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Robin earned his Ph.D. from Princeton University and was a professor of Comparative Literature. Robin was a founding member of the Nalanda Translation Committee and is well-known for his groundbreaking translation work of the "Gesar of Ling" epic, a primary cultural and religious treasure of Tibetan Buddhists.
Robin was a close and long time student of the great Buddhist teacher and master, the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He was co-director of Rinpoche's first retreat center in North America, Karmệ Chöling when it was established in 1970. By virtue of his deep erudition, and his own experience and realization, he was a gold mine of Shambhala and Buddhist teachings as well as of the history and practice of world religions, world culture, and the arts.
Services, prayers, and practices are being held for Robin by Buddhists around the world. He will be profoundly missed by many university and dharma students and by his family and very many friends.
Services were held at the Milwaukee Shambhala Center on Oakland Ave. For support of the many dharmic projects so dear to Robin, a fund has been established in his name. Donations can be made to the Robin Kornman Fund at any M & I Bank or mailed to: Robin Kornman Fund, C/O M & I Bank, 2701 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., Milwaukee, WI 53207.
The Chronicles Project tribute to Robin Kornman
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My friends have sponsored and put up this web site to help me in my project, producing a first English translation of the great Tibetan Epic of King Gesar of Ling.
Gesar of Ling is the Tibetan national epic, as well as the cultural matrix for the Shambhala teachings of my teacher Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche. For more than Cancera decade I have been working on a translation of this key text that would make available both the religious and the cultural treasures it contains. (There have been a number of re-tellings of parts of the story in various Western languages, but no adequate translation exists.)
The Gesar epic is a particularly difficult text to translate, because it is written in an ancient dialect of Tibetan which most Tibetans, even very learned ones, can not fully understand. I had been working on the translation since 1990, but made slow progress until I began working with the noted Tibetan translator Sangye Khandro and her learned friend Lama Chönam. Lama Chönam is a Nyingma scholar and practitioner who grew up among nomads in the Golok area of Tibet in which the epic originated. Basically, Chönam explained the meaning of the epic line by line and proverb by proverb, and Sangye and I wrote down a translation. In five years, we produced a draft translation of the first three volumes of a nine volume version.
Since then, I have been editing the translations, writing footnotes and a glossary to make it intelligible to a wide audience, and preparing it for publication. Penguin Classics has indicated interest in publishing it.
At this point, I am asking for help in bringing this important work to publication.
But a year ago I discovered that I have a form of cancer, peritoneal mesothelioma, and I had to stop the editing of the translation to fight for my life. My dear friends in the Buddha Dharma have kept me alive with their physical help, their prayers and kind wishes, and their donations, since I had to quit earning a living to fight the cancer.
The cancer grows in my abdominal cavity and must be treated with chemotherapy and eventually a scary operation. The whole history of this you can see in the link “Robin’s Cancer.” In any case, for the moment the chemotherapy has worked and I have go back to polishing the translation and
getting it ready. I don’t know how much time I have, but whatever it is, the translation must come first.
I’d like to ask for donations to support me while I am fighting the cancer so that I can focus on getting well and getting the translation done and to the press. I need money to live on and some money to pay other translators to come out and help me with the work. And I need money for the doctors and to pay my huge insurance premiums ($800 a month).
Through the link Donations you can find a way to contribute to this project.
The aim of this web site is to present to the public my work on Gesar of Ling and my work as a Buddhist teacher and Tibetan translator and to raise money to support this ongoing project. I am one of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s close students from his first days in America. He was very interested in the Gesar Epic and gave many teachings on it, some of which I am going to transmit here at this site. Trungpa Rinpoche had a certain way of understanding and practicing Tibetan Buddhism, and like many of his original students, I want more than anything else to make sure that his way gets passed on. So you’ll find here talks by me on Gesar and the Way of Trungpa Rinpoche and my writings on his Buddhist teachings. We’ll talk about many subjects: the Kagyü Lineage of Tibetan Tantra, the way of Shambhala, the Kalacakra tantra with its universalist and political messages, Trungpa Rinpoche’s view of Enlightened Society, an Enlightened approach to art and literature and a thousand other topics that circulate around the figure of Gesar of Ling. Please see the link marked Teachings, which will gradually grow as I put more of my writings there and refer you to the writings of my Kagyü brothers and sisters in the Dharma.
My real life’s work is to produce a translation of the Tibetan oral epic, King Gesar of Ling. You will find here today bits of my translation, a glossary to go with it, and all sorts of information on the epic. As I do a final polishing of my chapters, I’ll post them on this site for comment, plus other Gesar tidbits. For example, I show here a tanka (an icon) which displays images of most of Gesar’s famous heroes from the epic and I give identifications of them. You’ll be able to see portraits of his knights and warriors, his advisors, and the magical horses they all ride. I hope this will help as a reference point for reading the epic; we need images of the characters and gods of the Gesar Epic to make the reading a more substantial experience. There are prayers that go with the epic and I will publish some of them as well, for the epic is a coherent religious text and can be
practiced by people who wish to truly live in the world of Gesar.
Today, for example, I’m uploading Chapter I of Volume I, the introductory chapter and a section on Ling and the Chinese Emperor, a commentary on these chapters and a large glossary. Please see Translations. There will be more to come.
The Secret Flag
Dharma Art and Enlightened Society I have been working with Jack Niland, a painter, to get across some wonderful teachings Trungpa Rinpoche gave us on painting and the highest meditation practice. Jack has a tremendous amount of lore he received orally from Rinpoche in the early day before our scene became a colossus. We’re going to transmit some of it here and I’ll be showing some of it on my pages. For example, here is the special flag Trungpa Rinpoche designed in the early days and told Jack to keep secret until this moment. We display the flag as a sign that we intend to transmit all of Rinpoche’s teachings and let nothing of his living lineage be lost. Jack’s specialty was art and he has saved Rinpoche’s teachings on Dharma Art. My specialty was culture and I’ll be passing on a parallel set of teachings Rinpoche gave me on how to construct an enlightened society.
Please look at the translations I give here, the teachings in the teachings section, the Gesar Art, the Dharma Art, the other aspects of our web site. And if you think his activity should be supported, go to the funding page and make a donation. And I, in exchange, will promise not to look to either side, but to work on my corner of Trungpa Rinpoche’s heritage, the Gesar Epic and the notion of
Enlightened Society with all the time I’ve got left.
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