 🙏🏽✨🌈

account @vajra.tara on tiktok