Glossary entry for
burning ground

The term burning ground has the following meanings:

• a place where waste products are burnt
• in India, a place where corpses are burnt in connection with funeral rites
• a patch of land where seeping natural gas is permanently burning

This is the spiritual meaning:

"From an esoteric point of view, Tibet has passed through the burning ground of purification on a national level. What is the "burning ground"? When a developing entity, be it a person or a nation, reaches a certain level of spiritual development, a time comes for the lower habits, old patterns, illusions and crystalized beliefs to be purified so as to better allow the spiritual energies of inner being to flow thru the instrument without distortion. The spiritualization of the entity has sufficiently strengthened it enough to endure this extremely stressful experience."

From "The New Tibet - The Pure Land", World Service Network,1993. Quoted in Donald S.Lopez Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1998) p.203.

Contributed by Alan Pert

Van references in:

• "Dweller On The Threshold" (on Beautiful Vision)
• "Burning Ground" (on Healing Game)

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