The Snow Lion’s Turqouise Mane: Wisdom Tales from Tibet (1992) is a collection of more than 150 short stories and legends. The stories are traditionally passed down orally from spiritual teacher (lama) to student. Captured for the first time in English, they show the Land of Snow, mostly through the language of metaphor and imagination. All of the tales have the same thing in common – they are designed to teach in an entertaining and memorable way. Some stories have poetry embedded within them. For readers, each has an introduction to explain the context. There are tales of urban and rural life, royalty and farming, duty and discipline, youth and age, music and mantras, mountains and rivers, novices and sages. For example, ‘Why Didn’t I See It Before?” tells of the village of Swayambu in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, ‘a power place’ where old Thondo dreams that he was riding ‘a magnificent white elephant and holding a colorful bouquet of flowers.’ ‘Make Your Own Offerings’
REJECT GREED; TREAD LIGHTLY; CARE LOCALLY; RESPECT DIVERSITY ... by Martina Nicolls