Comet Lovejoy: Our Hold Put To Test

Comet Lovejoy! But it's a comet. Here it tells a different story otherwise, not the one we tend to hold for such sight of Karma Dhuwa Jukring (Long smoky tailed star), favorable from the name given. An aesthete's judgement, may be; absolutely different perspective consumable from its beauty. But our hold seems to prove some validity so far despite being rather aberrant to a seeing mind.

*

Christmas Comet Lovejoy

Photograph by Alex Cherney, TWAN

Comet Lovejoy seems to dive into the sunrise as seen from Cape Schanck in Melbourne, Australia, last Friday.

Officially known as C/2011 W3, comet Lovejoy was discovered by amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy of Brisbane, Australia, in late November. The ball of ice and dust was identified as a Kreutz sungrazer, a family of comets thought to be fragments from a larger body that broke up centuries ago.

Astronomers predicted comet Lovejoy would be destroyed when it made a close pass by the sun late on December 15, eastern time. But to the surprise of many—including its discoverer—the comet survived its solar encounter and reappeared after a few hours.

Although Lovejoy lost its original tail as it skimmed the sun's surface, the comet "reappeared almost like a point and redeveloped a tail on the way out, which I thought was quite amazing," astronomer Lovejoy told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Comet Lovejoy became visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere last week—and continued to streak across predawn skies through the holiday weekend.

Published December 27, 2011

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/12/pictures/111227-comet-lovejoy-pictures-space-station-nasa-paranal-chile/?fb_ref=.TvsM1cLq6AM.like&fb_source=timeline

Happy New Year--2012

Uncertainty costs a bold self-approach to invest meaning in one's way of living or a destined/considerate miraculous incentive-cum-support to come out of the tangle. The latter holds on to a lively hope that can sometimes get blurred out of recognition. The former, the sublime one, can't find a ledge on a slippery whimsical timidity and dual-mindedness. And there are such as ones who aren't entitled at all to be rated thus, those generic figures! But they are...

*

For the late Czechoslovakia's president Václav Havel: An Elegy

Lo, a great soul departs amid billows of pain-drops shuddering, the blurred horizon crooning the same dirge when a seeing one parts. 

A mutilated sentiment pounds hard fraying for being that fated--I don't have thee now. 

Shine thy beacon on us ever! 

Bestow thy enlightening and daring insight on us ever! 


Hush, the path already laid out there by the sublime one, so broad out there! 

Take it to the yonder realm daring, giving, holding and truly liberating not like the one sly, arbitrary, plundering, biased and discriminating! 

Lets open our eyes! 

It's out there! 

Take it, please!

Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche: The made scapegoat to face the looming death sentence

(Translated from the support-seeking document as my help and wish for the same dream)

December 17, 2011

The looming death sentence Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a true Tibetan patriot and an adept Buddhist master of Kham Lithang, still faces despite being postponed over times by virtue of international supports gained by the dedicated Tibet Rights Groups and his disciples diaspora appealing activities and movements.

The reason behind such false conviction bases on the same spurious criminal charge that only proves how Chinese such brutal and uprooting policies in eradicating Tibet identities, culture and important personages (even a child with strong sense of patriotism isn’t spared) have been actively carrying out over 6 decades now. Here Rinpoche is spiritually an important figure, an adept Buddhist master, and socially revered for his bold approaches towards the rights and freedom of the people.

As the reiterated earnest direction and advice by His Holiness the Dalai Lama for Tibetan people to stop propitiating the controversial deity Dorji Shugden for the well-being of Tibetan spiritual and political integrity, Rinpoche carried out the same guiding mission in Lithang. Since 1987 he had been able to found 7 monastic learning centers like Othok monastery, Kham Nalanda (Thekchen Jangchup Choeling monastic institute) and so on in Nyagchu, Lithang. And there he set up the caring institution for aged people and school in the district town for the children from nomadic and peasantry backgrounds and for orphans. He did skillfully optimize his revered fame in the region in enforcing preached laws proscribing theft, robbery and poaching. He did play so effective roles in spreading environmental awareness and protection, settling fatal internal feuds (especially like over pasture-land issues as consciously set by Chinese government by applying sensitive demarcations) and upholding Tibetan language and unique cultural values. So Rinpoche has been gaining steady stature from the devoted following people there and so began to appear as a vulnerable target of Chinese brutal stalking policy of blotting out through dire cunning means for such leading productive figure. Even though several attempts were made to arrest him, they failed out of fear of stirring public agitation thereafter.

