Buddhist caves found

Xrayman

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070503/wl_nm/nepal_dc_1;_ylt=Aps9M9yLodFZGI0yUfPccP9FeQoB




interesting

federica

I wonder if they're to let?

I wouldn't mind moving in!

Palzang

My question is how do you lose a cave in the first place?

Palzang

carbonunit

Palzang, I see what you mean. What is reported in "tomb raider" speak as caves, are probably what the locals would refer to as sacred places. These are the places that should only be visited by those with the correct understanding and respect to use them for their correct purpose as has probably been done for hundreds of generations. Whilst hidden from direct view these places are usually cherished by the local inhabitants of an area. Sadly all it takes is some cheap booze to get to this information. It is reported that steps had to be hacked into the rock to get to these caves - a literal path of destruction.

In an Eliot Pattison book I read a while back (although fiction I imagine it to be based on fact) a Tibetan Lama is trying to sneak past the Chinese authorities to get to one of these caves. He is dying and when he eventually gets there he sits on a bench next to the skeleton of his teacher which is the last in a long line of ancient crumbling remains. He then happily passes on in his rightful place.

Simonthepilgrim

The caves never got lost. They were always just where they had been. It is we who lose memory of them. As a boy, I was taken to the Lascaux caves. I still cannot believe that, for thousands of years, even the local people had lost the memory of these profoundly sacred places - but they had.

Palzang

It is also part of our supremely arrogant Western-centrism to suppose that nothing is discovered until we, i.e. Westerners, discover it! I mean, the Western hemisphere was already long populated when the first Europeans arrived, so how did they "discover" it? Ridiculous!

Palzang