A long time ago, I was a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Scotland. Then I disrobed and began to work on translating the life and work of the maverick and mysterious 6th Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso. The so-called "Love Songs" of the 6th are available in a number of publications, but below you'll find a translation and commentaryof a text about ten times as long, almost certainly not by his hand (though who can tell?). I wrote this book (with the long introductory essay which accompanies it) several years ago, but have not had any success publishing it. It deals with Tibetan poetry and history and specifically about the way in which the 6th Dalai Lama is basically a mythical presence in Tibet(an culture), and not a flesh and blood human being.
I wrote it initially for the Tibetological community, so it might not appeal to all tastes. That being said, the poems themselves are often funny and dramatic, sometimes weird and crazy, almost always beautiful and hardly ever tedious (unless they repeat themselves...). See what you think...
Download Gsung mgur commentary
Here too is a short paper I wrote about the life and two deaths of the 6th Dalai Lama for the journal published by the International Association of Asian Studies in Leiden.
Download 6th Dalai Lama for IIAS
