“Until [my return], when the river’s flow is completely blocked by ice and the touch of winter’s unbearable cold is oppressive, hold it in your mind that the massive snow mountain is my youthful body, full-breasted woman.” With these words Miwang Polhané, the eighteenth-century Tibetan ruler, begins his song of farewell to his lover before his departure for Mindrölling. Recorded in a literary biography of Polhané composed shortly before his death in 1747, this song in particular, and the subject’s numerous amorous encounters in general, offer a glimpse into a realm of desire rarely seen in...read more
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Humchen Chenaktsang explains how the ngakpas, lay practitioners of the "fierce mantras," of Repgong, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau came to be known as the Thousand... read more
