Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The Tibetan Epic of Gesar of Ling by Robin Kornman The Epic of Gesar of Ling. The Epic of Gesar of Ling—Gesar’s Magical Birth, Early Years, and Coronation as King is the translation of the first three of over one-hundred volumes of the national epic of Tibet, sung by bards since the 12th century C.E. and compiled as a woodblock under the direction of the great Ju Mipham Jampel Gyepai Dorje in the 19th century. It represents a true treasure of Tibetan culture that, due to the Tibetan diaspora, now incorporates itself within the Western canon of great philosophical and religious works. The inspiration and endeavor to translate these volumes began over two decades ago with the late Dr. Robin Kornman, who was both a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and a scholar of comparative literature. Fortuitously, he met Sangye Khandro and Lama Chonam, and they worked for many years together on the initial translation. Several months of the year, Sangye and Chonam sat at Robin’s dining-room table in his eastside Milwaukee lower flat, working—word-by-word and line-by-line—through the text with illuminating digressions spurred by Robin’s great curiosity and expansive mind. Each session was recorded. Later on, Jane Hawes became Robin’s close friend and Tibetan student; and after Robin’s death in 2007, she, Sangye Khandro, and Lama Chonam pursued a collaboration that completed the translation. Jane listened to the tapes of all the sessions; and again line-by-line, the three translators worked through the text. This is a marvelous story of the foils of human existence told as the Tibetan bards sung it in prose, in proverbs of the cultural wisdom of Tibet, and in poetry of the precious jewel of Buddhism. Translated by Robin Kornman, Lama Chonam, Sangye Khandro. Also available in paperback. Click here to subscribe to the LOB newsletter for updates and offers. More from this collection. A Vase of Nectar to Inspire the Faithful - A Biography of Patrul Rinpoche. Crucial Advice and Practices to Assist the Dying Process: An Invaluable Manual. Crucial Advice and Practices to Assist the Dying Process Teaching. Crucial Advice and Practices to Assist the Dying Process: An Invaluable Manual. Robin Kornman. Robin Kornman (April 17, 1947 – July 31, 2007) is best known for his work as a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, as well as a founding member of the Nalanda Translation Committee. Up until his death, he had spent many years working on an English translation of the Tibetan (living) epic Gesar of Ling — it is his work on this translation that has gained him the most recognition. A longtime student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kornman had been co-director of Trungpa Rinpoche's first Shambhala Buddhist retreat center in North America, Karmê Chöling, when first established in 1970. [1] The Tibetan Epic of Gesar of Ling by Robin Kornman. Professor Robin Kornman, reknowned Tibetan translator and scholar of the Tibetan Gesar of Ling epic died peacefully on July 31 after a long illness. Robin was a life-long student of the late Tibetan master, Chogyam Trungpa, founder of Naropa University, whom he met in his youth. As a translator of Tibetan literature, Robin was part of the Nalanda translation team who worked on The Rain of Wisdom , one of the first collections of Tibetan poetry translated into English. For decades Robin devoted his life to working on translating the Gesar of Ling epic, the longest epic in world literature believed to be over 1000 years old and still widely performed through out Central Asia. While a number of translations exist of the Gesar epic, Robin's unique gift and exacting scholarship rivals many of these translations. For an exquisite taste of his elegant language, click here, to access some examples. The Gesar of Ling represents a living Heroic epic cycle where the forces of good and evil are played out in the human realm. In Robin's own words: The Tibetan Epic of Gesar of Ling is an immense oral epic which is still sung by bards. It exists in literally hundreds of volumes, some of them transcriptions of bardic performances, others original compositions. The Gesar is a vast treasury of Inner Asian literary culture. It is still sung today in Tibet and is known in different languages and editions along the Silk Route and throughout the Far East. It contains long sections of prose narration alternating with hundreds of epic ballads and examples of every sort of poetry in the Tibetan repertoire, both folk and classical. In size it is like The Arabian Nights. In its breadth, unity, and seriousness, it is like the Homeric epics or the Mahabharata. It tells the story of a enlightened warrior named Gesar. At the beginning of the epic he is a Buddhist deity named Good News, living peaceably in a Buddhist heaven. The Tibetan tantric sorceror, Padmasambhava, and the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, attempt to involve him in worldly affairs. These events are reported in the extremely metaphysical first volume of the epic, the Lha gLing or The Divine Land of Ling. During the years I worked for the poet, Allen Ginsberg, Robin met with Allen on a number of occasions for feedback on his translations into English. For a fine article on Robin, read Larry Mermelstein's recollection. Robin Kornman. Robin Kornman (April 17, 1947 – July 31, 2007) is best known for his work as a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, as well as a founding member of the Nalanda Translation Committee . Up until his death, he had spent many years working on an English translation of the Tibetan (living) epic Gesar of Ling — it is his work on this translation that has gained him the most recognition. A longtime student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Kornman had been co-director of Trungpa Rinpoche's first Shambhala Buddhist retreat center in North America, Karmê Chöling, when first established in 1970. [ 1 ] The Power of a Tibetan Hero Kluge Fellow Discusses Asian Epic. What makes a story or a hero resonate so strongly across cultures? Robin Kornman, one of the Kluge Center's International Studies Fellows, discussed this question in a May 23 presentation titled "Nomadic Self- Knowledge in Inner Asia: the Tibetan Gesar of Ling Epic." King Gesar is a popular hero throughout Asia whose notoriety, Kornman believes, will eventually spread to the West. Kornman received a grant from the Luce Foundation to work at the Library of Congress using the Asian collections to complete his translation and study of this widely-known Tibetan epic, the largest existing oral narrative of the Silk Route. Kornman received a doctorate in comparative literature from Princeton University in 1995, has degrees from the University of Colorado and Indiana University, and has received research grants from many organizations, including the Luce Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. He has traveled throughout Asia and Europe in search of people familiar with the village dialect of the Yak herdsmen who lived near the Yellow River and originally created the epic of King Gesar. Although Kornman is a Tibetan-Buddhist translator and transcriber, he found that he needed "better informants" to help him translate the story's many written versions. Through his travels, he located more than 100 volumes of works, previous translations from the 1940s, and modern art and artifacts relating to the heroism of King Gesar. Kornman found that the field of anthropology, rather than comparative literature, helped him uncover the cross-cultural elements associated with the tales of King Gesar. He noted that the epic is used today as a role model for the younger generation throughout Asia—that of a devilish youth who goes on to become a wise Buddha. As part of his lecture, Kornman played sound recordings of traditional and modern music depicting the life of King Gesar; he also showed slides of a modern brocade portraying King Gesar as a Silk Route magician, a native Tibetan hero and an enlightened Buddha with rainbows emanating from him. "This Tibetan epic has traveled across cultures in what anthropologists define as 'standard nomadic behavior,'" said Kornman. Kornman used many texts in the Library's Asian Division to assist in his editing and translation of 800 pages of the epic, which is to be published by Penguin Press. He thanked the Asian Division staff for locating crucial reference materials for him and paid particular tribute to the Library's Tibetan specialist, Susan Meinheit. "I hope that one day readers will be able to find this Tibetan epic at the Library of Congress on the same shelf as Homer's 'Iliad,'" he concluded.