WHY CALL IT MARPA? or BLATANT PLUG

This translator is named after the great Tibetan translator, Marpa. At Marpa's time (the 11th century A.D.), Indian Buddhism was at its height, and a generation of Tibetans translators were devoting themselves to obtaining its texts and translating them from Sanskrit. Marpa was their major figure, so much so that today he is known as Marpa Lotsawa, or "Marpa the Translator".

In those days, the job of translator was not for the indoors type. "Translation" required studying with the Buddhist teachers who had the texts and could explain them. That meant travel from Tibet to India. From Marpa's home in the Lhotrak Valley, the easiest way to reach India was 15,000 foot Khala Chela Pass. Even to reach Khala Chela's relatively easy, three-mile high summit, Marpa had to cross two hundred miles of Tibet, most of them difficult and all of them lawless. From Khala Chela downhill to the great Buddhist center of Nalanda University was four hundred miles, but Tibetans would stop for years or months in Nepal, getting used to the low altitudes.

Tibetans had learned the hard way not to go straight to Nalanda. Almost no germs live in the cold, thin air of Tibet, and Tibetans arriving directly in the lowlands had no immunities. Whole expeditions had died from disease within weeks of arrival on the hot plains.

Marpa plays a significant role in my novel, The God Proof, which centers around Kurt Gödel's proof of God's existence. Yes, that Kurt Gödel, and yes, he really did worked out a God Proof (it's in his Collected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 403-404). The God Proof is available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/God-Proof-Jeffrey-Kegler/dp/1434807355.