AN INTRODUCTION TO TIBETAN PHILOSOPHY
AND HYPERTEXT POETRY

Prophet and priest of every creed and philosophy have found the need to express their most profound thoughts in poetry. Philosophic fundamentals cannot be adequately communicated to other humans in words of prose and in a framework of Aristotelian logic. The free association which is required for the human to evoke experiences of sound and sight and touch and smell in the context of a total message requires the ultimate mastery of the poets art. He/she must know his listeners and viewers, their culture and their environment, selecting those words and phrases which are evocative of the mental associations which she/he wishes to trigger. The cadence of the limerick is humorous, the languor of the sonnet is amorous, the structure of the sijo is paradox. Chinese poetry is quintessential in its requirement that the appearance of the poem and the choice of symbols be evocative of the message. At it's best the poem is no substitute for the nonverbal harmonic symphonies which are produced when unbridled nature and uninhibited humanity act in concert.So it is when humanity obsessed with hubris and ego makes technical advance, seemingly divorced from nature's reality, that philosophers will find a way to adapt (e. g. William Blake) or react(Milarepa) to that technology to reharmonize with nature so that "the diapason closes full in man".

This finest of mental arts has long been practiced by Buddhist monks of every mission but is nowhere as refined as in Tibet. Its finest scholar Milarepa chose to transmit his philosophy in a thousand songs. His rejection of things worldly as the path to enlightenment is tempered by the paradox that tolerates, even encourages, enjoyment of life while preparing for death. This enjoyment calls for a detached appreciation that worldly pleasures must someday be rejected. The finest distillation of this philosophy may be found in the song Milarepa sings when he first meets his great disciple Rechungpa. Much is lost in translation to English but even more is lost to peoples of the world by unfamiliarity with the cultural framework in which the poem is set. The first challenge faced by poets Piña and Yeh Nai-Tsi was the translation of the substance of the poem into the framework of other cultures. Piña was able to recast the poem in the form of the sonnet, the nursery rhyme, the Korean sijo and the Japanese Tanka but only Yeh Nai-Tsi had the diligence, the wisdom, the karma and the skill to bring it to flower in the form of a chinese poem .

If you have already examined these poems you have not yet had the presentation that is required for full appreciation. The translation cannot be understood or appreciated in separate readings for the reader must have a sense of the cultural identities within and throughout the different versions of the poem. It is here that the new technology of information transfer and hypertext provides the poet with the opportunity to lead the viewer through loops of understanding; moving back and forth between each culture at the points of sensitivity. Milarepa's poem is like the center of a flower and the loops are like petals of a flower which, examined, will lead you, as we would lead you, through a path of enlightenment of Milarepa's meaning and message.