Rev. Danny Fisher

Just a Buddhist Minister Trying to Benefit Beings
July 26, 2010

A Gift of Dharma for 7.26.10

Photo by Michael Wood.

Today’s dharma quote is yet another from the Vidyādhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939-1987), whom I first quoted and wrote a little bio for here. This is it:

Inner authentic presence comes from exchanging yourself with others, from being able to regard other people as yourself, generously and without fixation. So the inner merit that brings inner authentic presence is the experience of nonfixed mind, mind without fixation. When you meet a person with authentic presence, you find he has an overwhelming genuineness, which might be somewhat frightening because it is so true and honest and real. You experience a sense of command radiating from the person of inner authentic presence. Although that person might be a garbage collector or a taxi driver, still he or she has an uplifted quality, which magnetizes you and commands your attention. This is not just charisma. The person with inner authentic presence has worked on himself and made a thorough and proper journey. He has earned authentic presence by letting go, and by giving up personal comfort and fixed mind.

July 26, 2010

“A Conversation with One of the Buddhist Literary Heritage Project’s American Ambassadors” – This Week’s Post is Up at Shambhala Sun Space!

Ambassadors, in Bir, together with the Project's Executive Director (L-R): Nisheeta Jantiani (India); Sarah Wilkinson (US); Helen Bonzi (Canada); Huang Jing Rui (Executive Director); Frank Lee (Singapore); Ushnisha Ng (Singapore).

My latest “On the Buddhism Beat” post is now online over at Shambhala SunSpace.  This week, it’s a conversation with Sarah Wilkinson, one of the American ambassadors for Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche’s Buddhist Literary Heritage Project. Sarah is also a student in the Psychology program at University of the West, where I am professor in the Religious Studies department.  Here’s a snippet of our conversation:

Sarah, would you please explain the Buddhist Literary Heritage Project for those who aren’t familiar with it?

The Buddhist Literary Heritage Project is a project that evolved from a conference hosted by the Khyentse Foundation in March 2009. Obviously it was conceived of prior to that date, but that’s when fifty translators, scholars, and lamas met for the “Translating the Words of the Buddha” conference at Deer Park Institute in Bir, India, just outside of Dharamsala.  The idea was to get together to try to figure out exactly how to go about translating all of the Buddha’s teachings, with a more urgent focus on those that are only available in Tibetan right now. Knowing that the language has changed a lot and is kind of dying off, there’s a sense of urgency about getting these Buddhist texts translated. Some of these teachings are only available in Tibetan, and only five percent of what’s in Tibetan has been translated into English thus far. Some of these texts have been translated into Chinese, but only about 15% of those have been translated into English.

So there are many, many teachings of the Buddha only available right now in Tibetan—and Classical Tibetan at that, which relatively few people can understand at this point. So we’re trying to make sure that great lamas and qualified translators get together to both train new translators over the next couple of decades and make sure that these teachings of the Buddha are made available to everybody before it’s too late. This is a long-term project and is expected to take 100 years. Actually, I believe the ultimate goal is to get English (to begin with) translations of all the Buddha’s teachings, whether from translations in Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese, or Pali, into a single, user-friendly database for the use of scholars and practitioners alike.

Read the rest here.