為保存西藏宗教文化典籍做出巨大貢獻的Gene Smith先生於12月16日去世

Jinasaagara

E Gene Smith早年師從薩迦派德雄仁波切﹐從上世紀60年代起為美國國會圖書館工作﹐收集出版西藏佛教經籍﹐使得大量幾乎絕跡的典籍得到保存。由於Gene Smith多年接觸西藏佛教書籍和各派大德﹐所以對各派的教典﹑傳乘﹑寺院等事無所不知﹐被公然為非藏人之中對西藏佛教最博學者。由於他的努力﹐許多西藏寺院從新得到被認為已經遺失的佛典﹐美國許多大學圖書館也都獲得大批藏文典籍。Gene Smith私人收集的藏文書籍多至上萬種﹐多年來曾為許多喇嘛﹑學者提供圖書和信息。對於求教者﹐不論地位高低﹐Smith是有問必答。有人說甚至半夜3點都曾收到過他的email答復。他知道法尊法師有藏譯大毗婆娑論﹐十幾年前曾提供法尊法師漢譯七寶藏論的訊息﹐可惜沒有及時追尋。在過去十年左右﹐Smith致力建立www.tbrc.org網站﹐通過互聯網向讀者提供藏文典籍。主要著作有Wisdom Publications出版的Among Tibetan Texts。

有關E Gene Smith的詳細生平見以下網頁﹕
http://archive.thebuddhadharma.c ... ter/gene_smith.html

悼念Gene Smith的網站為﹕
http://www.egenesmith.org/

洛桑丹尊

鞠躬致敬，悼念缅怀！

zy

感恩、致敬先辈

笨者之帚

关于“十幾年前曾提供法尊法師漢譯七寶藏論的訊息”，他当时提供的消息称，这部漢譯七寶藏論在四川喜饶俄热活佛手中，然而，这是上海王渊明（网名：金顶三世）放出去的消息，真实情况是，王渊明手中似乎只有一本实相宝藏论的译稿，还是郭元兴先生的译著，而非法尊法师的，他虽然称要将漢譯七寶藏論供养给喜饶俄热活佛，然而据信，喜饶俄热活佛并没有收到漢譯七寶藏論的译稿，喜饶俄热活佛已然圆寂，末学曾与他的官方网站的站长联系，并由该网站的站长打听喜饶俄热活佛的眷属，并没有漢譯七寶藏論译稿的消息。喜饶俄热活佛是在去美国加州治病期间同Gene Smith先生谈起有人欲捐献汉译七宝藏论的消息的，当时他还没有这部手稿，后来也不曾收到。
藏譯大毗婆娑論据说手稿被带往DLSL，国内似乎未曾见到过。
以上是末学知道的部分，或许极其有限，仅供参考！

monlam

先生所為饒益教法眾生極大
敬佩無已

weihao

感恩！

景宗

沉痛哀悼，先生爲藏傳佛教作出的貢獻福澤百代。  

英文訃告如下：

Ellis Gene Smith, outstanding pioneer of Tibetan Studies and an academic maverick who singlehandedly preserved for posterity the enormous heritage of Tibetan texts on philosophy, history and culture, died at his home in New York City on December 16.  The cause is not determined but likely is connected to a series of heart-related incidents suffered on a recent trip to South Asia.  He was 74 years old.

For decades, Smith has been universally recognized among scholars of Tibet around the world as the dean of Tibetan Studies. This undisputed and splendid reputation in the field is due to Smith's extraordinary accomplishments in the preservation and dissemination of Tibetan literature; his unparalleled knowledge of Tibetan religious history; his dedication to making Tibetan literature universally accessible, particularly for Tibetans; and the unstintingly generous assistance that he has provided to scholars around the world for more than forty years.

