THI Related News

Anne Klein to give Buddhist Studies Lecture on "The Sunlit Sky: Longchenpa’s Open Secret," October 4 at 7pm, Naropa University

Anonymous — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 19:33:26 +0000

Anne Klein to give Buddhist Studies Lecture on "The Sunlit Sky: Longchenpa’s Open Secret," October 4 at 7pm, Naropa University Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 06/29/2018 - 13:33

Anne Klein (Rice University) will deliver a lecture titled "The Sunlit Sky: Longchenpa's Open Secret" at 7pm on October 4, 2018 at Naropa's Nalanda Events Center, 6287 Arapahoe Avenue, Boulder, Colorado. This lecture is part of an on-going Buddhist Studies Lecture Series, a collaboration between Naropa University and the Department of Religious Studies. Anne Klein will be staying the weekend to participate in the Lotsawa Translation Workshop, October 5-8th at CU Boulder, made possible with the generous support of the Tsadra Foundation.

The Sunlit Sky: Longchenpa’s Open Secret

Buddhist philosophy and practice is oriented to subtle states which are famously inexpressible. This is especially true in the esoteric Great Completeness (Dzogchen) traditions. But the inexpressible is not inaccessible. It can be known. Sensing, affective feeling, and the kinesthetic engagement of the body are intrinsic to such knowing. The brilliant poet-yogi Longchen Rabjam, who gave voice to Tibet’s most powerful Dzogchen compositions, reshaped earlier Buddhist understandings of mind, body, and senses. He saw as portals to an intimate, inexpressible knowing This inexpressible yet ubiquitous, easily obscured yet thoroughly available wisdom is Dzogchen’s open secret.

Although reality is inexpressible, it is deeply felt. What does it feel like? To the body it feels like flows deep within. In wisdom it arises as states of wonder, delight, and loving responsiveness. Such states can seem impossibly esoteric. Yet there are analogies to them in everyday experience. Intuition, for example, also springs forth of its own accord. In philosophy, metaphor and poetry, Longchenpa makes the strange familiar, revealing how these awakened states, seemingly esoteric and distant, are an open secret because our sensibilities are primordially primed for their own awakening. Wisdom, he says, is present throughout every mind and body, and thus, potentially as clear as the radiance of a sunlit sky.

Anne C. Klein /Rigzin Drolma is Professor of Religion at Rice University. She is also a Lama in the Nyingma tradition and a Founding Director at Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism (www.dawnmountain.org). Her training includes close study with major Tibetan Lamas in three of Tibet’s great traditions. Her academic work and teaching-retreats draw from all of these, with special emphasis on Nyingma Heart Essence traditions. Her translation work focuses on Tibetan texts and oral commentaries on them. Her central thematic interest is the embodied interaction between head and heart as illustrated across a spectrum of Buddhist descriptions of human consciousness and its cultivation. She has also been a participant in Mind Life and other conversations between Buddhism and contemplative science. Her seven books include Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse: A Story of Transmission and Meeting the Great Bliss Queen and, most recently, her translation of Strand of Jewels: My Teachers’ Essential Guidance on Dzogchen by Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche. (Photo: Daniel Donner, Garuda Media)

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Alumnus Yönten Nyima and Professor Emily Yeh Cited in Articles on Tibetan Grasslands

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Jan 2016 20:04:53 +0000

Alumnus Yönten Nyima and Professor Emily Yeh Cited in Articles on Tibetan Grasslands Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/21/2016 - 13:04

University of Colorado alumnus Yönten Nyima (PhD in Georgraphy, 2012) and Professor Emily Yeh have been cited in two recent articles in Nature and SciDev.net on the rapidly changing status of nomadism in the grasslands of the Tibetan Plateau. The articles were written following author Jane Qiu's 4700km trek form Xinning to Lhasa during which she met with nomad familys and scientists to understand and assess the impact of government policies, climate change, and other factors on the health of the grassland environment and the nomads who earn their living across its more than 1.5 million square kilometer expanse. Nyima is currently a Tibetan policy researcher at Sichuan University in Chengdu, PRC. The two articles are available at the following URLs:

http://www.nature.com/news/trouble-in-tibet-1.19139

http://www.scidev.net/global/livestock/feature/tibetan-herders-livestock-disaster-fences-floods.html

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Tsadra Foundation Donates Collection of Tibetan Texts to CU Libraries

Anonymous — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 01:42:50 +0000

Tsadra Foundation Donates Collection of Tibetan Texts to CU Libraries Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/18/2015 - 19:42

In September 2014, the Tsadra Foundation generously gifted the CU Libraries with an impressive collection of Tibetan texts consisting of religious, historical, biographical and philosophical materials. The gifted texts include the collected works of a number of the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism, whose works are only beginning to be studied in any depth as Tibetan Studies expands as a field.

