Download or read book Tales from the Tibetan Operas written by Gavin Kilty and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eight Tibetan opera narratives express Buddhist concepts in myths and stories for the enjoyment and edification of readers of all ages. Timeless Buddhist ideas come to life in the myths and stories in Tales from the Tibetan Operas. Poetically vibrant, these eight classic lhamo stories have continued to delight and edify Tibetan audiences of all backgrounds, from village children to learned scholar-monks and Dalai Lamas. Western readers can now also get a glimpse into ancient Indian and Tibetan history and mythology through these cultural touchstones. The operas revolve around the drives of the human condition: the desire for power, the irresistible seduction of attraction, thoughts of revenge, attachment to family, the fear of separation and pain, the wish to be free from oppression. On visual display are the human and nonhuman characters of history and folklore — kings, queens, conniving ministers, ordinary folk, yogis, monks, and powerful beings from other realms such as gods and nagas — engaged in plotting, kidnapping, fighting and death, journeys to faraway lands, separation, and reconciliation, often with a quest for seemingly impossible treasure. The suspenseful tales have many dramatic plot twists, but they all end in happiness, where the good achieve their goals and the bad receive their just desserts. The operas thus bring to the people the fundamental ethical laws of behavior and teachings of natural justice based on Buddhist doctrine. The book features more than fifty gorgeous photos of the operas being performed in Tibet and India.
Download or read book Tales from Tibetan Opera written by Yao Wang and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Hidden History of the Tibetan Book of the Dead written by Bryan J. Cuevas and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1927, Oxford University Press published the first western-language translation of a collection of Tibetan funerary texts (the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo) under the title The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since that time, the work has established a powerful hold on the western popular imagination, and is now considered a classic of spiritual literature. Over the years, The Tibetan Book of the Dead has inspired numerous commentaries, an illustrated edition, a play, a video series, and even an opera. Translators, scholars, and popular devotees of the book have claimed to explain its esoteric ideas and reveal its hidden meaning. Few, however, have uttered a word about its history. Bryan J. Cuevas seeks to fill this gap in our knowledge by offering the first comprehensive historical study of the Great Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo, and by grounding it firmly in the context of Tibetan history and culture. He begins by discussing the many ways the texts have been understood (and misunderstood) by westerners, beginning with its first editor, the Oxford-educated anthropologist Walter Y. Evans-Wentz, and continuing through the present day. The remarkable fame of the book in the west, Cuevas argues, is strikingly disproportionate to how the original Tibetan texts were perceived in their own country. Cuevas tells the story of how The Tibetan Book of the Dead was compiled in Tibet, of the lives of those who preserved and transmitted it, and explores the history of the rituals through which the life of the dead is imagined in Tibetan society. This book provides not only a fascinating look at a popular and enduring spiritual work, but also a much-needed corrective to the proliferation of ahistorical scholarship surrounding The Tibetan Book of the Dead.
Download or read book Tibetan Sacred Dance written by Ellen Pearlman and published by Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. This book was released on 2002-12 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the time Buddhism entered the mythical land of the snows, Tibetans have expressed their spiritual devotion and celebrated their culture with dance. This book--lavishly illustrated with color and rare historic photographs depicting the dances, costumes, and masks--is the first to explore the significance and symbolism of the sacred and secular ritual dances of Tibetan Buddhism.
Download or read book The Mirror of Beryl written by Sangye Desi Gyatso and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-05-17 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Composed while its author was the ruler of Tibet, Mirror of Beryl is a detailed account of the origins and history of medicine in Tibet through the end of the seventeenth century. Its author, Desi Sangye Gyatso (1653 - 1705), was the heart disciple and political successor of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama and the author of several highly regarded works on Tibetan medicine, including his Blue Beryl, a commentary on the foundational text of Tibetan medicine, The Four Tantras. In the present historical introduction, Sangye Gyatso traces the sources of influence on Tibetan medicine to classical India, China, Central Asia, and beyond, providing life stories, extensive references to earlier Tibetan works on medicine, and fascinating details about the Tibetan approach to healing. He also provides a commentary on the pratimoksha, bodhisattva, and tantric Buddhist vows. Desi Sangye Gyatso's Mirror of Beryl remains today an essential resource for students of medical science in Tibet.
