Wikipedia Trail: King Sagara to Shambhala

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I began this trail while looking up more information on King Sagara, mentioned in the "Bhagiratha and Ganga" story in the PDE Ramayana. He was said to have lost 60,000 sons and I wrote my story this week on that. While reading about him, I was interested to learn more about the age he lived in, because the scale of time involved in the story is massive.

That led me to the Satya Yuga, the first of four Yugas (great ages) which cycle through endlessly. They are not the same length, and the Satya Yuga is 1,728,000 years long. This was fascinating because I already learned about the Kali Yuga, the final and darkest age which concludes with the arrival of....

Dasavatar: The Avatars of Vishnu
Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Kalki, the final avatar that Vishnu occupies in the cycle of existence. He arrives to end the dark age of Kali Yuga, and he is mentioned not only in Puranic texts but also Buddhist literature. A text from Tibetan-Buddhism mentions that there are actually 25 Kalki's, who rule successively from....

Shambhala, whose existence is argued to be pre-Hindu and pre-Buddhist, and was incorporated into these religions as they evolved, represents a kingdom of spiritual and physical evolution which is pure. Supposedly, future Buddha rules there now, which is a fascinating idea. The myth of this heavenly paradise was so popular that both Russia and Germany mounted expeditions to find this fabulous place in the 1930's. Sadly, they were unsuccessful.

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