But in 2002, he was arrested out of the deliberately set up charge of bombing and has been incarcerated since then. The nature of such charge is absolutely groundless. In such higgledy-piggledy confusion and set up Tibetans and justice loving people at large have been hurt so deeply. As unanimously cited in the book of the compiled investigative works and pleas produced by educated Chinese, notable writers and the concerned lawyers on the prime looming but false charge filed against Rinpoche, it voices the grounded reality of ‘only power play but not applying as per the legal provisions the constitution rules on’. They succinctly put as:

Leveling such false charge of the heinous crime against Angak Tashi[1] is outrageously unacceptable for anyone and, then, why not for his devoted followers.

Angak Tashi’s firm attitude and revered fame are being taken as the challenging hindrance against the reputation of Chinese government.

Particularly, as he put forward in the court and in his tape later smuggled out to USA, he stood firm in his words saying how possible he did commit such crime of bombing as he can’t even think about such. He says he would never disgrace the Lama Avaloketeshwara, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, by committing such unimaginable crime and adds that up to the people of Sichuan province know what kind of person he is, who cares even for the protection of insects. And he counters the way of setting up such false charge against him is the real crime and inhuman.

His close disciple named Lobsang Dhondup, who was leveled with the same charge, did voice strongly about the charge being false and raising the slogans ‘Long live His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche’ during his death sentence being carried out.

We, the followers and students of Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, do appeal the justice loving world at large, individuals and rights groups and organizations for coming out together in practical support of our voice: To make our dream come true, the release of Tulku Tenzin Delek Rinpoche and all the political prisoners in Tibet!

---

1 Angak Tashi is Rinpoche’s name when he was small at home or before getting ordained.

For This Sterile Year

Yet again here the end of sobbing trail

Eschewing fancies tried; debilitated frail.

Disillusionment moulded amorphous—

Protean drifter relapses grey ominous.

A cherry dream cloying yet addicted

Numb, solo musing depth embedded.

The musing grey self-sneering vacancy,

Sentiment diverted opaque from piquancy.

Ambivalence mimicks unpracticality,

Yet the otherwise threatens incapability.

Cherry dream thus shrinks; bounces back,

The cyclic flurries gyrate along din-track.

Desperate quest for the beacon oblivion veils,

Radicalizes the dreamy course eternity prevails.

Thou end soon but not for me, a dreamer.

Nay care fresh one, by then the same dreamer. 

