Tibetan 2012 Prophecies Revisited and Revealed

After our nod to the 2012 Doomsday prophets, posted here the other day, we received comments from one of Digital Tibetan Buddhist Altar's valued correspondents. Our correspondent is a lotsawa of some considerable stature who we publish anonymously, in order to keep plausible denial options open.

A lotsawa, you will recall, is a translator who actually accomplishes the practices he or she translates. This particular lotsawa is a vajra brother (or sister) of mine, so I feel comfortable about saying that.

By the way -- the photo of the Nechung Oracle has absolutely nothing to do with this. I just thought it might satisfy the people who are tasking search engines to find secret stuff about 2012. You know... the stereotypical space ship picked up Jesus from the crystal cave in Tibet, but the government doesn't want us to know, and the lamas are keeping it under wraps because of the big alien bases in the Himalayas.

So, anyway... rather more seriously... here is what our correspondent had to say:

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I won't be surprised if 2012 is a dud. In fact I'll be relieved. It's the year of the water dragon. I don't know if that's good or bad.

There is some evidence for a Tibetan prophecy relating to 2012. Two texts relating to that year and our present times are found at

http://www.skydancerpress.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=65

The first is by Lodro Rab phel, the second Dzigar Kongtrul. It says some interesting things. Basically he had a vision of Varahi using light and gazing she gave him this message -- lightly sampled here, from the beginning:

/stong chen dbyings kyi mkha klong du/ 'In the expanse of the sky, the ultimate sphere of emptiness'

Note that the metaphor already has us looking upwards.

/de chen thig le 'od stong 'bar/

'The Tigle of great bliss blazes with empty/thousands (stong) of light[s]'. I.e., on a relative level there are lots of stars in the sky, right?

/snang srid dag pa'i mkha klong du/
'In the pure expanse of the sky of apparent and possible events'

/snang stong dbyer med sgra ru 'phos/
'Legions (ru) of sound, light-emptiness indivisible, shoot forth'.

--Sounds almost kabbalistic. But 'ati'-rlly amazing things do happen.

/'byung 'gyur lkog tu gyur pa'i don/
'Hidden facts about what's yet to happen ('byung 'gyur)'

/rig stong rdo rje lu gu rgyud/
'Adamant braids of empty awareness'

/cir yang shar ba'i tshig gi phreng/
'sentence-strings pop up everywhere'

/rdo rje brda' yi tshul du 'pho/
'shooting out like adamant symbols[brda']'

A pun on the homonyms _mda'_ 'arrow' and _brda'_ 'word,esoteric sign, symbol'.

/me lce ldum bur 'bar ba la/
'ablaze in a globular mass of flame-tongues'

Wait...this could be a prophecy of Usenet and/or the Blogosphere!
But seriously:

/g.yu 'brug sngon mos kha chus gzhig/
'A turquoise dragon analyzes deeply with [her] saliva'

'Turquoise dragon' is standard poetics for 'thunder'; 'sngon mo' or blue indicates the sky. "kha chu" means saliva or also water (chu) from the sky (kha). This is one of the more enigmatic lines in this text. With a Tibetan prophecy one should attend to the possible double meanings and homonymic/etymological affinities, and this one has more than most.

"Chus" sounds the same as _'chus_ which variously could mean 'twist around', 'lie', 'deceive', or 'take sides'; it also sounds like _mchu_ meaning 'lips' or 'beak' -- dragons have beaks, in Tibet at least. Indeed a few lines further down it says: 'The [sharp edges] of the fangs of a furious monster (srin po, meaning possibly someone born in Capricorn=chu srin) might clamp down on the head of a powerful lord (/srin po khros pa'i mche ba'i zur/ /dbang po'i mgo la theb kyang srid/ -- now this image could be straight out of the Bhagavat Gitra or Ramayana!).

_Ngon mo_ is feminine for blue but with the agentive suffix 's', _sngon mos_ could also mean 'beforehand', referring to the prophetic context. One can also read sNgon (before)+ mos (wished) as 'previous aspirations'. _kha_ 'space, mouth' also means 'temporal context, vicinity, speech, in front of, entailment, fortune, karma' and so forth; so _sngon mos kha_ could mean 'the karma/speech/entailment/ or proximity' of previous aspirations (good or bad)

Also _gzhig_ 'to analyze' sounds identically with the past, future and imperative of _'jig_ meaning 'to destroy' and likewise sounds the same as past passive particple of intransitive _'jig pa_ meaning 'to decline, collapse, disintegrate'.

_g.Yu 'brug_ 'turquoise dragon' means thunder from the sky, implying water. And what year falls right around the middle ('khyil-- see reference to 'coiled snakes' below) of the present sexagenary cycle? Yup, it's the year of the Water-Dragon, year 29/60, which encompasses most of the dreaded 2012 in our calendar.

