FOREWORD

I AM VERY HAPPY and honored to write a brief foreword to this excellent work presenting His Holiness the present Dalai Lama’s commentary on The Essence of Refined Gold by Sonam Gyatso, the Third Dalai Lama of Tibet. I feel it is especially auspicious in that Glenn Mullin has dedicated the volume to my original teacher, the late Venerable Geshe Wangyal, whose tireless efforts have been instrumental in helping His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama spread the Buddhadharma in America. The taming of America is similar in many ways to His Holiness the Third Dalai Lama’s taming of Mongolia.

The Dalai Lamas of Tibet are one the wonders of our planetary history, and their contribution has not at all come to an end. They are the political and spiritual reincarnation of the Bodhisattva, or Buddhist Messiah, Avalokiteshvara, who comes into our violent history to “tame” our emotional wildness and enlighten our intellectual confusion.

The deeds of Sonam Gyatso, such as the taming of the fiery Mongol nations, bear striking witness to the power of the spirit of enlightenment, with its detachment, love, and wisdom triumphant over egotism, greed, and violence. Glenn Mullin is a skilled translator of Tibetan, whose devotion to His Holiness the present Dalai Lama and religious commitment to realizing the Dharma shine through his well-chosen words. His useful work proves that academic linguistic qualification is only a first step in the process of translation. After it must come a commitment to the spirit of the original writings, a selfless determination to submerge the ego formed in a mother culture into the culture of the original text, and then a single-minded discipline to reconstruct the vitality and integrity of the original in the mother tongue.

The great translators of Tibet, who brought the Buddhist civilization to their people, were never concerned with their personal fame or profit. Yet they were honored as “eyes of the nation” (Tib., Lo-tsva-ba; Skt., Lokacakshu), national treasures who became living eyes for their contemporaries to see the wisdom and beauty of the worlds beyond their borders. Glenn Mullin has joined this ancient fraternity of Lotsawas by giving us a wonderful series of works revealing the inner life and outer deeds of all the Dalai Lamas. May all enjoy them and be inspired by the gentle triumphs of this prince of peace. And may His Holiness the living Dalai Lama long continue creating yet another such wonderful biography on the planetary scale of modern times!

Prof. Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman

March 14, 1985

Amherst College, Massachusetts