THE ATLAS OF THE EMPTY THRONE

Nālandā burns

Nālandā destroyed

nature

The great monastic university — libraries, thousands of students, centuries of philosophy including Nāgārjuna's successors and Śāntideva's hall — is sacked during the Ghurid campaigns. Indian Buddhism, already declining, effectively ends in the land of its birth.

Why the tradition survives in Tibet, Sri Lanka and East Asia and not in India — and the reason so much of it reaches us in translation only.

rhymes with

sephirahgevurah

whyGevurah at its harshest: the severity that is simply loss. The Tree's own tradition knows this shape of date well.