Words Well Spoken: Maxims of Earth and Stone

On a winter evening in 2005, while sipping hot coffee, all alone, at my favourite haunting place, India International Centre in Delhi, without any specific reason, I suddenly recalled some stanzas of "Water and Wood" composed by Je Gungthangpa which I had read many years ago. It caused me to think of whether I could try to write something in imitation of it. So I wrote few stanzas "Of Stone", as my first name Doboom means 'stone vase'. The stanzas seemed to form smoothly. Feeling a sense of receiving some inspiration, every evening during a month I wrote a couple of stanzas before going to bed, and completed the stone part. Meanwhile, I had requested his Holiness the Dalai Lama for a teaching on "The Path to Enlightenment" and got the opportunity of receiving it in Dharamsala. So, based on some comprehension of the teachings, I started writing stanzas "Of Earth" and completed it at the end of the teachings which lasted several days.