Download or read book The Handsome Monk and Other Stories written by Tsering Dondrup and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tsering Döndrup is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed authors writing in Tibetan today. In a distinct voice rich in black humor and irony, he describes the lives of Tibetans in contemporary China with wit, empathy, and a passionate sense of justice. The Handsome Monk and Other Stories brings together short stories from across Tsering Döndrup’s career to create a panorama of Tibetan society. With a love for the sparse yet vivid language of traditional Tibetan life, Tsering Döndrup tells tales of hypocritical lamas, crooked officials, violent conflicts, and loyal yaks. His nomad characters find themselves in scenarios that are at once strange and familiar, satirical yet poignant. The stories are set in the fictional county of Tsezhung, where Tsering Döndrup’s characters live their lives against the striking backdrop of Tibet’s natural landscape and go about their daily business to the ever-present rhythms of Tibetan religious life. Tsering Döndrup confronts pressing issues: the corruption of religious institutions; the indignities and injustices of Chinese rule; poverty and social ills such as gambling and alcoholism; and the hardships of a minority group struggling to maintain its identity in the face of overwhelming odds. Ranging in style from playful updates of traditional storytelling techniques to narrative experimentation, Tsering Döndrup’s tales pay tribute to the resilience of Tibetan culture.
Download or read book King of the Empty Plain written by Cyrus Stearns and published by Shambhala Publications. This book was released on 2007-11-09 with total page 1137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: King of the Empty Plain is familiar to every Tibetan yet nearly unknown in the rest of the world. Tangtong Gyalpo's incredible lifespan, profound teachings, unprecedented engineering feats, eccentric deeds, and creation of Tibetan opera have earned this fascinating figure a unique status in Tibetan culture. Believed to be the great Indian master Padmasambhava appearing again in the world to benefit living beings, he discovered techniques for achieving longevity that are still held in highest esteem and are frequently taught six hundred years later. His construction of fifty-eight iron suspension bridges, sixty wooden bridges, 118 ferries, 111 stupa monuments, and countless temples and monasteries in Tibet and Bhutan remains an awe-inspiring accomplishment. This book is a detailed study of the life and legacy of this great master. An extensive introduction discusses Tangtong Gyalpo's Dharma traditions, the question of his amazing longevity, his "crazy" activities manifested to enhance his own realization and to benefit others, and his astonishing engineering and architectural achievements. The book includes a complete translation of the most famous Tibetan biography of Tangtong Gyalpo, as well as the Tibetan text and English translation of a unique early manuscript describing his miraculous death. The text is further enriched with ten color plates and seventy-seven black-and-white illustrations.
Download or read book Love and Liberation written by Sarah H. Jacoby and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love and Liberation reads the autobiographical and biographical writings of one of the few Tibetan Buddhist women to record the story of her life. Sera Khandro Dew Dorj (1892Ð1940) was extraordinary not only for achieving religious mastery as a Tibetan Buddhist visionary and guru to many lamas, monastics, and laity in the Golok region of eastern Tibet, but also for her candor. This book listens to Sera KhandroÕs conversations with deities, dakinis, bodhisattvas, lamas, and fellow religious community members and investigates the concerns and sentiments relevant to the author and to those for whom she wrote. Sarah H. JacobyÕs analysis focuses on the status of the female body in Sera KhandroÕs texts, the virtue of celibacy versus the expediency of sexuality for religious purposes, and the difference between profane lust and sacred love between male and female Tantric partners. Her findings add new dimensions to our understanding of Tibetan Buddhist consort practice, complicating standard scriptural presentations of a male subject and a female aide. Sera Khandro depicts herself and her guru and consort, Drim zer, as inseparable embodiments of insight and method that together form the Vajrayana Buddhist vision of complete buddhahood. By advancing this complementary sacred partnership, Sera Khandro carved a place for herself as a female virtuoso in the male-dominated sphere of early twentieth-century Tibetan religion.
