40 Immutable Parables - Lexicon

Seeing the Color Red/Auschwitz:

Moloch: An ancient Middle Eastern deity children were sacrificed to.

 

A few Minutes and Seconds/ Vienna and Bratislava:

Kitsch: Cultural junk.

Blitzkreig: Lightning war.

 

A population of Competing Systems/Bulgaria:

BS: Abbreviation for Bullshit.

 

Glimpsing a Fetal Recognition/Greece:

Ganachakra: Tibetan word for a feast offering at the end of a long puja.

Samsara: Sanskrit for the world of illusion. What most humans consider " real. "

 

Caught in a vicious circle/Israel:

Grockingly: A nonsense word invented for speed-reading in the USA.

Via Delorosa: The path of the crucifixion.

Mikvah: A Jewish ceremonial bath.

 

Buddah meeting Ahura Mazda/Jordan:

Essenes: Ancient Jewish monastic sect.

Ahura Mazda: The Zorastrian god of light. Who fight Angra Manyu the god of darkness. The origin of the Judeo-Christian concept polar opposites fighting in the universe.

 

Land of Subtle Rhythm/New Delhi and North Bengal:

Kalu Rinpoche: A big Tibetan Shampa Kagyu saint. The author met his recent reincarnation and traveled with him throughout India.

Shatrel Rinpoche: Another Tibetan saint from the Nyingma lineage.

Bokar Rinpoche: A famous Kagyu Lama who is instructing the new Kalu Rinpoche. The author took refuge with this Lama in 1991 in San Fransisco. Taking refuge means you take on the Buddhist vows and commitments and thus also receive the blessings and protections for the Vajrayana path.

Lama Wangchen: A young Lama who instructed the author for a few years. Called the " Little Kalu " because in a previous life spent many years meditating in the same cave with the old Kalu Rinpoche.

 

Libretto of Karma/Bodgaya:

Samantrabhadra puja: A big ceremony with the holy Tibetan yabyum as its major center of gravity.

Bero Khentse: A Kagyu lama closely affiliated to the Karmapa.

 

A Strange Curved Space/Kathmandu:

Bodhicitta: Sanskrit for universal compassion.

The Challenge and the Glory:


Feeling Gross Concussions/Japan:

Rinne Tensho: Japanese for reincarnation.

So Deska: Japanese for " Is that so? " A common Japanese social phrase.

Shinto: The original animist religion of Japan.

Ki: Japanese for mind energy. Chi in Chinese.

Bunraku: Japanese puppets.

Satori: A sudden illumination. A play on the atomic flash and sudden enlightenment.

Yostebito: A homeless wanderer.

Samurai: A Japanese warrior. They were often yostebito.

Geisha: A Japanese female entertainer.

Kansai: Central Japan where Osaka is situated.

Awaji-Shima: A large island off Osaka. Supposably the original home of Japanese culture. Today a conservative farming community being invaded by Japanese yuppies.

 

It's Ancestral Clairvoyance/Kathmandu:


Terma: A crucial word which means hidden treasure. Often hidden teachings revealed in psychic visions and then written down.

Cannanites: The original pagan inhabitants of Palestine.

Mudra: Sanskrit for special hand gesture used in meditation.

Confucian: Ancient Chinese philosophy for optimal social organization.

Asana: Sanskrit for physical yogic poasture. Related to the mudra which are sometimes called hand asanas. Asanas are body mudras?

Zorastrians: Followers of an ancient Persian religion that focused on the polar struggle between good and evil forces. The foundation stone of Judeo-Christian-Muslim beliefs. A fatal kind of dualistic moralism.

Mayan: Advanced Pre-columbian Indian civilization on the Yucatan peninsula in what is today Mexico and Guatemala.

Osiris: The Egyptian god that was resurrected after being chopped into pieces. Has a close similarity to the story of Jesus.

Marduk: The ancient Mesopotamian god of war. The first big patriarch deity that toppled the female deity Tiaamat. Zorastrian influences come from this mythology.

Dilgo: The great Dilgo Khentse. The young incarnation of the previous master who died in 1991. The author has three crucial meetings with Dilgo in 1997 in a life and death struggle for spiritual redemption.

Lethe: The mythological Greek river that's crossed to get to the long-suffering underworld.

Angra Manyu: The Zorastrian devil and enemy of Ahura Mazda.

Mugabe: The local Black dictator of Zimbabwe, the former white colony of Rhodesia.

Sylvia Plath: A famous feminist American poet that committed suicide in the early 60's. Plath was a follower of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

Emily Dickenson: America's greatest poet. She wrote in strange haiku-like sentences in New England during the American Civil War. Her work is strangely close to Buddhism. Dickenson is very much a jnani yogini.

Shiites: The majority Muslim sect in Iran that triggered the Iranian revolution in 1979 and fomented the current global Muslim surge.

Yabyums: The holy consort couples. A central idea in both Black and White Stress and especially in Challenge and Glory.

Mohanjedaro: The " oldest " known civilization situated near the Indus river in what is today the Sind province of Pakistan. Today the area is dangerous and infested with thieves.

Pashupatinath: Nepal's nickel and dime version of India's Veranasi where bodies are burned in the open. A powerful place.

 

Five-hundred Mile an Hour Rip tides/Bhutan:

Surya: The great Indian sun god.

Rimed: Another extremely critical word. Tibetan for multi-denominational. The name of a religious movement in Eastern Tibet that encouraged the preservation and practise of multiple forms of Vajrayana worship. Both Kalu Rinpoche and Dilgo Khentse come from this region and are major protectors of the author. The Rimed movement is a contrast to the Gelupas who under the Dalai Lama attempted to centralize political and religious control from their capital in Lhasa in Central Tibet. The attempt failed. Tibet was too big and to sparsely populated. The author uses the word Rimed in a generic sense for the entire planet.

Karmapa: The head of the Kagyu order. The Kagyu succession struggle is showcased in Harvest of Gems.

Sissy: American slang for childish in a girl-like sense. Often derogatory.

Dzong: A Bhutanese fortress/monastery. Hundreds are scattered all over Bhutan.

Je Kenpo: The religious head of Bhutan. A crucial post: The Bhutanese pope. The last one physically vanished at death when he achieved the rainbow-body of illumination. The author paid his respects at the Je Khenpo's crypt even though the body was no more.

Dasho: Honorific Bhutanese term used for addressing high officals.

Chanjul Rinpoche: A great Bhutanese Lama.

Samarzinka gompa: Gompa is Tibetan for monastery.

Paro: The most sacred valley in Bhutan and also the location of Taksang monastery and Bhutan's only airport.

Empowerment: A secret teaching received orally or mentally by a practitioner. Often without conscious knowledge of a transmission. A seed planted for reaping in future lives. One of the most miraculous events one can have on the spiritual path.

Guru Rinpoche: A popular Tibetan name for Padmasambhava. The founder of Tibetan Buddhism.

Taksang Monastery: The most sacred site in Bhutan. Padmasambhava meditated for many months in a cave located close to the monastery which is over a thousand years old. It burned down to the ground a few months after the author visited it.

 

Inner-vortices/Eclipse Equinox/ Southern Bengal:

Esplanade: Calcutta's main street.

Baksheesh: Universal term for a bribe often handed under the table.

Rishis: The ancient Indian forest sages.

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