At the time of his death Smith was Senior Research Scholar of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, an on-line digital library and bibliographical resource for the study of Tibetan literature, which he founded with the help of friends and patrons in 1999.  At the heart of this collection of Tibetan works, which has been disseminated to university libraries around the world as well as to countless Buddhist monasteries in Asia, are the manuscripts and blockprints that Tibetan monks and scholars brought out on their backs as they fled ------starting in the 1950's.  Smith was in India at the time and recognized the enormous importance of this literary heritage pouring out of Tibet.  He quickly mobilized the resources, personal connections with Tibetan teachers, and institutional structures to publish, preserve and catalogue these works.  He has continued these labors down to the present, later making connections within China as well as continuing those in India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim to arrange for the publication of hundreds of collections and single rare works of Tibetan literature.  At TBRC Smith has furthered that contribution by using his unparalleled bibliographical knowledge to catalogue the torrent of texts coming out of Tibet over the last half century in terms of their history, authors, and contents.

Gene Smith, as he is commonly known, realized his stunning intellectual achievements without the usual institutional support or positions.   He was born in 1936, in Ogden, Utah, to a traditional Mormon family. His father was a scientist working in a federal guided missile program, one result of which was that the family moved around a lot.  After high school, Smith received a congressional appointment to the military academy at West Point, which he never took up.  He went instead to study briefly at Adelphi College, Hobart College, University of Utah, and finally at the University of Washington in Seattle.  There he had the fortune to meet the great Tibetan scholar Ven. Deshung Rinpoche Kunga Tenpai Nyima, the tutor to the head of the Phuntso Phodrang branch of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism. and one of the greatest traditional Tibetan scholars of the twentieth century, who had been brought to teach at Washington during the sixties.   Smith began his intensive and comprehensive study of Tibetan literature and history at that time, quickly becoming fluent in both colloquial and classical Tibetan, and absorbing much of Dezhung Rinpoche's encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm for Tibetan intellectual history.  In 1964 Smith completed his Ph.D. qualifying exams and travelled to Leiden for advanced studies in Sanskrit and Pali. In 1965 he went to India under a Foreign Area Fellowship Program (Ford Foundation) grant to prepare for writing his doctoral thesis.

In India Smith found himself uniquely qualified to bring together hundreds of Tibetan refugee scholars streaming out of Tibet at that time - often carrying no other possessions than their precious books on their backs - with the publishing industry of India.  The latter was then involved in a special, ingenious arrangement with the United States Library of Congress under the PL480 program, whereby India paid back loans to the United States in the form of books, which were then distributed to participating libraries in the U.S.  Recognizing an unprecedented opportunity to exploit this program to preserve and publish the massive and often unique copies of virtually all of Tibet's literary heritage then coming out of Tibet, Smith took a job in the New Delhi Field Office of the Library of Congress.  He went on to demonstrate great initiative, creativity, and genius in contacting all sects and groups of scholarly Tibetan refugees, identifying thousands of rare and important manuscripts, and arranging to have them edited, copied, and published.

This work with the Library of Congress in Delhi thus represented an unparalleled venture in culture preservation and documentation, and it depended entirely upon Gene Smith's masterful combination of organizational skills and intellectual insight.  The upshot was that American university libraries became stocked with massive collections of indigenous Tibetan literature, collections which have become the basis for all Tibetological research in the United States.

[ 本帖最后由 景宗 于 2010-12-27 00:30 编辑 ]

景宗

Not only did Gene Smith oversee this massive preservation and publication venture, he also wrote countless knowledgeable introductions to these publications, providing the modern world with virtually its first systematic glimpse of Tibetan history in detail. These famous introductions, now published as an anthology entitled Among Tibetan Texts, have been the mainstay of Tibetological research around the world since the early 1970's, and demonstrated Smith's enormous knowledge of the field, far exceeding that of any other non-Tibetan scholar in the world (and most Tibetan scholars as well).  He has thereby provided the first - and only -- detailed guide map to the teachers, schools, institutions, meditative traditions, rituals, lineages, patrons, literary practices, genres, bibliography, philosophical ideas, religious practices, and arts and crafts of Tibetan religious and political history.

