Word: tantrics
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Dalai Lama's peasant family came with him to Lhasa, and his father was made a noble, but he saw little of them. His days were spent with monkish tutors, in learning the Tantric texts of Lamaism and the complex religious ceremonials. At night he went to sleep in the enormous, fortresslike Potala, and could hear the palace gates close harshly and the ringing shouts of the watchmen as they marched through the long, twisting corridors. Without playmates or attending parents, the Dalai Lama matured early, and at 14 he visited Lhasa's great monasteries of Drepung...
...Drepung monastery thousands of red-robed lamas crouched on their haunches in a graveled courtyard while the 14-year-old Dalai Lama preached to them on the Tantric texts in a clear, boyish voice, but with the composure and assurance of an adult. A Tibetan-speaking Westerner was there, an Austrian named Heinrich Harrer, who had escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp in India and painfully made his way to asylum in Lhasa. The debate that followed between the abbot and the Dalai Lama was a genuine contest of wits, says Harrer, in which the God-King was "never...
Tibetan Buddhism, called Lamaism, is a variant of Mahayana, basing a large part of its practice on the revelatory Tantric texts. It absorbed much of the dark, animistic Bon Po religion of primitive Tibet and swarms with demons and fiercely copulating gods. The world is haunted by such specters as the ro-langs, or standing dead. They walk with their eyes closed, never change direction, and their touch is fatal to human beings. There are mountain demons who suck the life from unwary travelers, demons who cause hailstorms and earthquakes and eclipses. The Tibetan Buddhist contemplates an intricate pantheon, from...