Product Description. Gendun Choephel is a legendary figure in Tibet. Believed to be the reincarnation of a famous Buddhist lama, this promising young monk. Visionary, artist, poet, iconoclast, philosopher, adventurer, master of the arts of love, tantric yogin, Buddhist saint. These are some of the terms that describe. A new translation of The Passion Book brings to light author Gendun Chopel’s belief that even sexual pleasure could be a path to enlightenment.
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Rahula Sankrityayana — In my article on Tibetan Buddhism, which I posted quite sometime back, I made a brief reference to the efforts of Mahapandita Rahula Sankrityayana in bringing back from Tibet, precious books and ancient manuscripts that were no longer available in India. Cboephel that context, I wrote a few lines about the scholar and his life.
He seems to have been quite a cool guy: I am not sure if the Chofphel ever regarded himself a cool-guy. I wonder, despite his scholarship, whether the term cool-guy meant anything to him. His time was much before the slang entered into books. Even in case he was wise to the term, I cnoephel, he could not have cared less. I had no opportunity to meet the Mahapandita. I did, of course, send him a few letters.
He replied in Hindi to my letters in English. That was during — 61, my hard times, the years of great stress and total confusion. He advised me to dig into Pali texts if I have to understand the Buddha and his choephsl.
I later came to know that soon after that he returned to India; and died of caner, in the yearat Darjeeling. I could not pursue Pali studies. I had other priorities; I had to earn a living. That took me to the genduun called Bombay. I was initially attracted to Rahula Sankrityayana through his books on travel, especially his fascinating experiences in that land of mystery, Gebdun. It attempts to reconstruct early human history from pre-Vedic times to the coephel modern India It focuses on various stages in the civilizations that flourished in the regions between the basins of the two great rivers the Volga in Russia and the Ganga in India.
The remarkable thing about the book is the way it presents history as a series of stories of imaginary characters. That was very fascinating.
His basic education was in Urdu and Sanskrit at the village school.
You will not get this life again. He was bitten by the travel-bug quite early in life. He survived by doing odd jobs; and serving the groups of wandering mendicants, sadhus. Some say; he learnt Devi Upasana during this period. After staying with the sadhus for nearly a year, he gendyn home for a brief period ; and, then again left for Varanasi to study Sanskrit under a Vaishnav pundit, Baba Ram-udar Das.
He also taught himself some Indian languages and English. He learned photography as well. He again left Varanasi on a long pilgrimage of South India. On return, he settled down at the Arya Samaj, Lahore; and pursued Vedic studies.
Heat that time, was in his twenties; and, his writing career started here. He wrote for Sanskrit and Hindi periodicals.
He was imprisoned for three years, during It was while he was serving his term in the prison, Kedarnath got acquainted with the Buddha and his teachings. It had a profound impact on him. He learnt Pali and Sinhalese languages; and studied the Buddhist texts — the Tipitakas — choepel the original. After a stay of about three years, he left Sri Lanka and joined Dr. Rajendra Prasad who later became the first president of the Indian Republic in social constructive activities.
He also became the president of the Azamgarh unit of the Indian National congress. Bitten by the travel bug, he quickly left for the forbidden land of Tibet.
Ggendun India — Tibet border, during the British Raj, was virtually sealed; and, it was extremely difficult to enter Tibet from India.
Sankrityayana, therefore, took a circuitous and a very hazardous route to Tibet, which was hardly traveled.
He entered Tibet through Kashmir. Some say; he even got secret initiations. He did succeed in thisto a certain extent. He too lived an interesting and an adventurous life. Gendun Choephel visited India and was thoroughly taken up by the turbulence of the freedom movement. It is said, in India he experienced the most creative phase of his life. Gendun Choephel returned to Tibet in He got associated with the Tibetan Revolutionary Party ; and, designed its logo: He began to write the political history of Tibet ; but this attempt was abruptly stopped by his arrest.
He was accused of insurrection and thrown in jail for three years. Inhe was chodphel. But his heart was broken ; and, he promptly drowned his desperation in alcohol.
Soon afterwards, inthe Chinese army overran the Tibetan troops in Eastern Tibet. Shortly after the occupation of Lhasa by the Chinese army, Gendun Choephel diedin the middle of October, And when some vendun people claimed the opposite, they were exposed to various difficulties, such as being burnt alive.
Today, even in Buddhist countries everybody knows that the world is round.
However in Tibet, we still stubbornly state that the world is flat. Every man has a woman. Every woman has a man. Both in their mind desire sexual union. What chance is the for clean behavior? If natural passions are openly banned, unnatural passions will grow in secrecy. Most of the books and manuscripts he brought back from Tibet had been lost in India; but preserved in Tibet.
What he had brought back was a literary treasure. All his later writings revolved around this collection, in one way or the other. He settled down in Patna for a while, researching into the Sanskrit and Tibetan manuscripts he brought back from Tibet. He even toyed with the idea of setting up a Buddhist University in Nalanda. While working on the Buddhist manuscripts in Patna, he was asked by the Mahabodhi Society, Calcutta to go to England to spread the message of the Buddha.
Sankrityayana accompanied by Ananda Kausalayana, a Buddhist monk and scholar, left for Europe and England during the year While in England, the celebrated Indologist Theodor Stcherbatsky was greatly impressed by the scholarship of Sankrityayana ; andinvited him to Russia. He stayed in Russia for more than ten years, until Sankrityayana did not have formal education and degrees; yet, in consideration of his learning and scholarship, he was appointed professor of Indology at the University of Leningrad.
At the Universityhe taught IndologySanskrit and Bengali. He published about ten books in Bengali while he was there. He became a member of the Communist Party, around By about this timehe gave up his monastic status. She helped him in his work on Tibetan — Sanskrit dictionary. They got married; and had a son, Igor.
The Treasury of Lives
He was now a full-fledged member of the Communist Party. He wrote books and pamphlets on communist ideology. Despite chkephel bonhomie, the communist gejdun found it hard to tolerate his radical views and behavior. He was promptly expelled from the communist party and USSR, after about a decade of his life as a communist. His Russian wife and son were not allowed to accompany Rahul to India.
Stalin was then in control of the Soviet Union. On his return to India, he resumed his Buddhist work.
Gendün Chöphel – Wikipedia
From there, he went to Tehran, Shiraz and Baluchistan ; and, finally returned to India. It is said that during his lifetime he visited Tibet four times. As regards his physical appearance, it is said Rahula was a very handsome person, standing over six feet tallwith wide forehead, broad shoulders and chest.
He had a pleasant and a winsome disposition. Apart from travelogues he wrote extensively on a verity of subjects such as sociology, history, philosophy, Buddhism, Tibetology, lexicography, grammar, textual editing, folklore, science, drama, and politics, He also produced two huge dictionaries, one Tibetan — Sanskrit; and the other Russian-Sanskrit. He also prepared a glossary of Hindi terms for administrative use.
He also collected and wrote about the ecstatic songs Doha in Apabramsha dialect spoken by the eccentric Siddha saints of Bihar and Bengal. In honour of him, Patna MuseumPatnahas a special section, where a number of rare manuscripts, paintings and other items collected by him are displayed.
The book however appears rather incomplete; becausehe could not finish it in the way he wanted. But he was not allowed to visit the region and collect field data.