Rasa Theory and Affect
Nancy Lin (84000) and Annabella Pitkin (Lehigh) lead a rich discussion about how rasa and affect theories might help translators of Tibetan appreciate and communicate about art and literature in English, particularly regarding the more subtle aspects of tone, mood, and feeling in a given work. Nancy begins by facilitating a discussion of a particular verse to develop a shared vocabulary for rasa theory. She then presents potential understandings of rasa through consideration of Bharata’s Treatise on Drama and Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetry and employs this shared vocabulary in a conversation about the work of Tibetan authors. Annabella poses compelling questions about how we describe the indescribable experience and how we might valorize the experience we have when reading or translating from the Tibetan in order to reproduce that experience in English. The facilitators suggest that making efforts toward developing an integral vocabulary for rasa theory and affect theory could help translators continue to deepen the richness of description for emotional experience.
Event: Lotsawa Translation Workshop – Breakout Session
Date: October 7, 2018 – 11:00 am
Speakers: Annabella Pitkin, Nancy Lin
Topics: Translation, Transmission
Nancy Lin
84000, Berkeley
Nancy Lin is a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in Buddhist traditions of Tibet and the Himalaya. Her research focuses on courtly Buddhist culture, drawing from poetry and literature, images, objects, and other textual sources of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her current questions largely cluster around the dynamics between worldliness and renunciation as negotiated in such areas as religion and governance, social distinction and hierarchy, aesthetics and ethos, and wisdom and eloquence. Other interests include rebirth lineages and narratives, Tibetan engagement with Indic Buddhist and literary traditions, and cross-cultural interactions with the Qing court. She has previously held positions at UC Santa Cruz, Dartmouth College, and Vanderbilt University. Currently she is an associate editor for the 84000 translation initiative.
Annabella Pitkin
Lehigh University
Annabella Pitkin is Assistant Professor of Buddhism and East Asian Religions at Lehigh University. Her current research focuses on Tibetan Buddhist modernity, Buddhist ideals of renunciation, miracle narratives, and Buddhist biographies. She received her B.A. from Harvard and Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia, and has lived and traveled extensively in the Himalayan region, China, India, and Nepal. Her articles include “Dazzling Displays and Mysterious Departures: Bodhisattva Pedagogy as Performance in the Biographies of Two Twentieth Century Tibetan Buddhist Masters” (Religions, 2017); “The 'Age of Faith' and the 'Age of Knowledge': Secularism and Modern Tibetan Accounts of Yogic Power" (Himalaya, 2016), and "Lineage, Authority and Innovation: The Biography of Khunu Lama Tenzin Gyaltsen" (Mapping the Modern in Tibet, 2011). She is completing a book manuscript titled “Beggar Modern: Modernity, Renunciation, and Love in the Life of a 20th Century Tibetan Buddhist Saint.”
