The Wisdom Matrix September Films: The Great Transmission at the Rubin Museum

For 1,200 years Tibet has played a major role in Buddhism’s survival. The Great Transmission depicts the sacrifices made by generations of Tibetans to keep Buddhist knowledge alive, delving into the story of Buddhism’s arrival in the Land of the Snows, and the flowering of art and culture that followed as Tibet became the inheritor of an ancient tradition. Over the centuries, a long chain of Tibetan masters carefully cultivated this Buddhist heritage, creating a civilization of extraordinary spiritual depth. But in 1959, Tibet was invaded by Communist China. In the upheaval that followed, Tibet’s sacred texts were almost completely destroyed, and with them, Tibetan culture. Without the texts and the teachers who understood them, how could this ancient knowledge survive? Witnessing the disintegration of his culture, Tibetan refugee and Buddhist lama Tarthang Tulku decided to dedicate his life to restoring the knowledge of his tradition. For the next forty years, he worked tirelessly to find, edit, print, and distribute Tibet’s irreplaceable texts. Working with a handful of volunteers, he would eventually deliver over four million books into Tibetan hands, in one of the largest free book distributions in history.