by Paul Eliefrom Georgetown University
Buddhist Autobiography, Elevated
Benjamin Bogin is a fixture on the Hilltop as a professor of Buddhist studies in the theology department. But he can be forgiven for thinking that the Hilltop – the nickname for Georgetown’s main campus – is a misnomer. In an earlier life he spent six years in Kathmandu, Nepal – elevation 1400 meters — directing study-abroad programs in the Himalayas for students from American high schools and colleges.
The elevation of the Hilltop — at the Observatory near Yates Field House — is 52 meters.
Earlier this week Bogin gave a presentation from a new book of his at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan – elevation 4 meters — which is to New York City what Leonard Cohen’s redoubt on Mount Baldy is to Los Angeles: a site where perceptions of Buddhism are projected and sharpened.
Bogin’s research deals with Tibetan Buddhist autobiography and the ways visual art, narrative, and sacred geography intersect in Buddhist cultures – and all these interests come together in the book, called The Illuminated Life of the Great Yolmowa. It’s Bogin’s English translation and explication of the autobiography of the seventeenth-century Tibetan Buddhist Yolmowa Tenzin Norbu — renowned as a tantric adept, teacher, author, and painter, but especially as the author of this autobiography.
And not just the author: Yolmowa illustrated the autography, and the illustrations (that’s one up top) are “the only known example of a Tibetan visual autobiography.” Bogin explains:
"These dynamic and colorful scenes provide a window into the world of seventeenth-century Tibetan Buddhism that differs greatly from the better-known religious histories and the static iconography of most thangka paintings. They are presented here for the first time.”
How many of us get the chance to present the work of a major thinker in a different culture for the first time, as Bogin did at the Rubin, and does in the book? Not so many.
The original manuscript is in the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala, India — elevation 1457 meters.