Tibetan Literary Arts

The Shang Shung Institute is pleased to sponsor in part the production of this catalog for Smith College's Tibetan Literary Arts Exhibit, curated by Marit Cranmer, in honor of the visit of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso in 2007.

This exhibition was a modest attempt to introduce a few of the treasures within the vast and extraordinary field of Tibetan literature. As noted in the included essays, Tibet's written tradition has a rich history full of complexity that is only recently becoming known in the West. And its poetry, valuing as it does wisdom and intrinsic awareness, stands with the great world poetry of the human spirit.

Included in this book are the following lectures or writings:

Forward: Luigi Ottaviani, Oliver Leick, & Paola Zamperini
Introduction: Marit Cranmer
Tibetan Literature: Chogyal Namkhai Norbu
From "Light of Kailash": Donatella Rossi
Early Bon Literature: Peter Kvarene
Traditional Secular Literature of Tibet: Tulku Thondup
Poetry and Spiritual Experience in the Tibetan Tradition: Thupten Jinpa
Divinty Secularized: Peter K. Sorensen
A Small Stone Casts its Ripple: Jacqueline Gens
The Transmission of Presence - The Tibetan Poetics of Ineffable Experience: Steven D. Goldman
The Song of The Vajra: Poem from the Nyi Zla Kha Sbyor Tantra
Notes on the Poems and Illustrations