Free Losar E-card Advice for the Iron Tiger Year

This year Losar coincides with Valentines Day.  There must be a good reason for this.

The last time an Iron Tiger (lcags stag) year came around, His Holiness the Dalai Lama was made the leader of Tibet.  He was 15 at the time, and that was 60 years ago.  Tibetans by tradition have Jovian cycles called rabjung instead of assuming the centuries we've been brainwashed into accepting over the, well, over the... centuries I guess we'll have to say.

If you are one of those dozens of people out on the web at the last minute looking for a free e-card to send to friends on Losar, you can just slide this one off the blog page and into the body of an email.

If you're feeling more inventive, I'm sure you can do better, so why not go to 

http://www.freetigerpictures.com/ (expired link)

or maybe here

http://www.copyright-free-photos.org.uk/tigers/index.htm

and take one of their many photos, like I did, and then add your own words to it, using photoshop?  Well, why the hell not?  Your friends and family will appreciate homemade better than store-bought any day of the year.

I recommend taking one that has the tiger looking calm and serene, relaxed, with its mouth closed.  I don't think you want your holiday greeting to traumatize your friends out of their wits now, do you?

Oh, and I hope all Tibetans and all people of goodwill everywhere who feel concern for their future will find good reason for hope.  Soon.  We'll celebrate some.  And we'll pray.  But we'll also do our best to do something that will make a difference.  Buddha taught that things don't last, and if that holds true at all, it surely does for intolerable situations.

I'll see y'all again before long.  Meanwhile, visit these fresh new Losar blog entries for inspiration:  This one, this one, this one and this one. This article in the Bhutanese newspaper Kuensel also has an interesting bit on some special Bhutanese observances.  And if it's Ladakh you're concerned about, this piece offers an explanation for why they have already celebrated Losar two months ago.  Most of the rest that I could find here and there on the web was a little disappointing, but feel free to schmoogle or scroogle* for yourself.

(*Scroogle is a cookie crumbler, if you want to know.)