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.
