Until Nirvana's Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia

by Trent Walker, Kate Crosby

A unique Buddhist tradition, accessible in English for the first time—translations of forty-five Cambodian Dharma songs, with contextualizing essays and a link to audio of stunning vocal performances.

Until Nirvana’s Time is the first collection of traditional Cambodian Buddhist literature available in English, presenting original translations of forty-five poems. Introduced, translated, and contextualized by scholar and vocalist Trent Walker, the Dharma songs in this book reveal a distinctive Southeast Asian genre of devotion, mourning, and contemplation. Their soaring melodies have inspired Cambodians for generations, whether in daily prayers or all-night rituals.

Trained in oral and written lineages in Cambodia, Walker presents a carefully curated range of poems from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries that capture the transformative wisdom of the Khmer Buddhist tradition. Many of the poems, having been transcribed from old cassette tapes or fragile bark-paper manuscripts, are printed here for the first time. A link to recordings of selected songs in English and Khmer accompanies the book. These frank and compelling poems offer mirrors to our own lives—even as they challenge Buddhist conventions of how to die, how to grieve, and how to repay the ones we love.

Genres: Poetry, Music, Asia, Religion, Spirituality

368 pages, Paperback

First published December 27, 2022

About the author

Trent Walker is the author of Until Nirvana’s Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia (Shambhala Publications, 2022) and the co-editor of Out of the Shadows of Angkor: Cambodian Poetry, Prose, and Performance through the Ages (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2022). He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies and a Lecturer in Religious Studies at Stanford University. A scholar of Southeast Asian Buddhist chant, literature, and manuscripts, he has published widely on Khmer, Lao, Pali, Thai, and Vietnamese Buddhist texts and recitation practices. For links to his academic publications and other resources, visit www.trentwalker.org

Reviews

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

a beautifully translated and researched book on Cambodian Buddhist poetry. I spent some time living in Cambodia, but didn’t get the chance to learn much about their Dharma songs, so I was thrilled to find this book at the Barre Center

[Sandra Massey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book knowing nothing about buddhism but reading this book made me interested in learning more and it also taught quite a bit.