Himalaya village caught between culture and nature

"An ethnic community in Nepal's remotest Himalayan district, bordering Tibet, says it has been struggling to save its unique Buddhist culture from being uprooted by floods from a glacial lake.

The locals of Halji village in Humla district of western Nepal practise the Drikung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, which has an 11th-Century monastery at its heart.

They are very worried that the Rinchenling monastery - one of the oldest in Nepal and highly revered in Tibet - could be swept away or damaged by floods and mudslides caused by the outburst of a glacial lake on the mountain overlooking their village."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14620091

An architect looks at the Taj Mahal Legend

"If Shajahan did not build the Taj for the love of Mumtaz, then why did he want it? His love for Mumtaz was evidently a convenient subterfuge. He actually wanted the existing palace for himself. He appropriated it from Raja Jai Singh by making him an offer he could not refuse, the gift of other properties in exchange. He also acquired whatever was precious within the building including the immensely valuable gold railing.

By converting the complex into a sacred Moslem mausoleum he insured that the Hindus would never want it back. Shahjahan converted the residential quarters to the west of the main building to a mosque simply by modifying the interior of the west wall to create a mihrab niche. He added Islamic inscriptions around many doorways and entries to give the impression that the Taj had always been Islamic. Sure enough, the scholars have been silent or deceived ever since."

"The picturesque aesthetic was a way of seeing that emphasized the suitability of a scene to be included in a picture, that is, it was pictorially assimilable. This was the dominant aesthetic used in the colonies to not only portray the landscape, but to also change it. Hill station picture postcards show how this aesthetic was used to make "mountains" into "hills." They show us the aesthetic shifts that took place in order to create a "home away from home.""

http://tasveergharindia.net/cmsdesk/essay/102/

Vulture's Peak

"This is what Vulture's Peak looks like in Bihar state, India:"


http://buddhistgroup.livejournal.com/107804.html

India has a new symbol for the Rupee

"The Indian government approved a symbol for the rupee on Thursday after holding a nationwide design contest. It's a fusion of the Latin letter "R" with the ancient Devanagari Ra."

http://www.slate.com/id/2260617

India Re-Mapped: The Tibetan Geographies of Buddhist India

"Toni Huber's most recent scholarly contribution to Buddhist studies, especially the sub-genres of Tibetan pilgrimage and religious geography, makes a methodical foray into the heretofore underexplored contours of the Tibetan geographies of Buddhist India. Emerging from Huber's recognition that many Tibetan sacred spaces have explicit or implied links to India, his goal for the book project is ambitious: to trace the changing perspectives, border,s and maps of the Indian holy land from the Tibetan perspective from the age of ancient Tibetan empires to the present day. "

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=25320

Deploying the British Granny Cloud to tutor poor Indian classrooms over Skype

"This BBC video-clip describes the latest ingenious project from Sugata Mitra, an Indian-born professor at Newcastle University. You'll most likely know Mitra from his Hole in the Wall computers set into the walls of buildings in India's poorest slums. Mitra's new project uses the "UK Granny Cloud" -- a large group of British grannies who've agreed to volunteer an hour a week to tutor Indian classrooms over Skype video conferences -- to supplement education in Indian schools where there is a shortage of teachers. "

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/20/deploying-the-britis.html

Tibetans Protest China’s 60 Years of Occupation

"Dharamsala, July 13,2011: - Tibetans and supporters rallied from the main temple Tsuglakhang and gathered at TCV Day School in McLeod Ganj despite the intermittent rains to protest the Chinese government's planned propaganda celebration this week in Lhasa, Tibet. The celebration marks 60 years of Beijing's rule over Tibet. The commemoration comes as tensions remain high in eastern Tibet where daily protests continue to take place since mid-March and Chinese security forces are engaged in an intense security clampdown."

http://secrettibet.rsfblog.org/archive/2011/07/14/tibetans-protest-china-s-60-years-of-occupation.html

Dial-a-book : Indian Innovation

Relaxing into Meditation can now be ordered in India via the innovative dial-a-book-service.