Download or read book Love Letters from Golok written by Holly Gayley and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Love Letters from Golok chronicles the courtship between two Buddhist tantric masters, Tāre Lhamo (1938–2002) and Namtrul Rinpoche (1944–2011), and their passion for reinvigorating Buddhism in eastern Tibet during the post-Mao era. In fifty-six letters exchanged from 1978 to 1980, Tāre Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche envisioned a shared destiny to "heal the damage" done to Buddhism during the years leading up to and including the Cultural Revolution. Holly Gayley retrieves the personal and prophetic dimensions of their courtship and its consummation in a twenty-year religious career that informs issues of gender and agency in Buddhism, cultural preservation among Tibetan communities, and alternative histories for minorities in China. The correspondence between Tare Lhamo and Namtrul Rinpoche is the first collection of "love letters" to come to light in Tibetan literature. Blending tantric imagery with poetic and folk song styles, their letters have a fresh vernacular tone comparable to the love songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama, but with an eastern Tibetan flavor. Gayley reads these letters against hagiographic writings about the couple, supplemented by field research, to illuminate representational strategies that serve to narrate cultural trauma in a redemptive key, quite unlike Chinese scar literature or the testimonials of exile Tibetans. With special attention to Tare Lhamo's role as a tantric heroine and her hagiographic fusion with Namtrul Rinpoche, Gayley vividly shows how Buddhist masters have adapted Tibetan literary genres to share private intimacies and address contemporary social concerns.
Download or read book Tibetan Peach Pie written by Tom Robbins and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Internationally bestselling novelist and American icon Tom Robbins’ legendary memoir—wild tales of his life and times, both at home and around the globe. Tom Robbins’ warm, wise, and wonderfully weird novels—including Still Life with Woodpecker, Jitterbug Perfume, and Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates—provide an entryway into the frontier of his singular imagination. Madcap but sincere, pulsating with strong social and philosophical undercurrents, his irreverent classics have introduced countless readers to natural born hitchhiking cowgirls, born-again monkeys, a philosophizing can of beans, exiled royalty, and problematic redheads. In Tibetan Peach Pie, Robbins turns that unparalleled literary sensibility inward, stitching together stories of his unconventional life, from his Appalachian childhood to his globetrotting adventures —told in his unique voice that combines the sweet and sly, the spiritual and earthy. The grandchild of Baptist preachers, Robbins would become over the course of half a century a poet-interruptus, an air force weatherman, a radio DJ, an art-critic-turned-psychedelic-journeyman, a world-famous novelist, and a counter-culture hero, leading a life as unlikely, magical, and bizarre as those of his quixotic characters. Robbins offers intimate snapshots of Appalachia during the Great Depression, the West Coast during the Sixties psychedelic revolution, international roving before homeland security monitored our travels, and New York publishing when it still relied on trees. Written with the big-hearted comedy and mesmerizing linguistic invention for which he is known, Tibetan Peach Pie is an invitation into the private world of a literary legend. “A rollicking reminiscence of his Appalachian upbringing, his spiral through the psychedelic ’60s, and his unconventional path to literary stardom.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
Download or read book The Yogin and the Madman written by Andrew Quintman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tibetan biographers began writing Jetsun Milarepa's (1052–1135) life story shortly after his death, initiating a literary tradition that turned the poet and saint into a model of virtuosic Buddhist practice throughout the Himalayan world. Andrew Quintman traces this history and its innovations in narrative and aesthetic representation across four centuries, culminating in a detailed analysis of the genre's most famous example, composed in 1488 by Tsangnyön Heruka, or the "Madman of Western Tibet." Quintman imagines these works as a kind of physical body supplanting the yogin's corporeal relics.
