“When wonder adorns wonder, Tibetan nomads sing: ‘Were I to heighten a high thing with something high,/ With clouds I would heighten the collar of the blue sky.’ Here is a heaped cloud offering of essays by distinguished scholars in honor of Janet Gyatso. Plumbing the extraordinary depths of Tibetan language, she has been revealing the riches and wisdom of Tibetan civilization in all its myriad complexities over a lifetime.”—Lama Jabb, author of Oral and Literary Continuities in Modern Tibetan Literature: The Inescapable Nation

“Janet Gyatso truly is a living treasure. She is an inspiration for scholarly excellence in the fascinating dimensions represented in this book—studies in Tibetan literature, the Nyingma tradition, gender and sexuality in Buddhism, early modernity, the more-than-human world, and so much more. But beyond this, she is an example of how to live a life dedicated to intellectual precision, far-ranging curiosity, and wholehearted mentorship.”—Sarah H. Jacoby, author of Love and Liberation: Autobiographical Writings of the Tibetan Buddhist Visionary Sera Khandro

“Through the works she has written, the courses she has taught, and the scholars she has mentored, Janet Gyatso has transformed the field of Tibetan Buddhist studies, as the essays in this volume so eloquently attest.”—Donald S. Lopez Jr., Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

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CU Boulder Alumnus Sonam Nyenda (MA in Religious Studies, 2015) recently founded the Bhutan & Himalaya Research Centre at Royal University of Bhutan (RUB). He is faculty at the College for Language and Cultural Studies (CLSC) in Takse, Bhutan.

The goal of the Bhutan & Himalaya Research Centre (BHRC) is to enhance research on Bhutan and the Himalayan region and to create an interdisciplinary network of research and teaching about and within the region. BHRC organizes events which include inviting guest speakers for lectures on Bhutan and Himalayan culture, art, history and politics, and conducting faculty seminars to further enhance the research capacity of CLCS faculty.

BHRC hosted Professor Holly Gayley from the Department of Religious Studies at CU Boulder to present the inaugural lecture for the Centre. The lecture, "Translating Buddhist Advice on Meditation Across Languages and Cultures," took place with Dr. Karma Phuntsho as Respondent on February 14th in Thimphu with more than 60 faculty and students in attendance.

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This photo essay captures the dreams and realities surrounding artificial glaciers in Ladakh. Informed by three months of preliminary research, it presents some visual evidence to accompany the authors’ reflections while on Fulbright-Nehru Student Research grants in India. 

The authors, Sierra Gladfelter and Eben Yonnetti, are alumni of the Tibet Himalaya Initiative and University of Colorado Boulder in Geography and Religious Studies, respectively.

Visit the full photo essay: "Ladakh’s Artificial Glaciers, Ice Stupas, and Other Attempts to Survive a Warming Planet" here.

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Doctoral student in ethnomusicology, Mason Brown, shares vignettes of his dissertaton fieldwork on Tibetan folk music in Nepal.

Visit the full photo essay, "Folk Songs in Nubri" here.

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THI Visiting Scholar, Andrew Grant, shares his experiences between 2010-2017 at the Tibetan festival of Lurol in the village of Sadjye (Sa dkyel ས་དཀྱིལ) near to the heart of Rebgong (རེབ་ཀོང་།) in Qinghai Province / Amdo Tibet.

Visit the full photo essay here.

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, PhD student in Geography, was awarded a National Science Foundation - Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) grant by the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program. The award will support his dissertation research project titled "Extra-Territorial Sovereignty, Nationalism, and the Politics of Development".

His doctoral dissertation project will explore emerging questions in geopolitics about interactions among extra-territorial sovereignty (the power nation-states exert over people and places outside their borders), state-building, ethnic nationalism, and multi-ethnic contestations over space, place, and political expression. Through an ethnographic case study of Chinese economic and political influence in Nepal, he will investigate the following set of core questions: (1) How do the seemingly banal, everyday, and gendered practices of Tibetan nationalism and place making in one part of Kathmandu reveal the messy intricacies of Chinese extra-territorial politics of development in Nepal?  (2) How do Chinese extra-territorial sovereignty and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce Tibetan refugee subjectivities in Nepal?  (3) How do place based identity politics and Nepali ethnic nationalism produce contestations between Tibetan refugees and members of other ethnic groups in Nepal?  Rupak will examine how everyday interactions, events, and practices reveal the intricacies of macro-scale geopolitics. In doing so, this dissertation will provide additional linkages between feminist political geography and geographies of sovereignty and territory.

For more information on the grant, see the .

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We would like to congratulate our THI graduate students on their graduation from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Sierra Gladfelter graduated with a MA in Geography. Her thesis title is "Training Rivers, Training People: Interrogating the making of disasters and the politics of response in Nepal's lower Karnali River Basin".

Galen Murton graduated with a PhD in Geography. The title of his dissertation is "Border Corridors: Roads, Trade, Aid, and the Geopolitics of State-making between Nepal and China".

Eben Yonnetti graduated with a MA in Religious Studies. The title of his thesis is "Entering the Unified Maṇḍala of All the Siddhas: The Sādhana of Mahāmudrā and the Making of Vajrayāna Buddhist Subjects".

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A library exhibit on "Tantric Ritual in Tibetan Buddhism" opened Wednesday, April 12 on the third floor of Norlin Library, next to the entrance to the stacks. It features an image of Dorje Drolö based on a liturgy from the collected works of the contemporary Nyingma master, Dudjom Rinpoche, and an array of ritual implements, displayed as if someone was engaging in the practice. The exhibit provides an inviting glimpse into the world of tantric ritual with explanations of the liturgical context and the individual implements on display.

The exhibit was designed by Eben Yonnetti, MA student in Religious Studies and Provost Fellow for the University Libraries. It celebrates the collaboration between the Tsadra Foundation and CU Boulder, since the ritual featured comes from a recent donation of Tibetan texts by Tsadra to the University Libraries. The exhibit is also timed to amplify a lecture by Jacob Dalton on Monday, April 17th on "Evoking Enlightenment: The Rise of Poetic Language in Early Tantric Ritual."

Thanks to the Tsadra Director of Research, Marcus Perman, for lending many of the ritual implements on display; to the CU Boulder Libraries, the Provost Fellowship, and the Tibet Himalayan Initiative for funding this exhibit; and to the Rubin Museum of Art for granting permission to use the scroll painting image on display.

Read more on this in a featured article in the Colorado A&S Magazine: 

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, PhD Candidate in Anthropology at CU, recently published a book-length translation of Nida Chenagtsang's  (Sky Press).

From Sky Press: Ati Yoga, literally meaning the ‘utmost yoga,’ is the pinnacle of Buddhist Vajrayana practice. It is the most simple, direct, and profound path to experientially realize the primordial wisdom which is one’s basic nature. In his remarkably clear and accessible commentary which seamlessly weaves in verses from Yuthok’s own root text and quotations from Tibet’s great masters of meditation, Dr. Nida Chenagtsang skillfully points us to the sky-like nature of our own mind which is clear, vast, and unobstructed by the clouds of afflictive emotions. Much more than a theoretical exposition, Volume One of Mirror of Light contains precise instruction on Ati Yoga’s preliminary practices and trekchod (‘cutting through hardness’) -- ancient proven techniques that reveal the present fresh awareness that is free from all confusion and beyond the 'hardness' of dualistic thinking.

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