Life stories of all the Sakya Trizins
༄༅། །དཔལ་ལྡན་ས་སྐྱ་པའི་གདན་རབས་མདོར་བསྡུས་ཞེས་བྱ་བ་བཞུགས་སོ། །
In preparation for the enthronement in March 2017 of HE Ratna Vajra Rinpoche as the 42nd Sakya Trizin, a collection of the life stories of all the Sakya Trizins is being prepared in both Tibetan and English.
IBA scholars have been invited to carry out the translation from Tibetan into English. They started this project in late November 2016.
The translation team includes Khenpo Ngawang Jorden, Gen Jampa Losal, Ngawang Tenzin, Tsering Tashi, Christian Bernert and Pema Dorje. The Tibetan version was collated by former IBA scholar Kalsang Sherpa.
English into Tibetan team
A new team was formed at IBA early in 2016 to tackle the challenging project of translating a series of academic papers from English into Tibetan.
The topic of these papers is also challenging – questioning the traditional view of the status of women in Buddhism. Authors Allison Goodwin, Alan Sponberg and Mano Mettanando Laohavanich investigate the proposal that Sakyamuni Buddha’s teachings originally gave women equal status.
Here is the abstract for Goodwin’s paper, titled Right View, Red Rust and White Bones : A Re-examination of Buddhist Teachings on Female Inferiority.
“Hundreds of psychological and social studies show that negative expectations and concepts of self and others, and discrimination based on the idea that a particular group is inferior to another, adversely affect those who discriminate as well as those who are subject to discrimination. This article argues that both genders are harmed by negative Buddhist teachings about women and by discriminatory rules that limit their authority, rights, activities, and status within Buddhist institutions. Śākyamuni Buddha’s instructions in the Tripiṭaka for evaluating spiritual teachings indicate that because such views and practices have been proven to lead to harm, Buddhists should conclude that they are not the True Dharma and should abandon them.”
This paper has been previously published in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, ISSN 1076-9005, Volume 19, 2012, http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/
The hope is that this translation will eventually be published as an e-book for dissemination to Dharma groups around the world.