Sublime

Devipuram—“The Goddess’s Abode”—the temple complex that Guruji had spent more than three decades building up from almost nothing in the rural wilds of eastern India.

Cliff arrived at Devipuram toting a small, pyramidal Sri Meru he had ordered by mail from Devipuram five years earlier.16 One day he brought the Meru to Guruji for his blessing. Handing it back afterward, Guruji told him, “This is for your healing.”

Central Indian city of Patna, on the banks of the Ganges. This was the court of Samudragupta the Great (r. 335–375).

In the Chungnan Mountains south of Sian, I once met a Buddhist master who had founded four Buddhist colleges before finally retiring to spend her last years in a mountain hut. She told me in all seriousness that mantras were taught to humans by beings from another world. No doubt their authors were from another world. At the very least, it was a

Dharmabodhi Sarasvatī.

Gangetic plain and the area in which the Buddha spent most of

Buddha in the Jungle by Kamala Tiyavanich. From her research of Buddhism in Thailand, extending back to the earliest written records of previous centuries, you see a very wide range of meditation practices in use. You read how the forest lineages included healers, educators, schoolteachers, priests, peacemakers, and meditators; some were