The impressive range of collected works are ecumenical in scope, drawing from the major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, include the collected works of Marpa, Milarepa, Rechungpa, and Rangjung Dorje, who are seminal figures in the Karma Kagyu tradition; Shākya Chokden and Gorampa among the great Sakya masters; Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Geluk tradition; the Jonang masters Dolpopa and Tāranātha; Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, who is important to the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions; and the ecumenical nineteenth-century polymath Jamgön Kongtrul.

This collection also includes significant historical and biographical materials, selected works on epistemology and other philosophical domains, including an 18 volume collection of Sakya exegeses, and a 25 volume collection of treatises by masters from the region of Kham. We are fortunate for the diversity of these materials and the depth in certain areas, such as early Kagyu masters, Sakya exegetical materials, writings by key Jonang figures, and masters from the region of Kham.

Among the gems in the donated texts by the Tsadra Foundation are woodblock carvings of The Treasury of Knowledge, an important artifact in the study of the production of Tibetan texts. We used this resource for a multi-media display at Norlin Library celebrating key transformations in the production of Tibetan texts—from woodblock prints to digital display—inaugurated in October 2014 on the third floor of Norlin across from Special Collections. The library installation, titled "Opening the Tibetan Treasury of Knowledge: Textual Transmission and Cultural Preservation," was masterfully designed by the library's graphic design artist, Andrew Violet.

The library installation opened alongside a lecture by Andrew Quintman of Yale University on "The Making of Milarepa: Reading and Writing the Life of Tibet's Great Saint" on Wednesday, October 1st, following the tour and a reception at the CU Art Museum lobby at 3:30pm. The reception included a viewing of a special exhibit of the Lhasa artist Gade on the theme of "pecha" or traditional Tibetan texts, organized by Ariana Maki, Associate Curator of Asian Art at the CU Art Museum. These events and exhibits were planned in conjuction with Tsadra Foundation's conference on "Translation and Transmission" that took place in Keystone, CO on October 2-5, 2014. This conference drew more than 200 scholars and translators in Tibetan Studies to the region. The Center for Asian Studies acted as a Partner in the conference, and CU faculty member Holly Gayley served on its Steering Committee.

Since 2008, through the efforts of Paul Moeller and Megan Welsh, the CU Libraries has been building a collection in Tibetan texts, including historical and biographical works, religious treatises and canonical collections, and contemporary journals—all Tibetan language materials. For example, with funds from Religious Studies, we purchased a complete collection of the recent critical edition of the Tibetan Buddhist canon, published in Beijing by the China Tibetology Publishing House. This includes two major collections: the Kangyur (Buddhist scriptures translated from Sanskrit) in 106 hardbound volumes and Tengyur (Buddhist commentaries translated from Sanskrit) in 112 hardbound volumes, which together take up two full shelves (top to bottom) in Norlin. We also hold important extra-canonical collections, such as The Collected Nyingma Tantras (Snga 'gyur rgyud 'bum phyogs bsgrigs) in 57 volumes and The Collected Commentaries on the Kālacakra Tantra (Dus 'khor 'grel mchan phyogs bsgrigs) in 7 volumes. In addition, we hold several collections of contemporary Tibetan literary and research journals, including Light Rain (Sbrang char), Popular Arts (Mang tshogs sgyu rtsal), and China Tibetology (Krung go'i bod kyi shes rig).

The donation by the Tsadra Foundation significantly expands both the breadth and depth of these holdings. For a flourishing Tibetan and Himalayan Studies program at CU Boulder, it is essential for the CU Libraries to continue to expand and develop its Tibetan language materials. Substantial gifts like this by the Tsadra Foundation provide crucial resources for advanced language study and research for faculty and graduate students at the university and along Colorado's Front Range.

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