Architecture, Geography, Hagiography: the Mythic Terrain

Padmasambhava's handprint outside the Asura Cave, Pharping

Preface

In the course of travels throughout Asia, we encounter crossroads of myth, legend, and the apparent phenomenal reality of this shared world of appearances. Much of what we see is the result of conditioning, predispositions, identifications, and projection.

I've seen handprints, footprints, and self-arisen statues and syllables that are said to have grown out of rock (and I know of one such that's fairly well-documented); all of this, according to geophysical science is nonsense or fraud. Yes, yes, all these phenomena could be faked. Sure. Why not? Or they could be what they are? Sure. Why not?  But I want to look at these phenomena from two different perspectives. One would be the phenomenal/empirical perspective, subjected to geological analysis and the other would be from the hagiographical with all the salvafic and soteriological emphasis these objects and aspects of the landscape (caves, rivers, mountains) contain.

For those of us who accept uncritically what appears before us, others see us as simple-minded or superstitious. For those of us who see everything as subject to analysis and debunking, the equation "miraculous = fraudulent" is the foundation of approaching these phenomena.

Over the course of several entries, I hope to arrive at a kind of ontological resonance; a location of neither acceptance nor rejection, something more deeper and vital than either.

I hope you join me and share your thoughts in the comments.

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