After serving as field director of the Library of Congress Field Office in India from 1980 to 1985, Smith was transferred to Indonesia. He stayed in Jakarta running the Southeast Asian programs until 1994 when he was assigned to the LC Middle Eastern Office in Cairo. In February 1997 he took early retirement from the Library of Congress and returned to the United States, bringing with him his own extensive library of Tibetan materials.  He served first as a consultant to the Trace Foundation for the establishment of Himalayan and Inner Asian Resources (HIAR), and then relocated to Cambridge, MA where he joined Wisdom Publications as acquisitions editor launching the Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism series, in order to provide a forum for publishing outstanding new contributions to scholarship on Indian and Tibetan Buddhism and to make accessible seminal research not widely known outside a narrow specialist audience.

While at Wisdom Smith still had the unflagging energy and enthusiasm to develop new and innovative means to make his unique knowledge and literature available to present and future generations.  With the help especially of David Lunsford, Smith proceeded to establish the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center. With the support of the Donald and Shelley Rubin Foundation, he moved TBRC to New York in 2002 where he could make this library accessible to students and scholars. This library quickly became the premier site for Tibetological research in the United States, if not the world, which it remains until today.

During this entire period, continuing to the moment of his death, Smith has freely provided extensive bibliographic information to virtually every Tibetologist in the world today.  Given that there are very few catalogues, indices, or other critical apparatus to this extensive body of Tibetan literature, it is no exaggeration to say that our Tibetological knowledge would be a bare shadow of what it is today had Gene Smith never existed.  He has remained the first resource that scholars of Tibet consult for information, and the material he has provided has become the backbone of the large majority of Tibetological doctoral theses and books that have been completed to date.

Representatives of more than 300 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, India, Nepal, and Bhutan unanimously nominated E. Gene Smith for a lifetime achievement award for his contributions to the preservation of the Tibetan literary and spiritual heritage. The award ceremony took place at the Nyingma Monlam Chenmo international prayer festival in Bodhgaya, Bihar, India, January 22-23, 2010.  Smith also received the Library of Congress Award for Meritorious Service on several occasions, including the Distinguished Service Award in 1997.

At the time of his death, the University of Leiden in the Netherlands was arranging for a ceremony to award to Gene Smith an honorary doctoral degree, which he had never completed despite his many years of outstanding academic work.

Gene Smith is survived by three sisters living in the United States, the dedicated staff at TBRC, and by countless academic scholars around the world.  The latter are not only indebted to Smith for his enormous generosity in sharing his encyclopedic knowledge with them, but will miss him as a most kind-hearted and warm friend.  Smith is held in the highest regard by the Tibetan religious scholastic community as a great visionary and saint in providing a way to preserve the massive literary heritage of Tibet.

Prayer services are currently being held for Gene Smith by the leading lamas of the Tibetan Buddhist world in India.  A public memorial service is being planned for early February in New York City; interested parties may contact memorial@tbrc.org for further information, as well as instructions on how to make a memorial donation in order to carry Gene Smith's work at TBRC further.

For further information on this obituary, contact:

Jeff Wallman, Executive Director, Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center jeffwallman@tbrc.org

Leonard van der Kuijp, Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Studies at Harvard University and Chair of the TBRC Executive Board vanderk@fas.harvard.edu

Janet Gyatso, Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University and member TBRC Executive Board jgyatso@hds.harvard

[ 本帖最后由 景宗 于 2010-12-27 00:40 编辑 ]

释法童

刚刚与胜海居士通电话,他从多处说到先生对藏传佛教/佛典的发心,护持/奉献/贡献.本人虽不懂这些文字,但听听也是极其让人感动,赞叹/ :) 随喜.虽不识先生,但海外许多佛教大德们都为先生发去信件表示悲痛,感恩于他. 后辈们也当记得先生对藏传佛教所做的善行,随喜赞叹,功德无量.

