Longing to Awaken
An indispensable collection of Buddhist devotional poems and songs
Longing to Awaken features twenty-five translations of Buddhist devotional poems and songs composed by revered Tibetan masters from diverse traditions and time periods. The anthology invites readers to experience a variety of poetic forms that embody a range of emotions, from grief and longing to skepticism and humor, demonstrating the ways that poetry can inspire faith as well as reflect the profundity and at times fraught nature of the teacher-student relationship. This collection gives weight to literary—not simply literal—translation as a crucial endeavor in the transmission of Buddhism today, one with the potential to raise the profile of Tibetan poetry onto the stage of global literature.
Featuring a remarkable interview with esteemed Tibetan master Jetsün Khandro Rinpoché to elucidate Buddhist devotion and a landmark essay by Lama Jabb articulating a Tibetan theory for translating poetry.
This book—whose contributors are among the most innovative translators of Tibetan literature in the world—stands alone among works on Tibetan poetry, both in its attention to issues of poetic theory and practice and its thematic focus on the complexities of Buddhist devotion. It is a major contribution to Tibetan Buddhist and Asian literary studies.- Roger R. Jackson, Carleton College, editor and translator of Tantric Treasures: Three Collections of Mystical Verse from Buddhist India
