Dang Zang

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is in Sydney. It is important that I begin by saying that I have huge respect for HHDL (as we know him on the net). I have seen him a few times, such as in Coventry Cathedral or in Hamburg, where he gave a number of teachings and empowerments that I attended. Now it is not, I think, that I have seen him so much that I have become jaded, but the enormous circus that surrounds him, at least in Australia, leaves me simply cold and uninterested.

A few months ago, for instance, I received e-mails containing a special offer: for a price of less than $150 I could attend a “Peace Through Justice Nobel Peace Prize Breakfast” with HHDL, billed as “this visit’s most intimate public audience”, with no more than 1440 guests.

Oh yes, now I remember why I’m not excited.

Whatever your prayer, now is a good time to say it.

Nepal – I would almost say my favourite country – has not stopped this primitive, superstious slaughter. The estimate is that 500,000 animals are being sacrificed. The description is that the process, even as animal slaughter goes, is slow and cruel.

Oh, what bad karma this will bring on that poor place! Pray for the animals, pray for the country that allows it, pray for the fools who participate!

You can learn more at Tibetan Volunteers for Animals, or you can search for Gadhimai.

I run three blogs. None of them is wildly active. Some of the posts have received a few comments – thanks for the interest!

Until now I simply had a system in which unknown posters have to have their first post approved by me. Once I have approved a post from you, you are then able to post without further checks. This works automatically, it’s simple and easy.  So far I’ve only had one human idiot whose posts I rejected.

It’s the non-human idiots that are the problem; every day I have to mark a large number of spam posts as such, and then delete them. It is to be believed that the vast majority of these – perhaps all – are machine-generated: spambots! I’ve therefore just added a “captcha” system. Most readers will be familiar with this kind of thing – you have to recognize an oddly written sequence of letters or numbers, perhaps a word. This is very hard to program a machine to do, so mostly only humans will get past.

I think I have set it so that it is only if you are an unknown user that this will appear. Like the freedom to add messages without me having to check them that known users, with a history of at least one approved comment, already have, it’s only the first time that you should have to face this small hurdle. If you have any problems with it – please let me know!

Well it seems clear from a number of sources that the wheels are turning and the plan developing. Wonderful. So much for the scare story that went round a few months ago about even tighter restrictions on his movements.

Not that I’m likely to be there – but I rejoice in your merit, Europe!

I remain uncertain about “Biff Painter“.

I half expected him to ignore my query, but I got a clearish answer:

I first learned Gtumo as a Daoist inner heat practice from Li, Long Dao of Sichuan then later from Lama Trangu Rinpoche the Tibetan version of Gtumo practice, Medicine Buddha meditations and Mantra and Chod Ritual. This took place in various locations beginning with his visit to my school many, many years ago. I am afraid I was a very poor student.

And we see that he really did meet Thrangu Rinpoche once at least:

Bit by bit the project of making a basic catalogue of my Buddhist library is moving forwards – one bookcase is now done!

That’s 207 books so far. But have they done me any good?

Last Friday we went to see a “general” talk given by Lama Tsering (look under “Lamas” at Odsal Ling).

At first I thought she was a bit school-marmish and sugar-coated. I soon realized I was entirely wrong, and ended up very impressed indeed. Not at all sugar coated, very direct, clear, honest – she really threw a light on the human condition.