才让杰波

感恩先生功德，祈祷速成正觉，祝愿教法昌盛！

Jinasaagara

這裡有兩篇有關Gene Smith"金·史密斯“的中文文章﹕
http://www.tibet.cn/zxyj/xzft/gwxz/201006/t20100619_594845.htm

http://people.tibetcul.com/snyy/201012/25194.html

(紐約時報上的英文訃告 - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/29/world/asia/29smith.html?_r=1)

以上兩篇中文是學術界的人寫的。大寶法王﹑創古仁波且﹑12世Tai Situpa﹑Dzogchen Ponlop仁波且﹑代表寧碼法王Trulshik Rinpoche的Shechen Rabjang仁波且﹑喇嘛梭巴仁波且﹑桑東仁波且等大德也都紛紛發信表示悼念。大寶法王說他私人對Gene表示感恩並為他迴向。發起英文甘珠爾翻譯的宗薩欽澤仁波且這樣說﹕

We have witnessed in history that there is always an individual and usually an unsung person who would serve and protect the dharma. If we all look back to what he has achieved and done, E. Gene Smith is no doubt such a person. I have always said that Gene Smith has done much more for the dharma, and has achieved much more selflessly than many tulkus and lamas of the present time.

“我們看到在歷史上總會有人--通常是默默無聞者--出來獻身護持佛法。如果我們回顧他的成就和所為﹐E Gene Smith無疑是這樣的人物。我總是說與當代許多活佛和喇嘛相比﹐Gene Smith為佛法所作的遠遠要多﹐並且所作的成就更為無私。”

欽澤仁波且所說的恐怕是在佛法遇到危難時出來奉獻自己而設法拯救的人。Gene是一個傳奇性的人物。他過世後世上少了一部西藏佛法﹑文化的活百科全書﹐許多受益于他的人產生這樣一種感覺﹕我們現在活在一個沒有Gene的世界之中。

[ 本帖最后由 Jinasaagara 于 2011-1-1 03:57 编辑 ]

Jinasaagara

Gene Smith的照片

雪圣宝藏

学习的榜样
光辉的一生

Gene Smith先生，我们深深感恩、怀念您！

[ 本帖最后由 雪圣宝藏 于 2011-1-1 18:34 编辑 ]

景宗

原帖由 Jinasaagara 于 2011-1-1 03:44 发表
這裡有兩篇有關Gene Smith"金·史密斯“的中文文章﹕
http://www.tibet.cn/zxyj/xzft/gwxz/201006/t20100619_594845.htm

http://people.tibetcul.com/snyy/201012/25194.html

(紐約時報上的英文訃告 - http:/ ...

E. Gene Smith, Who Helped to Save Tibetan Literary Canon, Dies at 74

E. Gene Smith, a Utah native who through persistence, ardor and benevolent guile amassed the largest collection of Tibetan books outside Tibet, saving them from isolation and destruction and making them accessible to scholars and Tibetan exiles around the world, died on Dec. 16 at his home in Manhattan. He was 74.

The cause was not known, but Mr. Smith had had diabetes and heart trouble in recent years, said Jeff Wallman, executive director of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, which was founded by Mr. Smith and a small group of friends in 1999.

Now at 17 West 17th Street in Manhattan, the center houses nearly 25,000 books dating from the 12th century. Besides containing many of the seminal texts of Tibetan Buddhism, the collection comprises secular works on a range of topics.

Mr. Smith, a scholar who became so enamored of Tibetan culture that he converted to Buddhism as a young man, was renowned for his seemingly limitless knowledge of Tibetan literature and his equally limitless fervor for saving it.

The center has begun to digitize its collection, making the texts accessible (in the Tibetan language and script) to anyone with Internet access. Almost 14,000 volumes — more than seven million pages — are available on its Web site, tbrc.org, which receives more than 3,000 visitors daily.

“The idea is to deliver the tradition back to the owners of the traditions,” Mr. Smith told the Buddhist magazine Mandala in 2001.

Though Mr. Smith had neither an academic affiliation nor a doctorate, wherever in the world he happened to be living — in New Delhi, where he acquired Tibetan literature for the Library of Congress; Cambridge, Mass., where he started the resource center in his house, sleeping amid towers of Tibetan books; or New York — his home became a magnet for students, scholars, religious leaders and exiles who sought his expertise on Tibet’s rich but little-known literary canon.