Timeline: Tibet

Courtesy: I would like to thank BBC for publishing the following 'A chronology of key events' titled as 'Timeline: Tibet', which I came across through one of my facebook buds status update and prompted me to publish here as to serve both my personal impulse and as the strong rebuttal to any trace of that lofty myth of Shangrila when Tibet is concerned in the conventional spheres of humanly world and their struggles for survival.  A chronology of key events: 7th-9th century - Namri Songzen and descendants begin to unify Tibetan-inhabited areas and conquer neighbouring territories, in competition with China. A Tibetan pilgrim. Picture: John Miles/PA Wire 822 - Peace treaty with China delineates borders. 1244 - Mongols conquer Tibet. Tibet enjoys considerable autonomy under Yuan Dynasty. 1598 - Mongol Altan Khan makes high lama Sonam Gyatso first Dalai Lama. 1630s-1717 - Tibet involved in power struggles between Manchu and Mongol factions in China. 1624 - First European contact as Tibetans allow Portuguese missionaries to open church. Expelled at lama's insistence in 1745. 1717 - Dzungar (Oirot) Mongols conquer Tibet and sack Lhasa. Chinese Emperor Kangxi eventually ousts them in 1720, and re-establishes rule of Dalai Lama. 1724 - Chinese Manchu (Qing) dynasty appoints resident commissioner to run Tibet, annexes parts of historic Kham and Amdo provinces. 1750 - Rebellion against Chinese commissioners quelled by Chinese army, which keeps 2,000-strong garrison in Lhasa. Dalai Lama government appointed to run daily administration under supervision of commissioner. 1774 - British East India Company agent George Bogle visits to assess trade possibilities. 1788 and 1791 - China sends troops to expel Nepalese invaders. 1793 - China decrees its commissioners in Lhasa to supervise selection of Dalai and other senior lamas. Foreigners banned 1850s - Russian and British rivalry for control of Central Asia prompts Tibetan government to ban all foreigners and shut borders. 1865 - Britain starts discreetly mapping Tibet. Buddhism has been present for more than 12 centuries BBC Religion & Ethics: Tibetan Buddhism 1904 - Dalai Lama flees British military expedition under Colonel Francis Younghusband. Britain forces Tibet to sign trading agreement in order to forestall any Russian overtures. 1906 - British-Chinese Convention of 1906 confirms 1904 agreement, pledges Britain not to annex or interfere in Tibet in return for indemnity from Chinese government. 1907 - Britain and Russia acknowledge Chinese suzerainty over Tibet. 1908-09 - China restores Dalai Lama, who flees to India as China sends in army to control his government. 1912 April - Chinese garrison surrenders to Tibetan authorities after Chinese Republic declared. Independence declared 1912 - 13th Dalai Lama returns from India, Chinese troops leave. 1913 - Tibet reasserts independence after decades of rebuffing attempts by Britain and China to establish control. Lhasa - "place of the gods" At 3,650m (12,500ft), one of the world's highest cities Population: 250,000 In the early 20th century, nearly 50% of residents were Buddhist monks 1935 - The man who will later become the 14th Dalai Lama is born to a peasant family in a small village in north-eastern Tibet. Two years later, Buddhist officials declare him to be the reincarnation of the 13 previous Dalai Lamas. 1949 - Mao Zedong proclaims the founding of the People's Republic of China and threatens Tibet with "liberation". 1950 - China enforces a long-held claim to Tibet. The Dalai Lama, now aged 15, officially becomes head of state. 1951 - Tibetan leaders are forced to sign a treaty dictated by China. The treaty, known as the "Seventeen Point Agreement", professes to guarantee Tibetan autonomy and to respect the Buddhist religion, but also allows the establishment of Chinese civil and military headquarters at Lhasa. Mid-1950s - Mounting resentment against Chinese rule leads to outbreaks of armed resistance. 1954 - The Dalai Lama visits Beijing for talks with Mao, but China still fails to honour the Seventeen Point Agreement. Revolt 1959 March - Full-scale uprising breaks out in Lhasa. Thousands are said to have died during the suppression of the revolt. The Dalai Lama and most of his ministers flee to northern India, to be followed by some 80,000 other Tibetans. 1963 - Foreign visitors are banned from Tibet. The Dalai Lama is the supreme head of Tibetan Buddhism Profile: The Dalai Lama In pictures: The Dalai Lama's 70th birthday 1965 - Chinese government establishes Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). 1966 - The Cultural Revolution reaches Tibet and results in the destruction of a large number of monasteries and cultural artefacts. 