The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes

© 1997

Based on the reminiscences of

Hurree Chunder Mookerjee

C.I.E., F.R.G.S., Rai Bahadur

Fellow of the Royal Society, London

Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London and recipient of Founder's Medal

Corresponding Member of the Imperial Archaeological Society of

St. Petersburg

Associate Member of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal,

Calcutta

Life Member of Brahmo Somaj, Calcutta

I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Lama. You may have read of the remarkable explorations of a Norwegian named Sigerson, but I am sure that it never occurred to you that you were receiving news of your friend.

Sherlock Holmes

The Empty House

Is not all life pathetic and futile?… We reach. We grasp. And what is left in our hands at the end? A shadow. Or worse than a shadow – misery.

Sherlock Holmes

The Retired Colourman

The Mandala (Tib.: dkyi-‘khor) is a sacred circle surrounded by light rays or the place purified of all transitory or dualist ideas. It is experienced as the infinitely wide and pure sphere of consciousness in which deities spontaneously manifest themselves… Mandalas have to be seen as inward pictures of a whole (integral) world; they are creative primal symbols of cosmic evolution and involution, emerging and passing in accordance with the same laws. From this perspective, it is but a short step to conceiving of the Mandala as a creative principle in relation to the external world, the macrocosmos – thus making it the centre of all existence.

Detlef Ingo Lauf

Tibetan Sacred Art

From time to time, God causes men to be born – and thou art one of them – who have a lust to go abroad at the risk of their lives and discover news – today of far-off things, tomorrow of some hidden mountain, and the next day of some near-by men who have done a foolishness against the State. These souls are very few; and of these few, no more than ten are of the best. Among these ten I count the Babu.

Rudyard Kipling

Kim

When everyone is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before. Listen to me till the end.

Rudyard Kipling

Kim