“The value of Tibetan literature is two things,” David Germano, a professor of Tibetan studies at the University of Virginia, said last week in a telephone interview. “First of all, it’s one of the four great languages in which the Buddhist canon was preserved.” (The others are Chinese, Sanskrit and Pali, an extinct language of India.)

“In addition to the scriptural canon,” he said, “there were histories, stories, autobiography, poetry, ritual writing, narrative, epics — pretty much any kind of literary output you could imagine. So the second value of the Tibetan canon is it’s one of the greatest in the world.”

The canon was imperiled after the xxx----- Tibet in the 1950s. Though fleeing refugees managed to smuggle some books out, the xxx destroyed a great many others.

“With the close of the Cultural Revolution, you essentially lost much of the Tibetan Buddhist literature,” Professor Germano said. “It was lost to the war; it was lost to the destruction of the monasteries, libraries and collections of books in Tibet that were systematically sought out and burned during the Cultural Revolution.”

Ellis Gene Smith was born on Aug. 10, 1936, in Ogden, Utah, to a Mormon family that traced its lineage to Hyrum Smith, the elder brother of Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith.

After attending a series of colleges, Mr. Smith settled in at the University of Washington, where he studied Mongolian and Turkish, earning a bachelor’s degree in Far Eastern studies in 1959.

Around that time, as he began work on a doctorate at the university, he started studying Tibetan with a visiting lama, Deshung Rinpoche, and was entranced. Further study was hindered, however, by the lack of available texts.

“We had no Tibetan books,” Mr. Smith told The New York Times in 2002. “Deshung said: ‘Go and find them. Find the important books and get them published.’ ”

After advanced study in Sanskrit and Pali at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Mr. Smith went to India in 1965, spending several years studying with exiled Tibetan lamas. He joined the Library of Congress field office in New Delhi in 1968, eventually becoming field director there.

Mr. Smith acquired as many Tibetan books as he could for the library, seeking out Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal and Bhutan and earning their trust. Most of the books he collected were either hand-lettered manuscripts or had been printed in the traditional manner, using carved wood blocks. (Tibet had no printing presses.) Often, a book he obtained was the only known copy in the world.

In India, Mr. Smith began printing new copies of thousands of Tibetan books. He was aided, serendipitously, by a United States program, Public Law 480, which let developing countries buy American agricultural commodities in local currency. The United States would take that currency and invest it in local humanitarian projects.

As Mr. Smith noted, nothing in the law expressly forbade using the money to republish great works of literature. And so, book by book, he brought much of the Tibetan canon to light. His publishing project, which lasted two and a half decades, furnished books to libraries and Tibetan speakers around the globe, greatly augmenting the store upon which scholars could draw.

“Without his vision, many of us in the field would not be doing what we’re doing,” Leonard van der Kuijp, a professor of Tibetan and Himalayan studies at Harvard, said last week.

In later years, after the Library of Congress sent Mr. Smith to Indonesia and then to Egypt, he continued collecting and publishing Tibetan texts through intermediaries. He retired in 1996 and three years later founded the center, where he served as executive director until last year.

Mr. Smith is survived by three sisters, Rosanne Smith, Carma Wood and LaVaun Ficklin.

He was the author of several published catalogs of Tibetan literature and a volume of essays, “Among Tibetan Texts: History and Literature of the Himalayan Plateau” (Wisdom Publications, 2001).

“Digital Dharma,” a documentary film about Mr. Smith and his work, is currently in production.

Interviewers often asked Mr. Smith what propelled his quest. His answer was simple, and Buddhist to the core:

“Karma, I guess.”

[ 本帖最后由 景宗 于 2011-1-2 02:54 编辑 ]

携手云端

七宝藏论，西南民大的万果教授层受一对儿台湾夫妇“委托”组织翻译，结果翻出几部后与台方联系款项和出版等问题时，联系不到人，方知被骗，后因无支持，译稿遗失等问题终使此事无果，可惜可惜，好在现在有三种宝藏论了，还差四个