1971 - Foreign visitors are again allowed to enter the country. Late 1970s - End of Cultural Revolution leads to some easing of repression, though large-scale relocation of Han Chinese into Tibet continues. 1980s - China introduces "Open Door" reforms and boosts investment while resisting any move towards greater autonomy for Tibet. 1987 - The Dalai Lama calls for the establishment of Tibet as a zone of peace and continues to seek dialogue with China, with the aim of achieving genuine self-rule for Tibet within China. 1988 - China imposes martial law after riots break out. The controversial Golmud-Lhasa railway opened in 2006 Railway raises fears for future In pictures: Qinghai-Tibet railway 1989 - The Dalai Lama is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. 1993 - Talks between China and the Dalai Lama break down. 1995 - The Dalai Lama names a six-year-old boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the true reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second most important figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The Chinese authorities place the boy under house arrest and designate another six-year-old boy, Gyancain Norbu, as their officially sanctioned Panchen Lama. 2002 - Contacts between the Dalai Lama and Beijing are resumed. Rail link 2006 July - A new railway linking Lhasa and the Chinese city of Golmud is opened. The Chinese authorities hail it as a feat of engineering, but critics say it will significantly increase Han Chinese traffic to Tibet and accelerate the undermining of traditional Tibetan culture. A pro-Tibet activist disrupts the Olympic torch relay through London 2007 November - The Dalai Lama hints at a break with the centuries-old tradition of selecting his successor, saying the Tibetan people should have a role. 2007 December - The number of tourists travelling to Tibet hits a record high, up 64% year on year at just over four million, Chinese state media say. 2008 March - Anti-China protests escalate into the worst violence Tibet has seen in 20 years, five months before Beijing hosts the Olympic Games. Pro-Tibet activists in several countries focus world attention on the region by disrupting progress of the Olympic torch relay. 2008 October - The Dalai Lama says he has lost hope of reaching agreement with China about the future of Tibet. He suggests that his government-in-exile could now harden its position towards Beijing. 2008 November - The British government recognises China's direct rule over Tibet for the first time. Critics say the move undermines the Dalai Lama in his talks with China. China says there has been no progress in the latest round of talks with aides of the Dalai Lama, and blames the Tibetan exiles for the failure of the discussions. A meeting of Tibetan exiles in northern India reaffirms support for the Dalai Lama's long-standing policy of seeking autonomy, rather than independence, from China. 2008 December - Row breaks out between European Union and China after Dalai Lama addresses European MPs. China suspends high-level ties with France after President Nicolas Sarkozy meets the Dalai Lama. Anniversary 2009 January - Chinese authorities detain 81 people and question nearly 6,000 alleged criminals in what the Tibetan government-in-exile called a security crackdown ahead of the March anniversary of the 1959 flight of the Dalai Lama. 2009 March - China marks flight of Dalai Lama with new "Serfs' Liberation Day" public holiday. China promotes its appointee as Panchen Lama, the second-highest-ranking Lama, as spokesman for Chinese rule in Tibet. Government reopens Tibet to tourists after a two-month closure ahead of the anniversary. 2009 April - China and France restore high-level contacts after December rift over President Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama, and ahead of a meeting between President Sarkozy and China's President Hu Jintao at the London G20 summit. 2009 August - Following serious ethnic unrest in China's Xinjiang region, the Dalai Lama describes Beijing's policy on ethnic minorities as "a failure". But he also says that the Tibetan issue is a Chinese domestic problem. 2009 October - China confirms that at least two Tibetans have been executed for their involvement in anti-China riots in Lhasa in March 2008. 2009 January - Head of pro-Beijing Tibet government, Qiangba Puncog, resigns. A former army soldier and, like Puncog, ethnic Tibetan, Padma Choling, is chosen to succeed him. 2010 April - Envoys of Dalai Lama visit Beijing to resume talks with Chinese officials after a break of more than one year. 2011 April - Dalai Lama announces his retirement from politics. Exiled Tibetans elect Lobsang Sangay to lead the government-in-exile.

