Films & Books
The Kalpa Group has an ongoing programme for producing films and books.
The Kalpa Group supports a range of activities that will expand the scholarly understanding of the Bön tradition and its formative position in Tibetan history, and present these findings to a broad audience in order to generate a greater understanding of the Bön tradition, and its central role in the lives of Bönpo communities. Projects include annotated translations and textual studies, books and articles for a more general readership, documentary films, and databases of manuscripts and photographs relevant to Bön.
This multi-faceted approach is exemplified by In Search of Zhangzhung (see a slide show: Movie or Stills), an internationally-acclaimed film that tells the story of a pilgrimage by the Bönpo monk and scholar, Geshe Gelek Jinpa, to Western Tibet in search of traces of the vanished land of Zhangzhung.
A second film on Zhangzhung is now at an advanced planning stage.
Scholarly studies of Bön have tended to favour the concerns of the "higher" vehicles, while the rich heritage of popular ritual, and the place of secular communities vis-à-vis the religion, have been underrepresented. In an attempt to redress the balance, the Bön Project is supporting the study of a range of protective and curative rituals. A number of films of key Bönpo rituals, with digital reproductions and English translations of all the texts used, will be made available on a dedicated website. The first of these films, The Dögyab: a Bönpo Exorcism Ceremony from Mustang, Nepal, will receive its premiere at the 12th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies in Vancouver in August 2010.
The author of the main Bonpo guide to Mount Kailash, Karu Druwang Tenzin Rinchen (1801-1860), left an autobiography that contains a fascinating account of his travels in Tibet as well as in Himalayan regions such as Mustang and Dolpo. A translation of this work by Khenpo Tenpa Yungdrung and Charles Ramble will be published in 2011.
Other translations due to be published include the Dragpa Lingdrag (Per Kvaerne and Dan Martin), the earliest Bönpo history of Tibet, and the biographies of the lineage masters of the spiritual tradition known as Atri. A major study of Bön liturgical music by Ricardo Canzio will appear in 2011.
