SHAMBHALA NOR/cinderella stamps featuring the chod rite of Vajrayana Buddhism

Shambhala Nor Postal Services

"Chod"

2000

a set of two stamps

by Eric Whollem

from

Shambhala Nor

the lost city of the lake of the north

edtions of 100, plus ten artist's proofs each
60  x 89 mm.
Copyright by the artist.

These stamps could be called by a variety of names, including: artist stamps,
artistamps,  cinderella stamps, fantasy stamps,  faux postage, mail art, or 
micronation stamps.

Shambhala Nor could be interpreted as a "micronation" from my own imagination. 
William Blake once said that "Nature is the Imagination." In this he was paralleling the
Buddhist idea that everything we experience is a projection of Maya.

Featured are meditation images based on Himalayan Buddhist folk art as rendered
by myself--using ink on  paper and collage, with border designs created on an antique
1980's word processor.

Shambhala Nor means Lake of Shambhala. Nor is lake in the Mongolian language.

CENTRAL ASIAN SHAMANISM

Shambhala is a legendary city of enlightenment popular in the Himalayas. Many maps to Shambhala have been created over the centuries. Finding Shambhala was a mystic quest

of many yogis. Shambhala was conceived as a city set in a lake. A great eight petalled lotus
floats on this lake, upholding Shambhala and it's millions of inhabitants.

Depicted on this stamp are two wisdom Dakinis involved in the Chod Rites. These rites

include symbolic dissolution and reconstitution of the yogi or yogini's bodies in purified form. These ideas may have originated in the shamanic Bon Po religion that preceeded Buddhism.

Bon Po shares many similarities with Altai Shamanism. The Altai live today in Kazakhstan,

Kirghistan, Tuva, Mongolia, the Uighur regions of West China and elsewhere. View their

beautiful music on You Tube. The throat singing of the Altai is very similar to that found

in Lamaistic music from Tibet.

The Bon name for Shambhala was Ol mo lung ring.