For Your Words: An Ode

Thanks for making this fool see himself now, being able to see even the subcutaneous level so futile, messily simple no matter how wholeheartedly honest, the best policy infantile. Yeah, such isn't an easy sentiment but now proved to hold and manifest so like a hypnotized soul's desperately defiant gestures against one's core rights monopolized thus. Then, why not, not to feel stark foolish and pathetic--so huge the illusion, the betrayal one's abstraction imposes like a grave brainwash: So, then, what to hold on?

Thanks for letting go into this self-mirroring retreat, the images so naive like mimicking back saying, "How poor you're!" Yeah, it's true.

A protean mind hard can be once fallen that deep. But to survive is pave way for it, to tickle the hibernated genius aloof. Now, I am for it. Thanks for pointing me to the blurring signboard! I peer down hard and find myself not completely blind. Thanks!

This growing conviction is almost proving valid:  Fated thou art for being unqualified this poor; it remains alien for thou! I do confess thus.Thanks for this timely revelation! Thanks again!

A Blurring Signboard

To let drag on is never to get ready to act as one's wish dreams for;

to ignore the past experience is to stumble upon the same again;

to yield to internal mess or strife is to let plunder again;

to stick along the right course is to come out smart one day—

an instant jolt to a numbing entity.

Pilgrimage to Paro Taktsang

Part: I

June 1, 2011

It is 30th today of Bhutanese calendar, regarded as Sabbath. As preplanned, we prepare to leave for Paro Taktsang (Tiger Den), which is regarded as the most significant among other Guru’s holy sites mostly on the rocky precipices: Ugyen Dhak, Dhak Karpo, etc. It attracts tourists and devotees from India and abroad but mostly local pious ones.

The familiar narrow asphalt road alongside the river on one side and the fertile fields on the other and then the turn from the main road at Satsam Chorten along the non-asphalt road. Just off ahead the turn the two storeys building with corrugated iron roof, the small apple garden protected by the waist high stone-walled fence (the round white stones from the riverside below) alongside the bumpy road, the apple trees bearing small apples like their buds, the pine trees on the opposite side: so familiar as of my staying here twice (in 1995 and 2002) when my sister Yangzom stayed here in the building in her single room on rent with the shared bathroom and kitchen, when she had her job at Yangphel Handicrafts.

The green painted iron bridge over the river is yet robust as said built by Janpanese. It’s adorned with cloth-made muti-colored wind-flags, the mantras and auspicious signs printed on the pieces of cheap loosely woven rectangular cloth for good fortune and success, strung stretched along either side from one end to another. Those weathered ones dangle below the newer ones flying above on tighter strings. It connects to the tiny hamlet with sparse households on the other side of the river.

Taken by Choedon from the halfway point

Not like in 1995, when Gen La on a hired horse led by the village lad but only up along the jagged rutted path, there is now road up to the certain point amid freshly wetted lush green pines bearing tawny new cones. Tourism must have prompted the same. It’s really pleasing to drive past the sparse households with walled apple gardens around and enter the pine-greenery. The point, the cleared opening with some wooden shacks on one side, where a vehicle has to be parked and start on foot. And just ahead the wider opening with lush green turf dotted with left unmaintained apple trees and a few horses nibbling at turf-naps. From the trace of a left household I wonder what forced them to leave such lovely place surrounded by the grandeur of coniferous forest and the magnificent view of Taktsang on the waistline of the towering precipice. But more precarious seems to be the lonely temple perched on the other rocky hill-top overlooking Taktsang. And only later I’m going to learn this hill-top isn't higher than the next by on whose waistline Taktsang is but it overlooks Taktsang below like surprisingly landed on a miraculous ledge.

We take some pictures from here with Taktsang at the backdrop. There are those saddled horses for hire. As we advance forward with those noisy Indian tourists the melodious chirrups coming from the thickets of pines around are like welcoming notes.

A group of Indian tourists as our companies to Taktsang. From the elder guy I learn they are from Mumbai but they belong to Kerala, but the other lady says she is from Goa. The guy says going for such site is experiencing and there are such sites in Kerala. A cute girl, bright complexion in dark trousers and shirt, with her seemingly dad says ‘hi’ to me and I greet back in the same way as we toil up along the winding rutted path replete with dried leaves of the thorny bushes with thorn-brimmed leaves. It was as of the recent rains that have washed them all along the deepened ruts. But the thick-waisted bespectacled young Indian in his early twenties, who is in tight dark jeans and synthetic black T-shirt accentuating his bulging waistline, suffers more as he is the last one leaving behind whiffs of his body odour. He hasn’t got anything to carry but he can’t make more than a few steps and rests gasping, his fatigued eyes seemingly lifeless through the white narrow glasses now burden rather than a part of his fashion taste.

