Moon Over Stanford

Thubten Jinpa with HH Dalai Lama

Moon over Stanford

Osel Thegchog Ling invited Anne Klein (you know, of "Meeting the Great Bliss Queen" fame) to come from Houston to teach this weekend in Alameda.  She then arranged a double-header, speaking at Stanford University in Palo Alto on Thursday evening. The talks title was "Land and the elements in Tibet: A Story of Living Large."

I drove down to Palo Alto with a new member of our group.  Anne's talk was a discussion of the word bla (pronounced la) in Tibetan, and I wish I could remember her definition. Bla has been translated as soul, kind of an energy body that inhabits various parts of a human body at different times, that can can be predicted by Tibetan astrology.  But land has bla, too, that can be a palpable power.  I can't do justice to her presentation.  

Interestingly, we noted a Tibetan man walk in the room who looked like that guy who translates for the Dalai Lama.  You know, the intellectual in the suit who translates Tibetan into English that is almost incomprehensible to us non-scholars.  Then, when he spoke, with that sort of English accent I --and everyone in the room--realized that it really was his holiness' translator.  He's really friendly, actually, and I can attest that doesn't wear that suit all the time.  Not just a guy after all, he is a Geshe Lharampa and a Ph.D.  His name is Geshe Thubten Jinpa.

What was funny is that he was asking Anne her perception about whether people in Tibet now are loosing their sense or belief in bla.  He said he hadn't been there since he was one.  Then, I thought, actually that's not funny.  Because of his connection to HH Dalai Lama, I imagine it would be impossible to get in to China or the TAR.