Until Nirvana's Time: Buddhist Songs from Cambodia

Winner of the 2024 Khyentse Foundation Prize for Outstanding Translation​

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.


About the Author
TRENT WALKER is Assistant Professor of Southeast Asian Studies and Thai Professor of Theravada Buddhism in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. A specialist in Southeast Asian Buddhist music, literature, and manuscripts, he has published widely on Khmer, Lao, Pali, Thai, and Vietnamese Buddhist texts and recitation practices. He has trained in Cambodian Buddhist chant since 2005 and is a regular speaker at temples, retreat centers, and universities.