Rinpungpa's Guidebook To Shambhala & the Kashmir Valley

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Rinpungpa's Guidebook (written in 1557 AD) locates Shambhala north of the Kashmir Valley and south of the Wakhan Corridor.....

Rinpungpa, aka: "The Scholar King". A Tibetan prince who was the last of a dynasty of Ministers who ruled Tibet during the 15 and 16th centuries. He was considered one of the finest poets of the Tibetan language. Composed a guidebook to Shambhala in 1557 called "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" as a letter to his dead father whom he believed to have been reborn in Shambhala. Complex and ornate style derived from the Sanskrit poetry of India.

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"The Kashmir Valley, also known as the Vale of Kashmir, is a valley in the portion of the Kashmir region administered by India. The valley is bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the main Himalayas range. It is approximately 135 km long and 32 km wide, and drained by the Jhelum River.

From: Rinpungpa's Guidebook to Shambhala .... "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" (1557 AD) ...."Crossing Tibet westward.....to the sacred mountain of Kailas ....from Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh and down through mountains and forest to the Vale of Kashmir..(Kashmir Valley)........ then north, through a maze of treacherous mountains....you will pass safely through and come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans......over an 'outer ring' of sky-high ice mountains, down through a vicious desert, into unknown vistas....only to reach a second 'inner ring' of snow mountains. Beyond there, you must choose rightly among high valleys and low cities, having the good sense to know Shambhala when you reach it.........then you will at last, see the cities of Shambhala.....gleaming among ranges of snow mountains like stars on the waves of the Ocean of Milk."

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Mount Kailash (also Mount Kailasa; Kangrinboqê or Gang Rinpoche; Tibetan: གངས་རིན་པོ་ཆེ; Chinese: 冈仁波齐峰 (simplified); Chinese: 岡仁波齊峰 (traditional)), is a 6,638 m (21,778 ft) high peak in the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of Transhimalaya in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. The mountain is located near Lake Manasarovar and Lake Rakshastal, close to the source of some of the longest Asian rivers: the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, and Karnali also known as Ghaghara (a tributary of the Ganges) in India. Mount Kailash is considered to be sacred in four religions: Bon, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.

Ladakh ("land of high passes") is a region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that currently extends from the Siachen Glacier in the Karakoram range to the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent.It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir and its culture and history are closely related to that of Tibet. Ladakh is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and culture.

The Kashmir Valley, also known as the Vale of Kashmir, is a valley in the portion of the Kashmir region administered by India. The valley is bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the main Himalayas range. It is approximately 135 km long and 32 km wide, and drained by the Jhelum River.The Kashmir division borders Jammu Division to the south and Ladakh to the east while Line of Control forms its northern and the western border........"In the first half of the 1st millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose. In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Salatin-i-Kashmir or Swati dynasty.......

Shigar (Urdu: شگر‎) is a district in the Baltistan division of Gilgit–Baltistan in the north of Skardu in northern Pakistan. The Shigar River, bisecting the Shigar valley, falls in the Indus River at Skardu city. The town is a popular site for tourists and trekkers and contains many historical buildings of architectural significance associated with the all communities. The town is inhabited 100% by Balti people of Tibetan descent. Almost 95% people belongs to Shia sect of Islam and the remaining belongs to the Sunni and the Norbakshi sects. It is the gateway to great mountain range of Karakorum.... The valley is very fertile and rich in fruits including apples, cherries, apricots, pears and walnuts.

Lower Kachura Lake (Urdu: لوؤر کچورا جھیل‎), also known as Shangrila Lake(Urdu: شنگریلا جھیل‎) is located in Kachura village 20 minutes from Skardu city (nearly 2,500 m or 8,200 feet) town. The lake is also known as Shangrila lake after a resort built on its bank in 1983....Shangrila Resort Hotel was founded by the late Muhammad Aslam Khan, the first commander of the Northern Scouts of the Pakistan Army.....Shangrila was named after a book titled Lost Horizon by James Hilton.

Two thousand or more Tibetans have made their home in Srinagar. These are Tibetan Muslims. A few Muslim families remain in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa; some live in border hill towns; but most of them have now settled in Indian Kashmir....The community traces its origin to merchants who travelled along the old silk routes. They were Muslim traders from Kashmir and the adjoining area of Ladakh. Four hundred or so years ago, the then Dalai Lama granted them land in the Tibetan capital...After a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule, the Dalai Lama and thousands of his Buddhist devotees fled across the Himalayas in 1959. Then, Tibet's Muslim community also felt restive. They were seen by some Tibetans as collaborators with the new Chinese rulers. After a lot of diplomatic push-and-pull, in which the Indian government took an interest, Muslims were allowed to leave Tibet...Dalai Lama visits Kashmir, first time in 24 years....

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The Pashtuns (/ˈpʌʃˌtʊnz/, /ˈpɑːʃˌtʊnz/ or /ˈpæʃˌtuːnz/; Pashto: پښتانه‎ Pax̌tānə; singular masculine: پښتون Pax̌tūn, feminine: پښتنه Pax̌tana; also Pukhtuns), historically known as ethnic Afghans (Persian: افغان‎, Afğān)and Pathans (Hindustani: پٹھان, पठान, Paṭhān), are an Iranic ethnic group who mainly live in Pakistan and Afghanistan....Historians have come across references to various ancient peoples called Pakthas (Pactyans) between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC,who may be their early ancestors. Their history is mostly spread amongst the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, centred on their traditional seat of power in that region. ....

Afghanistan possesses a rich linguistic legacy of pre-Islamic scripts, which existed before being displaced by the Arabic alphabet, after the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan. Among these scripts are Sharada, Gandhari, Kharosthi, Bactrian and Brāhmī . For thousands of years, Afghanistan was inhabited by Indo-Vedic people and thus all ancient documents, tracts, monuments and remains are of Hindu origins. Later, Buddhism became the major force in Afghanistan and brought with it its own liturgical languages.........Abundant archeological evidence in the form of inscriptions, numismatics and manuscripts[citation needed] has provided traces of the precursors of the contemporary Languages of Afghanistan such as Pashto, Dari and other Dardic languages.

Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.

John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico

Email....okarresearch@gmail.com

November 2018

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