Now putting some of this together..._kha chus gzhig_ most literally means 'analyzed/will analyze/analyzes with mouth-water' but of course this being a prophecy the most literal sense is probably not the intended one. I mentioned alreadoy some of the other possible meanings. Now what about translating _kha chu_ into Nostradamus (_chu kha_)? This is how so many prophecies get teased out of Nostradamus (e.g., 1999 actually means '666', 'Hister' means 'Hitler', 'nouveau cite' means 'new york', etc. etc.)

 _Chu kha_ means 'watershed', 'headwater' (of a river), 'shore', 'other side of the ocean' or even 'urethra'. So if _chu kha_ is what _kha chu_ is supposed to mean; then...in that case the expression _g.Yu 'brug sngon mos kha chus gzhig_ could be construed to mean:

"[In] the Water-Dragon Year [which is the year 2012, the world will be] destoyed by overseas  [kha chus=chu khas] [enemies], (or alternatively, by the water/flow (chus) of karmic retribution [kha]) [stemming from evil] intentions of previous aspiration (sngon mos), in global/globular (dum bu) holocaust"

That is, 'ablaze in a round mass of flame-tongues' or mushroom clouds.

On the other hand, given the multiple meanings of _chu kha_ and _kha chu_, it could mean simply that someone who reaches sixty years of age, or is born in 2012, gets a urinary tract infection  or becomes a urologist: _kha chus_ 'saliva'+ _gzhig_ 'analyzes' means _chu khar_ 'urethra'+ _gzhig_ 'disintegrates', or rather _chu kha_'urethras'+_gzhig_' examines'.

All joking aside, that this prophecy refers to our times is made clear in this text at the middle of page 1 line3:

/bgrang bya bcu bdun them skas la/
/'dzegs na ngal gso'i gnas su bde//

'If one climbs the staircase of the seventeenth enumeration' -- ie, to the end of the seventeenth sexagenary cycle --'there is happiness at a place of relief'. If we can only get through this one...

p. 1 line 3:

/thun dong dug mun 'khrigs pas 'grib/

"The [time] interval (thun) is obscured by gathering [clouds] of poison darkness (dug mun)"

I.e. by afflictions of the dark age.

/mkhar nag rtsa bar drug sprul 'khyil/

"Six snakes coil at the foundation of the black castle"

mKhar nag probably means (rgya) gar/dkar and (rgya) nag, ie India and China, meaning the prophecy refers to them. (Incidentally, 'Dragon' could be shorthand for 'China' and 'Tiger' for India, etc). Six snakes means a time interval spanning six snake years. In the case of this prophecy that would mean  1977-2037 (both fire snake years) or to include the entire seventeenth sexagenary cycle that we're in now, 1977-2043.

The previous 'six snakes coiled' implies this will happen around or in the middle of ('khyil 'surrounded by) the middle of the seventeenth cycle of 60 years or rather, in the middle of six snake-years 1977-2037 inclusive. I.e., around 2007 or a couple of years later.

Also on the first page:

/mgo yi nor bu'i zer zhig 'phro/

'The head's jewel emits a light ray' (Tib. zer, or cry of pain, or gives a painful jab).

'Head' (mgo) probably refers to Mriga-shirsha or "Deer's Head" the fifth lunar mansion or nakshastra, corresponding to Orion and specifically to the stars in his belt. Astronomically it could refer to a comet, or it could refer to a person with an important planetary placement there. (HHDL has Mercury in Mriga's mansion which is the strongest place for it by Jyotish standards, being both in Gemini and the mansion of Mercury's and Venus' happiness. Incidentally Mercury and Venus are referred to as "Jewels" (ratna) in Mriga-s"irs.a or Deer's Head.)

Another cryptic reference, possibly to Islam:

/g.yung pos ba gam ser chen 'dril/

'The Outcasts (candala=g.yung po) swarm around a great golden-domed palace (ba gam = pho drang)' meaning perhaps a temple, cathedral, mosque, executive mansion, Capitol, etc.

Sounds like like trouble to me. At the very least it reminds me of one of the opening scenes in _The Day After Tomorrow_.

The good news is, a few pages down, the Kalachakra tantra is supposed to last at least another 150 years on earth, or longer. This is good. It also says that Rudracakrin, the future 25th Rigden king of Shambhala, is living in the south -- perhaps in Goa? Mysore? Boca Raton?

I don't mean to make light of this prophecy. It definitely means something, many possible things, with regard to the world of facts (snang) and possibilities (srid).  But as the first Kongtrul was known to say, prophecies are difficult to trust...they don't come true unless many conditions are fulfilled. So we don't need to let the world go to hell in a handbasket just yet.

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With all due respect, I believe this has already been covered in Ghostbusters, by the famous admonition "Don't cross the streams!"

However, in a rather more serious vein, I read the above and I am left with an image of biblical-level, cataclysmic flooding, set to occur during the period ruled by a particular constellation, perhaps triggered by a meteor smashing into the ocean. A really, really big tsunami, maybe?

I think I'll take up sailing.