Until Nirvana's Time

"A collection of forty-five evocative ritual Dharma songs from seventeenth- to twentieth-century Cambodia, along with essays contextualizing the poems in terms of Cambodian Buddhist doctrine, the ritual lives of practitioners, and their melodic structure. Until Nirvana's Time consists of forty-five poems of Dharma songs from largely anonymous authors translated and introduced by Trent Walker. These songs have never appeared in English translation-many of them have never been published in Khmer either-and they come from oral traditions or were previously only available in personal collections as etchings on palm leaves or handmade bark-paper manuscripts. Because of the way the complex melodies work, one song can take hours to sing and they are, as Walker states, "often recited at night, traditionally in dusk-to-dawn rites of healing, mourning, dedication, and consecration." A link to recordings of the songs in English and Khmer accompanies the book. The poems are organized into four sections, each with their own short and accessible introduction by Walker, a vocal performer of these songs who also completed his dissertation on this topic at the University of California-Berkeley. These sections are "Narrating Lives," on the life and past lives of the Buddha, "Repaying Debts," on our connections with friends and family, "Befriending Death," on death and dying, and "Chasing Peace," on the final goal of nirvana. As a collection, these poems bring the Buddha's story to life while evoking, as Walker puts it, the fact that "we all must ask ourselves, sooner or later, what human life is really about." The book also includes four essays on these poems by the translator. The essays cover cosmology and doctrine of Cambodian Buddhism, how the poems are chanted as daily prayers and public rituals, the oral and written transmission of the texts, and the structure of the way the songs are to be chanted. These songs have been recorded in both the original and in English translation, truly bringing these forty-five songs to life. The poems are sung by several highly skilled vocalists trained in this particular tradition and lineage, including the translator. Many of these performances can be heard on stirringandstilling.org and a selection will also be available on Shambhala's website to accompany the book release"--