Long before the rugged Himalayan region was conquered by the benevolence of Buddhism and the blessings of Lord Buddha and his many loyal guardians the lands were at the mercy of powerful deities and terrifying spirits. People's houses were converted to small fortresses to ward off evil creatures and the populations were at the mercy of divine madmen, possessed bonpo shamans. When the famous Guru Rinpoche was brought in from India by King Trisong Detsen the bonpos may finally and officially have converted, but their masters and deities persisted and the old guard never went away. Much as other local powerful beings or spirits, they remain in service of their people once more, though now under the watchful eye of Lord Buddha. And although there might now be gentle smiling monks performing the services instead of wild eyed bonpo shamans, the practice never really subsided, it just transformed and merged into a school of Buddhist discipline among karmapas and nyingmapas and so on.
Today some people living in this region realize the origins of their belief system and trace it back to the bön. Another pair of explorers recently reemerged from a journey into the distant corners of this wilderness. Small villages and dilapidated and crumbling dzongs were the starting points for excursions into the vastness of the old guard. Even in the shadow of Mount Kailash the presence of Buddha Tönpa Shenrab can be felt. Join Seetyca and Artin Mucht as they don their Parikrama moniker once more to open a treasure box of mysterious old gterma. As you gaze into this old world, remember to equip a spirit catcher and carry your phurba close to you at all times.
The Undara project is a loose constellation of musicians and artists hailing from Portugal. Setting an interdisciplinary path through musical arcanum and artistic obscurity their journey of discovery leads into a dark and unknown wilderness, tripping over smoldering rocks and stumbling over the very roots of mankind's origin. Hear the distant call of the untamed lands and feel the beckoning of long forgotten places to which mankind rarely chooses to venture. Rumour also has it that a new album is nearing completion.
Recent scientific theory and particle experiments are now challenging long accepted truths about our perception of the very world we inhabit. As mankind gazes further into space and our past the questions become more urgent and challenging. What is our origin and what is the nature of the universe, the very fabric holding life, matter and time together? Among academic disciplines and dogmatic faiths, our tertöns are striving to find the lost treasures, and among them Mathias has chosen the path of music as an insight into our cosmos. Find out more about the Aural Alchemy sessions here.
As darkness once again descends upon the northern hemisphere a host of inspired tertöns strived out into the cold in search of an inner light. Several paths intertwined at the foot of Mount Meru where the quest for wisdom eventually lead to several audiences with the Four Heavenly Kings, guardians and watchers of the world. Along the path home a number of tertöns lost themselves in the vast Himalayan range only to resurface in distant valleys and isolated villages. A wealth of knowledge and gterma is now slowly being recovered and we can expect to see the fruits of the hard labor over the coming months. Even now, fragmentary tones and notes have been carried here by a distant wind.
The search for the hidden gterma is a process started many hundreds of years ago. In the case of Pema Lingpa, the famous treasure seeker from Bhutan, it all begun with a vision at Yige Drukma. Tertön Pema Lingpa, born in the Bhumtang valley in the middle of the fifteenth century, had an encounter with the great Guru Rinpoche on an autumn day in the year of the monkey. Guru Rinpoche revealed to Pema Lingpa the knowledge of 108 gtermas, hidden in time and space by the great guru himself. Although the famous tertön is said to have captured the entire essence of all these treasures, fact remains that during his lifetime he only actually discovered about half of the them. The tertöns of our modern era continue the search in locations beyond. Today we all commemorate the revelation at Yige Drukma.
Yes, it is that time of year again, when for some bizarre and misanthropic reason our host terra refuses to turn its axis toward the sun, thus sending those of us in the northern hemisphere into the season of darkness and gloom. Our trees zip up and the smarter birds head for Africa while the rest of us don darker and thicker fabrics in an effort to keep out the cold. The tertöns up north bid the warm season a hearty farewell with the recent track "Autumn" presented by Urenga, the dub-techno alias of our trusted Hungarian compatriot Indo.
Discovered purely by chance in the sometimes seemingly never endless realm of the netlabel community sits this wonderful little ambient pearl from northern Norway. Havdis creates achingly beautiful aural paintings of a coastal world with streaks of romanticism and melancholy, though it is really up to you as the listener to discover what mood it sets upon you. Find this album on Mixgalaxy Records and then proceed to visit the artist's Soundcloud page for more downloadable material.
gterma contributor Nirmanakaya, with his odd and ingenious fusion of electronics and traditional instrumentation has reappeared on Australian netlabel TVK with a single track called Bharata Groove. This particular groove is a marriage of beats and synthetics with a flavour of sitar. Find it available for download on archive.org.
I know I am not alone in having waited eagerly for the release of "Il Silenzio di Dio" and now it is finally here. Gianluigi's performance in the Calabrian village of Archiaro in 2008 forms the basis of what appears to be a slightly melancholic and psychedelic minimalistic ambient journey. Let's hope we will see more of our Italian friend and ambinaut in the future. Visit Databloem for more information and allow yourself to be sucked into the samples available on soundcloud.
Home to man's pantheons of gods and various immortal beings, a giant sphere on which sit attached the brightest lights of the night sky, sparkling next to ominous towering clouds of majestic low pressure systems. The scattered threads of reddish clouds quickly race across the evening glare as day fades to night. The sky retains its grip on man's imagination, challenging our boundaries as the great beyond is beckoning in the distance.
