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| Preserve the Dharma – Light of Berotsana Outreach 2007 |
Letter from Lama Chönam
Introduction
When the Buddha taught his students, he spoke in the languages of his time and place, and he urged his students to teach in the languages and dialects of their listeners. The Buddha’s words and those of his students migrated into a spectrum of Indian languages and eventually found their way into many Asian languages, which allowed them to spread far beyond the borders of India and endure long beyond the eventual disappearance of the Buddhadharma from the Indian subcontinent. Translated into familiar words and meaningful expressions, the Buddhadharma crossed the Asian continent and permeated the lives of people throughout Central and Southeast Asia, China, Korea, and Japan, the Indonesian archipelago, the Tibetan cultural area, and Russia’s Asian frontiers.
The Buddhist culture of India bequeathed a particularly rich transmission of Buddhadharma to Tibet where it flourished for many centuries. Rarely has the world seen such a manifold and complete acquisitionof one culture’s knowledge by another accomplished with such excellence. Not surprisingly, the world looks increasingly to the Tibetan heritage in its search for the teachings of the Buddha. Yet we know that the Buddhadharma did not appear in Tibet until more than twelve hundred years after the Buddha died. How did Tibet become so central to the life of the Buddhadharma? Through translation. Many thousands of Buddhist texts were translated from Sanskrit and other Indian languages into Tibetan, and the slow infusion of stories, aspirations, inquiry, and contemplation into the language and culture of Tibet provided the ground from which the richness of liberating practice grew in such bounty.
The transformations that have swept over Asia during the past three centuries have in many ways eroded the ground in which the Buddhadharma grew abundantlywhile at the same time casting fertile seeds across land and sea. Now the Buddha’s teachings have begun to take root in America as well as in Europe; as in the past, so in our own time the knowledge of liberation passes from one person to another through the medium of the spoken and written word. For the liberation from hatred, avarice, and fear to be portrayed to an international community in a vivid and compelling manner, not only in our lifetimes but also for many generations into the future, the words serving as vessels for that knowledge need, once more, to be created anew.
We may not have all that much time. Teachers who received a significant portion of their education in Tibet have grown old, and many have already died. The texts they studied describe a life free from aggression and full of compassion, as well as the means for developing such kindness in oneself. Yet without guidance from the elder teachers, it will be difficult to understand the richly worded texts inscribed in a language unrelated to our own, the delightfully complex conversations that have unfolded across generations, or the initially invisible ways in which inquiry, contemplation, and ritual echo and inform one another. If we are to translate the texts in which the masters of the Buddha’s way have expressed their understanding, then the next few years will be critical to our work, for it is the knowledge and experience of the elder teachers that can enable us to speak of freedom, compassion, and joy to those who live here with us now and to those who will come after us.
A generation of Tibetans has grown up in oppressive conditions with relatively limited opportunities for study and practice. A generation of refugees has come of age in India and Nepal; most of them have never seen Tibet. Often the younger Tibetans find themselves in situations not entirely dissimilar from our own, working against time to learn as much as possible from their elders. Meanwhile, the reference points of language, landscape, and human culture shift at an ever accelerating pace, such that even as many texts are recovered, the ability to read those texts slips away. With the clock ticking, we look soberly at a powerful illustration of the Buddha’s teaching of impermanence; just as people come and go, so do languages, entire cultures, and all their knowledge.
When our teachers left Tibet and came to India forty-five years ago, they left so many things behind and they lost so much. Whenever possible, they brought their books with them, and even now they continue to scour the Tibetan plateau in search of texts that disappeared many years ago. They have undergone such hardship, and they have taken so many risks for the sake of the knowledge held in those pages. Have you ever wondered what those pages say? We have, and what little we have been able to learn has only whetted our appetite to hear more.
In 1959, tens of thousands of Tibetans
fled their homeland seeking refuge from violence, oppression,
and annihilation. Though in great danger, many took precious
moments to pack sacred texts, which they then carried with
them as they walked over the Himalaya Mountains to India. Limited
to a few items, often they chose books over food. Such cherished
words must warrant attention.
