Dimensionally Barrett

En route to Birgunj. A sunrise through smoke and smog. It was a long stretch to Bodhgaya. My bus left Kathmandu an hour late, expected and no big deal and we reached the border at Birgunj around seven-thirty Friday morning. Since I overstayed my visa in Nepal, I had to pay a 4000 rupee ($40 US) fine. Passport stamped and I was on my next bus to Patna. We reached Patna around 4:30 or 5 and I considered taking the train to Gaya, the later built city, sister to Bodhgaya. Gaya's a kind of dirty hole but Patna's worse. In any case, which city is the bigger shit-hole is moot since I wasn't staying in either one. I was impatient and decided to hire a taxi to Bodhgaya to go straight to the guest house. My patience returned and the ride was about five hours. A substantial part- forty kilometers out of 115 - was spent in unmoving traffic owing to an accident. Maybe two hours altogether spent dozing, chatting with the driver and in general, reflecting on the trek I'd...

Appendix 1: The Monk’s Presentation I found this provocative as there is a unique syncretism 1 to the epistemological approaches of the Drigung Kagyu. More than most schools, there is a sense that any such approach can work to hone the mental discipline and analytical skills needed to make sense of the various practices in the tradition. The principle point of departure for the monk (from Rinchen Ling, Kathmandu) is the following:  “The subtle obscurations should be abandoned first. The translation at hand has it ”It can also be the case that the cognitive obscuration is abandoned first.”  2  This strikes me as untenable; while there is a sense of “can”, the additional “also” doesn’t obtain from the context.    EDIT: on reflection, perhaps the use of “also” in the translation at hand is contextual to maintain the thought begun in the previous verse. His successive arguments may be found elsewhere in the Gong Chig and these will be cited a...

Lord Jigten Sumgon/Jigten Gonpo ( ‘bri-gung-pa-‘jig-rten -gsum-gon/‘bri-gung-pa-‘jig-rten-mgon-po ); founder of the Drikung/Drigung Lineage As many (most? All?) of you know, I don’t “play favorites”, I don’t root for teams, when it comes to religious traditions that I’m affiliated with. Across the Buddhist spectrum, this is many more times the case, but it doesn’t prevent me from my enthusiasms. For many years, I’ve been and continue my affiliation with the Drikung Kagyu because, well, so many friends have been or are still monks in the lineage and because it really is the embodiment of a Tibetan practice lineage. Sure, I have my reservations about Buddhism in general and Tibetan Buddhism in particular; these have been articulated elsewhere. However, there’s much to commend the Drikung lineage in terms of application. I seem to recall Lama Sonam many years ago was asked about what texts students at the center (now in Arlington, Massachusetts) would be studying and h...