Buddhism Now
And what, monks, is ageing? In whatever beings of whatever group of beings, there is ageing, decrepitude, broken teeth, grey hair, wrinkled skin, shrinking with age, decay of the sense-faculties—that, monks, is called ageing. (Buddha)
This is not simply and literally about that trilogy of—disease, old age and death. Sadly, no one is ever too young to become ill or die. But they say that, whatever age we die, after the heart stops we have a few minutes left in which the brain is still active. Now in a timeless realm and uninterrupted by any sound, the consciousness can be rounded out, made whole, according to the life—conscious and unconscious—of that being. People who have a religion which provides for after-death welfare, such as in Tibetan Buddhism, are less troubled. But those without such beliefs, can trust to nature’s spiritual intentions for them, as they, like plants, struggle instinctively and unerringly towards the light. (more…)
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Sceptics say that in meditation
A certain Mr Porng went to visit
“Bhikkhus, whatever grounds there are for making merit productive of a future birth,
The Handbook of Iconometry (Tibetan title: Cha tshad kyi dpe ris Dpyod ldan yid gsos) constitutes a lavishly illustrated treatise laying down the iconometic principles and measurements at the heart of the 17th-century art of Tibet. The book was produced in ca. 1687 at the instigation of the famous scholar and statesman sde srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho (1653–1705). Today, the original is kept in the Tibet Autonomous Region Archives (Lhasa). The Handbook includes more than 150 meticulously prepared drawings of buddhas, bodhisattvas and divinities, 70 script types and 14 stupa models all extrapolated from the rich heritage of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist art. These are accompanied by an introduction charting the production of the Handbook in the 17th century and the scholarly profile of its principal author Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho. In the appendix, it reproduces passages from the Vaiḍurya g.Ya’ sel that provide valuable additional information about the illustrations. 
You might sensibly ask why those
