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    A Quest for the Hidden Lands
    A Quest for the Hidden Lands
    A Quest for the Hidden Lands
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    A Quest for the Hidden Lands

    By Norma Levine

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    About this ebook

    My budding career as a literary scholar was suddenly hijacked by a singular seemingly random event. It was 1976 when I tiptoed into a tiny Buddhist shrine room in a farmhouse nestled into the Black Mountains of Wales and there beheld a Tibetan master, the 16th Karmapa, sitting on a throne performing a ceremony known as The Black Hat. My mind came to an immediate stop, suspended. It felt familiar, like the secret garden of childhood.
    I can still remember every detail like it was yesterday:
    Karmapa occupies the throne completely. He has a spiritual dignity that makes it his rightful seat, just as the lion proclaims his natural dominion. The force of his presence alone brings a hushed silence to the room. It feels like it has expanded into a cathedral.
    Two monks blow long Tibetan horns in a haunting wail so loud and long it startles thought patterns, blowing them away like clouds. The Karmapa slowly opens the Black Hat-box, takes the black silk crown in his hand, and puts it on his head holding it down with one hand. With the other hand he fingers a crystal rosary moving it deftly, twirling the beads around three times. The horns continue while he gazes with eyes that seem to dissolve the fiction of time and the boundaries of space. Time is standing still.

    That glimpse into enlightened mind became embedded like a seed and grew into a quest over the next decades to find the key places on our planet called the Hidden Lands.
    The legend came alive while I was living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas. I met Tibetans who had been to the supreme Hidden Land of Pemako while escaping from the Chinese invasion of Tibet. They made it sound like the ‘promised land’ with streams flowing with milky water. There were certain plants that could induce enlightenment.
    Why did it take decades to get there? What made the right ingredients emerge to penetrate this sacred sanctuary? And the big question: Who hid it and why?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNorma Levine
    Release dateApr 26, 2022
    ISBN9781005210120
    A Quest for the Hidden Lands
    Author

    Norma Levine

    Norma (or Naomi) Levine was born near Montreal, Canada and after completing her graduate degrees in Drama and Literature from McGill and Toronto Universities, moved to London UK in the 70’s. Her thesis on a British playwright, brought her to Hay-on-Wye in the Black Mountains of Wales where she dropped out of academic life, opened up the first natural food shop, and turned on to Buddhism after meeting the 16th Karmapa.She lived for five years at Sherabling Monastery, the seat of His Eminence Tai Situ Rinpoche, in Himachal Pradesh North India, practising meditation, and became the companion/consort of the exiled spiritual king of Bhutan.She is the author of 5 books on Buddhist themes and has written for the major London newspapers. She lived for many years in the village of Hay-on-Wye, famous for its Literary Festival. She now lives in Malvern, Worcestershire, and devotes her time to writing, gardening, and walking the Malvern Hills with her dog, Tara, an elegant lurcher.

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      Book preview

      A Quest for the Hidden Lands - Norma Levine

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