Robin Kornman 1947-2007

Robin,

My great and wonderful teacher, my most great and wonderful friend, my true friend.

This jigten (/'jigs rten/) that is the "receptacle of all that is perishable", this "support of all that will disintegrate", this external world that appears to us, has a great and gaping hole now that you are not here with us.

Robin had a remarkable gift of being just who he was without pretense. His great body unabashedly extended itself to the food, wealth, music, gardens, literature, and depth and readth of the phenomenal world.

Countless friends found their way to you in countless ways. Though Robin and I had been social acquaintances, that initial thread of connection through Tibetan, that most remarkable of auspicious coincidences, grew into a big thick rope of genuine friendship and love. We spent countless hours reading, writing, rewriting, the smallest translation detail checked and rechecked in references and cross-references - Robin's mind displayed itself in teaching from a oceanic depth of knowledge about Buddhism, literature, language, music, history, all contained in his devotion and realization of practice.

Robin was the greatest of teachers "like a loving mother" always seeming to know the next most useful lesson, never bored in unraveling it for teaching over and over.

It is the most inconceivable of coincidences that when Robin collapsed I was the farthest away I had ever been, on the other side of the world, in a place I never would have been had I not known Robin - in Mcleod Ganj, at a Tibetan lesson (where though I have so much more to learn, it became heartbreakingly more obvious what a great teacher Robin had been in giving me a basis to be able to learn). And that, when Robin died, I was in Leh, Ladakh, easily the most beautiful place on earth, where the sky is so close and so clear, that I could feel in some heartfelt way connected to that great mind that was Robin's and that was now dissolving into what is inconceivable and vast. I hold dear those hours and hours I spent with Robin - translating, talking, drinking tea, traveling to places near and far, those places alternating happy and sad, from Abhishekas to oncology consultations. Truly in this world it is unfathomably precious to have had such a friend.

My tears fall like monsoon rains and my being is soaked in the sadness that I knew one day would come. My tears fall like monsoon rains and my heart is filled with happiness for every moment together.

Love to your sister, your whole family, and the massive tangle of friends connected through knowing you.

tsewa thaye (/brtse ba mtha' yas)/

Limitless love go with you Robin -

Jane Hawes, July 31 2007