"Dial-a-Book, as simple as it sounds is a service that let’s you order books over the phone. Dial-a-Book saves you from the hassles of going to various bookstores to find the book you are looking for. Also, you don’t have to worry about not having a credit card or the payment gateway crashing while placing an order online. Unlike other services with Dial-a-Book you don’t have to pay in advance, you can pay once the book reaches you."

Anyone interested in acquiring a copy of Relaxing into Meditation can call 09650-457-457 or  09971-243-364 or send a post to http://facebook.com/dialabook or http://twitter.com/dialabook or send a mail to talk@dialabook.in

This service is available in Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Bangalore, Baroda, Bhopal, Chennai, Cochin, Coimbatore, Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kanpur,Kolhapur, Kolkatta, Lucknow, Mangalore, Mumbai, Mysore, Nagpur, Noida, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Visakhapatnam


For more information about the dial-a-book service, please visit http://dialabook.in/ or http://facebook.com/dialabook

Many thanks to Zorba Publishers for making this possible.

---

Relaxing into Meditation by Ngakma Nor'dzin is published in India by Zorba Publishers.  For more information contact geetugoel@zorbapublishers.com It is also available at all leading bookstores. For more information please see the book's web page http://bit.ly/nrprim

Ngakma Nor'dzin - Indian sub-continent publishing

"Relaxing into Meditation has created quite a lot of interest and has been picked up by an Indian publisher.  Zorba Publishers of New Delhi will be producing an Indian sub-continent version of the book. "


http://ngakma-nordzin.blogspot.com/2010/11/indian-sub-continent-publishing.html

Indian Scripts in Tibet

"Both scripts, Lantsha and Vartu, became the fundamental vehicle of Buddhist textual tradition. Lantsha script not only acts as a binding force for the Buddhist community, but what is more important these signs are a distinct mark of identification in mantras and Buddhist texts. For example the Buddhist Mahayana text in Lantsha was transferred from India to Tibetan monasteries. "

http://www.lantsha-vartu.at/

Lhundrup Topgye Ling Ngakpa Dratsang School

"Preserving Tibet's Oldest Spiritual Treasure
(educating children for the modern world)"

http://www.namchabarwa.org/school.htm

Pemako Ngakpa Dratsang School

"The school is a traditional ‘dra-tsang’, where the spiritual, academic, artistic and cultural treasures of the Tibetan people are passed from generation to generation. Blessed and named by the Supreme Head of the Nyingma Lineage, H.H. Minling Trichen Rinpoche, it upholds the Gokar-chang-lo’i-dé, the culturally vital non-monastic lineage of ngakpas representing one of the two original streams of Buddhism in Tibetan history that has flourished in Tibet since the 8th century. Following the Chinese occupation of Tibet it is in danger of extinction unless efforts are made to pass it on within the Tibetan community outside its homeland."

http://www.namchabarwa.org/about.htm

A Brief Pilgrimage to the Hidden Land of Pemakö

"In April and May 2006, I had the good fortune to accompany Lopon P. Ogyan Tanzin Rinpoche and Khandro Chöku Wangmo on a trip to their school in Payingdem village, Pemakö. For the benefit of Rinpoche’s Western students, who through him are connected to this hidden land, and to give a picture of Rinpoche’s remarkable activity there, I would like to share with you the following account of our journey; I have sought to weave into my depiction of our adventures some of the local lore I picked up along the way"

[PDF] http://www.nyingma.com/ogyan-cho-khor-ling/A%20Brief%20Pilgrimage%20to%20Pemako.pdf

"It is certainly a pioneering project, both in terms of being a centre specifically dedicated to the training of young ngakpas and ngakmas, and in terms of being the first non-governmental school in the area"

Unseen Dharamsala

"Dharamsala is a small town in north India, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas. In 1960, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, offered upper Dharamsala to the Tibetan refugees. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, fleeing persecution in Tibet, made it his home in exile as well as the home of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile. Today streams of Tibetan refugees flock to Dharamsala to receive blessings and teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama."

http://unseendharamsala.blogspot.com/

Remit 2 India

The safe way to transfer money

http://remit2india.com