Contemporary Tibetan Poetry Composed by Modernist Buddhist Lamas

Colloquium

JANN RONIS

East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley

Contemporary Tibetan Poetry Composed by Modernist Buddhist Lamas Introduced by Jacob Dalton East Asian Languages and Cultures and South and Southeast Asian Studies, UC Berkeley

••• Monday, April 13, 2015 12:00 pm •••

180 Doe Library, UC Berkeley Modern Tibetan literature has emerged in recent decades as one of the chief venues for the elaboration of social commentary and intellectual exchange among Tibetans on the Plateau. While the corpus of Tibetan fiction and memoir is voluminous, poetry has the widest readership and base of authors. I have been researching modern poetry composed by monks and lamas with an eye towards their development of a modern religious aesthetic and ethical voice. I will offer close readings of several poems by Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1968), a high ranking lama at the Larung Buddhist Academy in eastern Tibet, a remarkably innovative center of Buddhist learning and community formation. Tenzin Gyatso is widely traveled throughout Asia and beyond and he frequently writes about cultures and geographies that would be exotic to the average Tibetan. I argue hat his poems employ an innovative aesthetic and ethical mode of representation of strange and even morally challenging situations; one that is both cosmopolitan and deeply Buddhist. Cosponsored by the Center for Buddhist Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Free and open to the public • Wheelchair accessible www.ieas.berkeley.edu • [email protected] • 510-642-2809