A travelling tertön has returned from distant lands. Over the course of a long journey he suddenly found himself on a small footpath wandering through a secluded ravine, not recalling what had brought him there. The following days invited the lone tertön to explore an old world, a place renounced by modern man as myth, and the experience was not without peril. However, strong forces of light oversaw his wellbeing and safe return to our own domain, and he rejoined us with many stories to tell. The soundworld of Nirmanakaya is unlike most things we encountered before and like the hidden world itself, it defies description.
As we reported earlier, our tertöns have been busy analyzing and structuring the wealth of information brought back from the Rupa Loka through Indo's revealing sound-exploration two years ago. In an attempt to compile and give an overview of this boundless and seemingly dreamlike realm forever barred to us lesser beings, gterma is happy to present an album of condensed soundscapes bringing alive this beautiful world among veiled and towering mountains. The album is now available for ordering, please see our order info page for more information.
The dozed off summer month of July sees two new mini-releases from this talented and enigmatic Russian artist. The first is a reworking of a previously unreleased ambient track and the other came to life in the background of this work. Both releases are in short supply, visit taqueot for more information. In addition, the longer mini-album "Enter Serenity" on gterma as mentioned previously is expected to complete around the end of the summer.
It has been quite some time. You find yourself gently bobbing up and down the silken surface of a vast expanse of glowing water. The horizon offers no harbour yet your first reflex of panic has quickly given in to relaxed and calm introspection as the warm liquid rocks you to sleep. The stacking clouds shimmer in the evening sunlight and the water glitters peacefully like a million stars. Who can tell what stark realities await underneath the serene surface and in the murky depths beyond?
There comes the moment on every journey when the compass becomes worthless. The instrument appears to work as flawlessly as ever, steadily and stubbornly pointing out the way ahead, yet the direction is no longer of any use. The stream that once carried you ever so gently and swiftly now suddenly turned an aggressive force with which you must constantly struggle. It is in this humble state you will re-learn the skills you have taken for granted and once again seek out the path ahead.
The journey to enlightenment is never simple or easily undertaken. Adversity, obscurity and distraction are challenges along the path. Yama for example, a holy man in an age long gone by, sought to reach the enlightenment through fity years of solemn meditation in a secluded cave. As destiny would have it, he was disturbed in the last month of the forty ninth year, by two robbers who decided to seek refuge in his cave. As they cut the head of a stolen bull they had brought with them they suddenly realized they were not alone. For fear of their crime being exposed, they quickly decapitated the defenseless man, his pleas for mercy gone unheeded. In a flash of fury the now headless victim transformed into a ferocious and vengeful being of death. It took the head of the bull from the ground in place of its own and slaughtered the hapless murderers and drank their blood from cups made by their skulls. Yama then laid siege on the land and spread destruction and death in his wake.
Seeing the plight of the people, Jampelyang, the Lord of Wisdom, travelled to the Iron Cities of Hell in search of Yama. To tame the beast he decided to use Yama's own ferocity against him and changed his appearance into that of a raging beast with a buffalo head and eight pairs of arms and legs. Taking the name Yamantaka, the conqueror of death, he then challenged Yama, who upon seeing his own wrath infinitely magnified succumbed to fear and was subdued to becoming a servant and protector of the light. Yama now roams seven stories under the Earth, so far from his intended goal.
Beyond our human plane of existence lie the many other worlds of the Kama Loka; a sphere we share with the devas or suras, benevolent supernatural beings that have advanced closer toward the state of nirvana than we have. Further along the road to enlightenment are the sixteen worlds of the fine-material world, the Rupa Loka. The spheres here are mainly populated by blissful and graceful beings, in the higher abodes we also find the Arhats and remarkable beings that exist in a state of pure unconsciousness. Glimmers and visions of this tranquil and serene environment have now reached our civilization for us to enjoy. Stay tuned for the full report.
The phaya naga fireballs of the Mekong river is a phenomenon well known throughout Thailand and Laos. The expulsion of red fireballs from the river itself is seen as evidence of the occurrence of giant snakelike creatures living underneath the murky surface. Conflicting sources normally place the nagas in the Mekong, the sunken city of Bhogavati in Nagaland or within the ethereal Himmapan forest itself. Tertöns recently unveiled texts which they deciphered only partially and it led a researcher to the greater Krung Thep area. The nagas continue to elude man, yet at times both tertön and consort have reported a strange premonition while at sea in the area.
Strange reports are coming in from villages in the Karakorum Range. It would appear that over the past six months there have been multiple and seemingly coincidental observations of creatures with a striking similarity to the legendary Snow Lion, a proud creature long banished from the earthly realm. Though the majority of observations took place during the late winter the snow covered ground appears to have been undisturbed in each and every location. No substantial evidence supports these claims, and a tertön present in the area has not been able to corroborate the findings.
The great tertön Pema Lingpa once dove into the cool and dark waters of the Tang Chhu and emerged from the sacred depth its treasures revealed and the butter lamp in his hand still shining brightly. And although the Burning Lake may have revealed its mysteries, half a millennium later new tertöns still struggle to find the remaining lost gterma. Through wisdom and method united, tertön and consort journey ahead. What they seek to find they do not know, yet the path is laid out before them.