Download or read book Beyond the Robe written by Bobby Sager and published by powerHouse Books. This book was released on 2013-06-25 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve years ago, the Sager Family Foundation, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, and the Dalai Lama's private office began a groundbreaking program called Science for Monks to teach Western science to Tibetan monks and nuns. Recently, Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama announced a decision by the leaders of the monasteries to make the study of Western science part of the core curriculum required of all monastic scholars in the Gelug tradition. Beyond the Robe tells the story of the decade long development of the Science for Monks program and what it reveals about the larger role Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns can play in their monasteries, in their communities, and in the world at large. Beyond the Robe is a collection of essays from the monks and scientists containing the first insights that have come out of this historic effort. Beyond the Robe follows the monks' study of science, but it is not a science book. The real story here is what the study of science has revealed about who these remarkable men and woman really are and the much bigger role that they seem so suited to fill. "I hope that Beyond the Robe helps you to feel closer to the monks and nuns and to better understand their immense potential to provide leadership in their world and further insight into ours. Instead of simply admiring them from afar, let's all get close enough to really listen." —Bobby Sager "Bobby Sager has been not only a most generous and dedicated benefactor of the Science for Monks program since it was launched 12 years ago, but also he is a direct witness to its flourishing. His testimony and insight are key to an in-depth understanding of this unique encounter between two major traditions of knowledge, Buddhist contemplative science and modern Western science. His account provides a welcome encouragement to this wonderful meeting of minds and hearts at the service of humanity." —Matthieu Ricard "Beyond the Robe has many fascinating dimensions and makes a critical contribution to Tibet, to Buddhism, and to our world today. The space it opens is the world of the Tibetan Buddhist monastic universities, still thriving in Indian exile. Within that world, we encounter, in beautiful and thought provoking ways, the living tradition of Buddhist monastics, their realms of study, debate, prayer, and meditation, and their living intellectual and experiential encounter with the modern worldview, with its discoveries, technologies, and anxieties." —Robert Thurman
Download or read book The Tradition of Everlasting B n written by and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An annotated translation of five key texts of the Everlasting (Yungdrung) Bön school selected by the late H. H. Menri Trizin Rinpoché that includes scriptural teachings, a root tantra based on revealed teachings of the unconditioned absolute, a canonical commentary on the root tantra, an exposition of the Yungdrung tantric system, and the oral instructions on Bön meditation practices associated with experiencing the nature of the mind, the Great Perfection systems. This authoritative annotated translation of five key texts of Everlasting (Yungdrung) Bön by Marc des Jardins opens up a relatively unknown tradition that, since the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet, has undergone great transformations in its philosophy, doctrinal teachings, and meditative practices. Each text represents an important aspect of the tradition. The first text, by Drogön Azha Lodrö Gyaltsen (1198–1263), presents the grounds and paths of the Greater Vehicle of the Bön tradition and represents the philosophical ideology of its teachings based on the scriptures contained in the Bön canon. The second text is a short root tantra attributed to revealed teachings from Kuntu Zangpo, the personification of the unconditioned absolute. The third text is a commentary on this root tantra attributed to Drenpa Namkha (fl. eighth century), a Bönpo sage contemporary with Padmasambhava. The fourth text, by Nyamé Sherap Gyaltsen (1356–1415), presents a general exposition of the tantric system according to Yungdrung Bön. The final text, by Drutön Gyalwa Yungdrung (1242–90), pertains to the oral instructions on the meditation practices of Bön, especially on the cycle of practices associated with experiencing the nature of the mind, the Great Perfection systems. All five texts have been selected by the late H. H. Menri Trizin Rinpoché, Lungtok Tenpai Nyima (1927–2017), the thirty-third abbot of Menri Monastery, the central institution of the Yungdrung Bön school.
Download or read book Mahamudra and Related Instructions written by and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism began in the eleventh century with such renowned figures as Marpa and Milarepa, and its seminal meditative traditions are Mahamudra and the six Dharmas of Naropa. Mahamudra teachings focus on the cultivation of profound insight into the nature of the mind. The Mahamudra texts in this volume include a lucid work by the celebrated master Tsele Natsok Rangdrol and works by the twelfth-century master Shang Rinpoche, the great Third Karmapa, the Eighth Tai Situ, and Drukpa Pema Karpo. The volume also contains an inspirational work by Gampopa, the Drigung Kagyu root text, The Single Viewpoint, the Sixth Shamarpa's guide to the six Dharmas of Naropa, and finally an overview of tantric practice by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal, author of the famous Moonlight of Mahamudra. The texts in this volume were selected by the preeminent scholar of the Kagyu school, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche.
Download or read book The Music of China s Ethnic Minorities written by Yongxiang Li and published by 中信出版社. This book was released on 2006 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: China boasts many great musical traditions, these traditions have made an indelible mark on Chinese culture that has been felt by every generation.
Download or read book The theatre of Tibet written by Antonio Attisani and published by Mimesis. This book was released on 2024-04-05T00:00:00+02:00 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: he theatrical culture of Tibet is probably the last to remain virtually unknown to the outside world, and to the West in particular. As well as describing the current situation of studies on Tibetan theatre, the current volume also provides an essay on imagination and how it is concretely manifested by the Tibetan people and their actors. Recent decades have seen radical change for Tibetan theatre, ache lhamo, now performed by a diaspora for whom a declining artistic and technical change derives from an uncertain politics concerning secular and popular culture, as well as the ongoing cultural genocide caused by China’s subjection of Tibet.
