1,200-year-old Perfection of Wisdom Uncovered in Drepung

"A few years ago, or well, to speak truly, even today, if I were to say in front of a group of Tibetanists that manuscripts were preserved in Central Tibetan monasteries that are older than the Dunhuang documents (well, older than the bulk of them), they would have rolled their eyes, glanced at me askance, then looked away as if waiting to hear what the next joke might be. Today the joke is on them."

http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/1200-year-old-perfection-of-wisdom.html

Yul phyogs so soʾi gsar ʾgyur me loṅ

"The Tibet Mirror (Tib. Yul phyogs so so'i gsar 'gyur me long) was published from 1925 to 1963 in Kalimpong, and chronicles the most dramatic social and political transformation in Tibet during a time when vernacular writing was relatively scarce and a Tibetan media practically non-existent. The paper also relayed information about World War II, the independence of India, and other global news to Tibetan readers in Lhasa, Gyantse, Kham, etc., and to traders and aristocrats who frequently traveled from Lhasa via the Chumbi Valley to Kalimpong, Darjeeling and Calcutta."

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6981643_000/

The Innermost Treasury and Zhangzhung Language

"I promised to make available two works that I consider to be by far the most important source works for the study of Zhangzhung. The first is the Mdzod-phugs (I like to translate this as Innermost Treasury, although Primordial Treasury could also work), and the second is the Zhangzhung glossary compiled by the Yogi of the Zhu Clan Nyima Dragpa (Zhu-yi Rnal-’byor Nyi-ma-grags-pa)."

http://tibeto-logic.blogspot.com/2010/04/innermost-treasury-and-zhangzhung.html

"Using them as searchable electronic references makes it possible to find Zhangzhung words in their context immediately and with ease. The work of recovering Zhangzhung and deciphering may be partially done, but it’s still continuing. It’s a work in process."

https://sites.google.com/site/tibetological/innermost-treasury-of-life

Tibetan Caves Adventure

"Shot on location in Tibet, Journey with Kip and Michael through the the sacred cave retreat of Guru Rimpoche- The Fortress of Solitude. an exerpt from www.tamarassacredjourney.com"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUTxZmxnrGY

The triumph of Tibetan Buddhism

"soon discovered that Tibetan Buddhism is not all deities floating on lotus blossoms, tinkling bells and cedarwood incense. On the meditation cushion, I endured knee agony, extreme boredom and oscillations between elation and despair until I finally understood why Buddhism is known as a "science of the mind." As my struggles gave way to what the lama Trungpa Rinpoche describes as "cool boredom" – the depth and breadth of Tibetan Buddhist experience opened up for me and practice became a firm commitment."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/06/religion-buddhism-dalai-lama-tibet

Translations Reveal Tibetan Woman Mystic

"A unique collection of writings by a female Tibetan mystic, little known even among Tibetan Buddhists, is providing a rare glimpse of religious life in Tibet 100 years ago and is stirring new interest among scholars seven decades after her death.

The “treasure revealer” Sera Khandro (1892-1940) wrote her autobiography not in classical Tibetan but in the colloquial Tibetan dialect of Golok, in an area that now straddles the border between China's Sichuan and Qinghai provinces. She’s the subject of a forthcoming book by Sarah Jacoby, an assistant professor of religion at Chicago's Northwestern University."

http://www.rfa.org/english/women/sera-khandro-06022010151321.html

Riding Solo to the Top of the World

"Riding Solo to the Top of the World is an extraordinary documentary film about one man’s journey into the Himalayas. Under-employed filmmaker Gaurav Jani set out to document his motorcycle adventure in the Ladakh Changthang—the highest and most remote part of his native India. What he found there went far beyond adventure.

With no money to hire a camera crew, he shot the whole film himself, mainly from a tripod. This made an already arduous undertaking far more difficult; to get a distance shot of his bike inching along a mountain track above a river gorge, he would have to set the camera up on the opposite side, start it running, ride over to provide the action, and then ride (or often run) back to collect the camera."

http://meaningness.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/riding-solo-to-the-top-of-the-world/

Tibetans in China Protest Proposed Curbs on Their Language

"Thousands of Tibetan students in western China have protested since Tuesday against proposals to curb or eliminate the use of the Tibetan language in local schools, according to reports from Tibet advocacy groups and photographs and video of the protests circulating on the Internet. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/23/world/asia/23china.html?_r=1

The Dark Age and Buddhism’s future

"Based on new evidence, it seems that the so-called “Dark Age” may have been a Golden Age—for non-monastic Vajrayana. What was destroyed in 842 was monastic Buddhism.1 For ngakpas, the Dark Age was splendid: one could practice Tantra free from the narrow-minded moralizing of monastic busybodies and the political imperatives of feudal warlords."

http://ngakpa-update.org/the-tibetan-dark-age-and-buddhisms-future

The Influence of the Occult on the 1939 German Expedition to Tibet

"The speculation of Nazi leaders involved in the occult has not only surrounded Himmler, in the conspiracy theories of German author, Jan van Helsing (aka. Jan Udo Holey), Helsing claims that Hitler had believed in the occult conspiracy theories of Agarthi and that the 1939 German Expedition to Tibet had been the result of a request by Hitler to find the entrances into the underground realm of Agarthi in order to contact the descendents of the “Aryan god-men”. Helsing claims that Hitler was “completely taken” by the search for this realm and countless young men were trained in order to be sent to Tibet for this task"

http://tibettalk.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/the-influence-of-the-occult-on-the-1939-german-expedition-to-tibet/

Atlantis in the Himalayas

"Bruno Baumann left Munich in search of the Buddhist Shangri-la and happened upon the true cradle of Tibetan culture -- the silver palace of the Shang Shung kings. Fierce warriors and bloodthirsty shamans ruled this remote mountain realm more than 2,000 years ago."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,413526,00.html