Burning my fresh energy fuel in such crude fast-paced steps rather than in a saving firm-paced ones, I now feel struggling against troubling thin breaths after covering the initial distance that leaves them behind so. Choedon is off ahead disappeared from my sight. I now find how my concern for her is a huge misconception.

Being unable to make more than a few steps ahead at a time, I let Karchung and sister overtake me that saves me a lot, especially for my sister’s carrying the only thing I have, the woven basket of flattened plastic reeds with the edible stuffs inside. I find their paces are experienced slow ones.

The cute Indian girl and her dad are ahead of us, when my sister finds sunglasses dropped behind them and tells to me ask for them. As I pick up the glasses and do the same with ‘excuse me’, the guy, her dad, takes a few steps down to take it saying ‘thanks’. Then we manage to overtake them. From this point I try to be at Karchung and sister’s heels. I find those green painted Use Me trashbins made out of oil-containers dotted along the turns and there are dug pits for the same; thanks for those drinking water-posts with protruding taps above overflowing wooden troughs.

As I am toiling behind them but see them off ahead, I find a Bhutanese guy in dark Goe appears abruptly behind me from a shortcut and he crosses the proper route to try up along another shortcut. The sleeves of his Goe wrapped around his waist revealing his underwear, a white T-shirt. His funky hairstyle gelled wet, maintained cluster of beard below his chin, the sunglasses on his bright face speak some of his taste in vanity. But I can’t have a close look at him. He is on a call with his cell phone and looks at ease not like me fighting with breaths. And I am going to learn later he is usual commuter, the experienced one, the tourist guide now of those Indians left far behind him. It must be him shouting at those Indian tourists down there at the parking point, “Start walking!”

As I reach the flat point with the drinking water-post, the shrine with a large painted prayer-wheel, I find him sitting on a bench. As I walk past him ahead, I hear him saying ‘halfway’ to those Indians reaching the point. It leads to a tourist reception of the sort. From here we leave them behind. I’m going to see them only at Taktsang while standing on the steps to butter-lamps offering cell after visiting the Guru’s prime shrines. I see now the Bhutanese guy in dark Goe, their guide, has befriended his clients well from the way how he chats with the cute Indian girl. “I would carry you over there”, he says as she must have pointed out there, the overrunning beauty of coniferous splendour on the slopes of the yonder hills and below the rocky precipices. “Oh, it can’t be easy”, she says laughingly. And I can’t overhear anymore.

Then at last at the point at the edge of the semi-rocky slope, like at the knee-line of the hill, almost level opposite with Taktsang perched on the rocky ledge on the other side and the winding crude slab-steps down with iron and concrete hand rials on concrete posts up to the angle of the rocky walls. The lovely fall coursing down the dark slippery walls, the drizzles can be felt when crossing the small concrete bridge. Up from the point there the current of this fall can be heard like background music to the chill of the site. And it’s to take the same steps upward till the proper entrance of the imposing holy site. But before hitting the steps up we take some time here taking some pictures or enjoying the views around.

Snub Me!

Used am I to a sneer

Now the feeblest peer.

Hardened am I numb

Apt for thy silly snub.

To this nadir I breathe

A solace down depth--

A sentiment tarnished

Form a beauty bleached.

Fated-handicapped strife

Now find my damning life.

A forced smile boring

A spontaneous blurring--

Yonder, pray, a sign ajar

Asunder slip through afar--

A wonderland stark mindless

Thereby bereft of closeness.

Yeah, now snub me a mad

Too deranged to feel sad.

Please: Don't instruct me how to breathe fire as I am aware of shedding extinguishing chill later on.