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| The Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas: A Pilgrimage to The Oracle Lake | 
| Director: Michael Wiese
Actors: Steve Dancz, Glenn Mullin, Khenpo Tashi
Studio: Michael Wiese Productions
Category: DVD
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $19.57
You Save: $5.38 (22%)
Buy New from $19.57
Avg. Customer Rating:  (19 reviews)
Sales Rank: 34915
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD
Running Time: 120 minutes
Number Of Items: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
UPC: 799898200394
EAN: 0799898200394
ASIN: B000LMPM9G
Release Date: August 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Join a spiritual pilgrimage and explore the Tibetan caves where the early Buddhist masters achieved enlightenment. Visit the sacred Oracle Lake where the Dalai Lamas have received prophetic visions. Other major power spots of Tibet include: Potala Johkang Drepung Monastery Nechung Drak Yerpa Valley The caves of Songsten Gampo, Jowo Atisha, and Guru Rinpoche Samye Monastery Lambhu Lagang Castle Ani Sanku Nunnery Lama Tsongkhapa Meditation Cave Tranduk Kangyur Stupa Terdak Lingpa Tashi Lumpo Champa Zhishi Sakya Chokhor Gyal Milarepa s Cave The Oracle Lake Our guides are Steve Dancz (composer for National Geographic), Glenn Mullin (author of over 25 books on Tibetan Buddhism) and Khenpo Tashi (a Bhutanese monk and international teacher.)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Sacred Sites December 28, 2008
This DVD brings the viewer to Tibet to meet its people and to share in the meaningful experiences of their lives and spiritual practices. It is inspiring as well as educational. A must see for anyone interested in Tibetan Buddhism.
 Great sights, but uninsightful November 21, 2008
"The Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas: A Pilgrimage to The Oracle Lake" is a 70 minute collection of home movies of a 2007 trip to Tibet dressed up as a feature documentary. There is some wonderful footage of the Tibetan countryside and numerous sacred sites, including temples, mountains, caves, and lakes. If you've never been to Tibet and know nothing about it, this film might serve as a good visual introduction to the culture and the landscape. The rest of us are left to wonder if the project was simply a clever means for recovering the expenses of what looks to be a rather financially substantial pilgrimage.
The film is narrated in flat, almost dispassionate tones by Steve Dancz, an American music professor, who along with a group of what appears to be around 15 other middle-aged Americans is led across Tibet by American Buddhist teacher Glenn Mullin and Bhutanese religious scholar Khenpo Tashi. Along the way Dancz relates the rather typical tourist reaction of wonder and surprise at being in Tibet, as well as reporting historical and contemporary spiritual claims of supernatural events. Most anyone who has traveled in the region has had similar reactions, and who when visiting a place for only a few hours, or even a few moments, is going to risk insulting the locals by asking if they really believe that walking around a pile of rock reciting a mantra has the power to affect meteorological conditions? Most of us just try to soak up the experience.
But if you are inclined to produce a commercial document of your visit, one that you want to share with the world, one that has the potential to inform and help people understand the relevance of your pilgrimage, it seems such a document is the appropriate occasion for questioning, for examining your experience, for evaluating the meaning of your journey. Perhaps for Dancz there was no need to question, in which case The Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas is an example of what you see is what you get. I'd like to think there's more going on, that Dancz was on deadline to finish the film, that perhaps producer Michael Wiese forced him to excise the more interesting observations, and that a more introspective book or film may be forthcoming
For anyone who might be looking for a video document of Tibetan landscapes and scared sites, this is a film worth checking out. For anyone hoping to learn about the Dalai Lamas, about Buddhism, about the meaning of pilgrimage, about the experience of ambition fulfilled, you would do better to look elsewhere.
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A Sense of Reverence and respect October 10, 2008
As a teacher of Buddhist meditation, I read the reviews of this DVD with great interest. Watching it, I felt it had been made with a real sense of reverence and respect for things Buddhist. No one made fun of anything and the reactions were all sincere. This is a great film for teaching classes on Buddhist sites and Buddhist art. One gets a real feeling of what it's like to be in Tibet, which is a stretch today, with the Chinese domination. I would highly recommend this DVD to any serious teacher of World Religions or of Buddhist meditation.
SAcred Pilgramage May 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This beautiful film bring us exquisite photos of the the mythic monasteries we read about and whose names are embedded in any study of Tibet or its religion. Thank goodness, not a travelogue, it captures, but lightly, the spirit of pilgrimage.
A Tibetan monk once told me you should always meditate for a time which is shorter than what you would like, leaving you wanting more. So it is with this film. We are left wanting more, and that is good.
There is a lovely, clear and thoughtful interview with Glenn Maullin who is both scholar and guide and, charmingly, old Tibetan hand.
A Truly Independent Film... March 27, 2008
I'm not a follower of any organized religion, I'm a journeyman filmmaker and it is from that perspective that I truly enjoyed this film.
The great American director, Frank Capra was one of the first filmmakers to have his name above the title. Why? Because he believed in the concept of "One Man, One Film." He believed that the director was the man who was responsible. I have seen no better example of that concept than at a recent screening of Michael Wiese's documentary feature, "The Sacred Sites of the Dalai Lamas"
This is a documentary that harkens back to the 1960's work of Pennybaker and Wiesman, because Mr. Wiese has stripped away all of the fancy filmmakeing equipment and simply taken his digital camera to Tibet and observed. He observed its beauty, its simplicity, its sacred sites, many of its truely gifted "holy men" as well as the daily trials of the didicated deciples who went along on the journey.
This feature is so inspirational as a work of truely independent cinema that I believe it should be taught in every film school on the planet. This entire film is the work of basically three gifted men: the director / cinematographer / ediitor, Mr. Wiese, as well as two of his long time friends and associates who did the beautiful music and charming narration.
I recommend this film to anyone in the world who has a story to tell or who has the itch to make a movie. Watch this film and learn how to use the simplicity of a digital camera, available locations and abvilable light to make your own feature film.
Micheal Wiese has empowered you to do it...
Many of the deciples who went on this adventure to Tibet, claimed to have had "a vision" wile visiting one of the Sacred Sites. Mr. Wiese remarked that he was too busy shooting to take the time to have a vision...
I must humbly disagree with him. I believe that he difinately had a vision, a strong, clear and independent vision... and every bit of it is up there on the screen...
David Worth
Director / DP / Lecturer / Author
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