Tibet Archaeology

"Scholar, explorer, writer, and pilgrim John Vincent Bellezza is widely recognized as one of the foremost specialists in the archaeology and cultural history of Upper Tibet. He has lived in the high Himalaya for over a quarter of a century. Explore these pages for information about his work."

http://www.tibetarchaeology.com/

The Ngakpa Disciples of Guru Rinpoche

"The ngakpa style of vajrayana practice has ancient roots which go back at least as far as the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet."

http://www.nyingma.com/artman/publish/ngakpa_disciples.shtml

Tibet Expedition1998

"The plan was to follow the trails of the Swedish Tibet explorer, Sven Hedin who explored these remote areas at the beginning of the 20th century and the Austrian mountaineer, Heinrich Harrer (Seven Years in Tibet) who fled in the 1940s from the British Prisoner-of-War Camp in Dehradun in India to Tibet and stayed there until 1950. When Sven Hedin visited western Tibet in 1908, this area was so marginalised as to almost disappear from the history and geography books. The legend of a holy mountain (Mount Kailash) and a lake (Lake Manasarovar) from which four of Asia's mightiest rivers flowed was largely ridiculed by western cartographers. When Hedin returned from his arduous journey he was able to prove that there was indeed such a holy mountain and such a lake, and that the remote western part of Tibet was in fact the source of the Tsangpo/Brahmaputra, Indus, Sutlej and Ganges (Karnali) rivers.

When in 1990 I was elected as Member of the first independent Parliament of the Republic of Namibia and appointed as a Minister of the Namibian government I was able to start working to make this plan to become a reality. In the mean time I had been to many trekking and mountaineering expeditions in many parts of the Himalaya and Karakoram and to the central and eastern parts of Tibet. Due to the fact that for many decades there was a very close relationship between SWAPO of Namibia and the Peoples Republic of Namibia, a special permit with authorisation of the Chinese Prime Minister was granted that I was able to visit as an individual tourist these areas and some still closed areas in northwestern Tibet in 1998 (from April to June 1998)."

http://www.klausdierks.com/Himalaya/photo_documentation-1998.htm

Tibet was an Independent Nation

"The Tibet Autonomous Region (T A R) is not seen as the authentic Tibet; it was created by China in 1965 for administrative reasons, comprises less than half of historic Tibet and consists of the provinces western Kham and U-Tsang. POPULATION Tibet has an estimated population of about 6 million Tibetans and 7.5 million Chinese settlers. The estimated population within the Tibet Autonomous Region (T A R) is 2.62 million, of which Tibetan (93%) and Han Chinese (6%), whilst the rest live in the Tibetan areas outside the Tibet Autonomous Region. ECONOMIC Tibet is rich in natural resources, such as gold, iron, lead, uranium and huge reserves of forest."

http://secrettibet.rsfblog.org/archive/2011/05/13/tibet-was-an-independent-nation.html

The Lost World of Tibet (rare footage of Tibet in 1930s)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR0y1CrcBio

"Here is a very interesting documentary by the BBC about Tibet in the 1930s and leading up the Chinese invasion of Tibet. It has a lot of very rare and amazing footage of the Dalai Lama and his family, festivals in Lhasa, and the Chinese occupation. It also includes commentary from the Dalai Lama, Samdhong Rinpoche, and others like the Dalai Lama’s sister-in-law."

http://tibettalk.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/the-lost-world/

The Lost Caves of Tibet - 1/5 Kingdom of Mustang

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5iWG0bRFU

Crow Augury - Kromakhy, Master of Ravens and Crows

"It is possible to foretell coming events through careful attention to the cries and behavior of crows. As we may see, the practice of divining from bird calls, properly called auspicy in the English language, appears to originate in China. Yet, as narrowly concerned with crows, it would seem the practice is an Indo-Tibetan invention with symbiotic relationship to Chinese methods.

The tradition with which I am most familiar comes to Tibet from India. The first written record of which I am aware is found in the middle sixth century, in the Brihat Samhita by Varahamihira. In the early ninth century we find a Sanskrit text entitled Kakajarita translated by the pandit Danacila into the Tibetan language as Bya-rog-gi skad brtag-par bya-ba, or "Investigating the Cries of Crows." Through incorporation of this translation into the Tibetan Tanjur, or Buddhist canon, crow auspicy became an established means of divination in Tibet. "

http://kromakhy.blogspot.com/2004/04/7-crow-augury-tibetan-style.html

Jacob Dalton: Dark Age audio

"Traditional accounts have obscured the more positive aspects of the period. Freed from the watchful eyes of the imperial court and the monastic orthodoxy, Tibetans of the late ninth and tenth centuries were able to make Buddhism their own. The themes, the imagery, and the strategies they developed during these inchoate years formed the cultural foundations upon which Tibetan Buddhism would be built. Only by excavating these foundations and shedding some light on this “dark age” can we gain a clear appreciation of the Tibetan adaptation of Buddhism."

http://ngakpa-update.org/jacob-dalton-rethinking-tibetan-dark-age-webcast

In the footsteps of Joseph Rock

"Kham then and now. A photoblog showing how eastern Tibet looked in the 1920s and how the same places and people look now. Based on the explorations of botanist Joseph Rock."

http://drjosephrock.blogspot.com/2011/06/chapter-7-seeking-lost-mountain-of-muti.html

"Khampa nomads and Tibetan pilgrims were still in evidence in town, rubbing shoulders with Han Chinese girls sporting the latest Nokia mobile phones and Hello Kitty accessories. On the main town square teenage Tibetan monks leapt around in their crimson robes to slam basketballs though hoops, without attracting a second look from the well groomed staff in the marble lobby of the four star hotel."