Holly Gayley, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, received a 2021 Kayden Translation Award for her book, Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of the Tibetan Visionaries Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tare Lhamo. An inspiring and intimate tale set against the turmoil of recent Tibetan history, Inseparable across Lifetimes offers for the first time the translations of love letters between two modern Buddhist visionaries. The letters are poetic, affectionate, and prophetic, articulating a hopeful vision of renewal that drew on their past lives together and led to their twenty-year partnership. This couple played a significant role in restoring Buddhism in the region of Golok once China’s revolutionary fervor gave way to reform. Holly Gayley, who was given their correspondence by Namtrul Rinpoche himself, has translated their lives and letters in order to share their remarkable story with the world.
The Kayden Translation Award at CU Boulder is given biennially in recognition of an outstanding creative or scholarly translation in the fields of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. The award was established to honor the memory of Eugene Kayden, a translator in his own right, and to promote the translation of texts that would help encourage the exchange of knowledge and research in a variety of fields.