With such inspiration, Lama Chöying Namgyal, Sangye Khandro, and I formed the Light of Berotsana
Translation Group in 1999 with the aspiration to contribute precise,
lively, and eloquent translations to the library of Buddhist literature
now developing in the English language. Each of us has been studying
with some of Tibet's most learned masters for three decades, and we
continue to work closely with a diverse group of exceptional teachers.
Raised and educated in Golok, Lama Chöying Namgyal (Lama Chönam)
came to the United States in 1992. He brings an extensive education
and the sensibilities of a native speaker to our work. Sangye Khandro
has lived, studied, and practiced among Tibetans and translated for
accomplished Tibetan teachers for the entirety of her adult life. I
received my B.A. in English literature from Princeton University and
earned a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia. When
we met, we found a harmony of interests, knowledge, and styles that
we had no right to expect, and working together we realize work finer
than anything we accomplish individually.
We see a wonderful opportunity to
accomplish work of lasting value. Questions important to contemporary
humanists, scientists, and social innovators have been addressed by
Buddhists in India and Tibet throughout the twenty-five hundred year
history of the Buddhadharma. We note that they have been pondered both
carefully and deeply in their own time and place, and we recognize
abiding and timely value in these investigations. Following the way
of the Buddha, our ancestors have looked long and hard at the practice
of integrity, the process of knowledge, the meaning of dignity, the
nature of mind, and the journey to freedom. Without careful translation
of these deep reflections, very few will have access to them; profound
insight and the benefit it brings may easily be lost to future generations.
The next several years will see us collaborating on a translation of The Essence of the Secret (Guhyagarbha), a text that has played a vital role in Tibet’s view and practice of Vajrayana Buddhadharma since the eighth century, as well as illustrious commentaries upon that text composed by Longchenpa, Jamgön Mipam, and Dodrup Tenbay Nyima. All of this will be accompanied by Khen Rinpoche Namdröl’s copious and discerning oral commentary. Our other projects will include translations of Jamgön Kongtrül’s decisive essays on the two truths, Mind Only, and the Middle Way School, and Jamgön Mipam’s provocative synthesis of Maitreya’s portrait of buddha nature with Chandrakirti’s instructions on emptiness.
Suppose the literature of Tibet were never to be translated. What would be lost? At present we cannot say precisely how the knowledge of body and mind that Tibet’s Buddhist literature may offer to humanity in the coming millennium will illuminate and uplift the lives of our children and their children, even though we feel certain that it will. But consider this: from the tenth to thirteenth centuries, the translation of treatises on philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and alchemy from Arabic into Latin gave Europe the knowledge that Eastern scholars had culled overmany centuries from Greece, India, Persia, China, and the Near East. Among thesewere the works of Euclid, Plato, Ptolemy, and Aristotle. These translations in turn played a crucial role in the developments that we now call the European Renaissance and in the inception of modern science. Suppose these works had never been translated into Arabic or had never passed from Arabic into Latin. Would we wish to forego such knowledge and invention as has come from discovering the philosophy, mathematics, and poetry of India, Persia, and Greece? Probably not. Something like that knocks at our door even now. We do not know what will come from mixing our minds with the visions of Longchenpa, the revelations of Jigme Lingpa, the humane learning of Jamgön Mipam, Karmapa Rangjung Dorje’s meditations upon the ineffable, or Karmapa Mikyö Dorje’s compelling analysis of confusion and clear seeing, but we do know that the keys to a treasury of imagination, compassion, and practical application have been placed in our hands. We have only to turn them in the lock. To do so, we need your financial support.
In every age and every land where the Buddhist teachings have flourished, translation has played a crucial role. Had the texts not been translated, the Buddhadharma would not have endured. This world so full of strife would be much the poorer without the vision of nonaggression, gentle humor, and effective action that the Buddhist teachings provide. Please give some thought to the person you would like to become, the world in which you would like to live, and the wonderful things your children and your friends will do when the right tools and the knowledge of how to use them are placed in their hands. Please help us to ensure the transmission of the Buddhist teachings in their entirety from the world quickly vanishing to the world now being born. Thank you.
May the Buddha’s compassionate wisdom permeate the minds and hearts of all.
Jules B. Levinson with Sangye Khandro and Lama Chönam
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