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David Bennett first became involved in Buddhism in 1975 at Samye Ling Buddhist Centre in Scotland. After studying with various teachers he met Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche IX in 1981 in Australia and continued studying and practicing under his guidance until Traleg passed away in 2012. David was Vice-President of Traleg’s main Centre E-Vam Institute in Melbourne Australia for many years. He works as a graphic designer and has used these skills to contribute to Traleg Rinpoche’s ongoing activities since joining the Centre. ([https://www.shogam.com/project/david-bennett/ Source Accessed Dec 6, 2023]) +
Yael Bentor is a senior lecturer of Indian and Tibetan Studies in the departments of Comparative Religion and Asian Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her current research interests are the dynamics of the evolution of tantric traditions in Tibet during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, focusing on the creation stage of the Guhyasamāja Tantra. She is the author (with Penpa Dorjee) of [[The Essence of the Ocean of Attainments]]: Explanation of the Creation Stage of the Guhyasamāja, King of All Tantras (AIBS, 2013) and [[A Classical Tibetan Reader]]: Selections from Renowned Works with Custom Glossaries (Wisdom, 2013). ([http://www.as.huji.ac.il/user/287 Source]) +
AY\E-SOPHIE BENTZ is a teaching assistant at the Graduate Institute of International
and Development Studies in Geneva. Her research focuses on the politics of the
Tibetan diaspora. +
Samuel Bercholz is the founder and editor-in-chief of Shambhala Publications. +
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev (/bərˈdjɑːjɛf, -jɛv/; Russian: Никола́й Алекса́ндрович Бердя́ев; 18 March [O.S. 6 March] 1874 – 24 March 1948) was a Russian philosopher, theologian, and Christian existentialist who emphasized the existential spiritual significance of human freedom and the human person. Alternative historical spellings of his surname in English include "Berdiaev" and "Berdiaeff", and of his given name "Nicolas" and "Nicholas". Russian paleontologist and Christian apologist Alexander V. Khramov (Borissiak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Ph.D. from Moscow University) attributes his ideas about an atemporal human fall to Berdyaev and Evgenii Nikolaevitch Troubetzkoy. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Berdyaev Source Accessed June 1, 2023]) +
Douglas L. Berger is Professor of Comparative Philosophy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. His primary areas of research and teaching are classical Brāhmiṇical and Indian Buddhist thought, Classical Chinese philosophy, and cross-cultural
philosophical hermeneutics. He is the author of ''Encounters of Mind: Luminosity and Personhood in Indian and Chinese Thought'' (SUNY Press, 2015), ''"The Veil of Māyā:" Schopenhauer’s System and Early Indian Thought'' (Global Academic Publications, 2004), and coeditor, with JeeLoo Liu, of ''Nothingness in Asian Philosophy'' (Routledge, 2014). He has authored dozens of essays and book chapters on the areas of his research and is chief editor of the University of Hawai'i Press book series "Dimensions of Asian Spirituality." He has also served as the president of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (2014–2016). (Source: [https://research.tsadra.org/index.php/Ethics_without_Self,_Dharma_without_Atman Ethics without Self, Dharma without Atman]) +
Alan J. Berkowitz was the Susan W. Lippincott Professor of Modern and Classical Languages and Professor of Chinese at Swarthmore.
Berkowitz, who chaired Asian Studies and served as the Chinese section head for 15 years, joined the Swarthmore faculty in 1989 when Chinese was the smallest section of Modern Languages & Literatures (MLL). As the sole professor of Chinese, he exercised wise leadership and worked tirelessly to make the fledgling section into a vibrant program and became its first tenured professor. Chinese is now the second largest program in MLL after Spanish. ([https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/memory-alan-berkowitz Source Accessed June 2, 2023]) +
Dr. Stephen Berkwitz is an expert in religious studies with a special focus on South Asian religions. Since 2001, Berkwitz has published dozens of publications relating to Buddhism and South Asian culture. His books include Routledge Handbook of Theravada Buddhism, co-ed. w/ Ashley Thompson (Routledge, 2022) and Buddhist Poetry and Colonialism: Alagiyavanna and the Portuguese in Sri Lanka (Oxford University Press, 2013).
He is the department head of religious studies at Missouri State University. He serves as series editor for the Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism series, as well as on the editorial board of the journals "Religion," "Journal of Global Buddhism" and "Buddhist Studies Review." Berkwitz has received several fellowships to conduct research in Sri Lanka, Germany and Portugal, and he holds several professional memberships relating to Asian Studies and Buddhism. +
Lopön Helen Berliner has been a student of Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche since 1994. From 1970-87, she was a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition; and has been fortunate to receive teachings and empowerments from masters of the four great lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. Earlier training in wisdom traditions, East and West, provided the foundation for her path. Ever grateful for the celebration of dharma in the western world, she has worked as editor and/or indexer of books by authors including Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Jetsun Khandro Rinpoche, Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, Ane Pema Chödren, and others. Lopön Helen has degrees in fine arts and psychology, a master’s in Buddhist Studies specializing in environmental psychology, and is the author of ''Enlightened by Design''. As a teacher of Buddhism and contemplative disciplines for over forty years, she delights in sharing the magic, challenges, and ubiquitous potential of the path of practice. ([https://mindroloselling.org/programs-classes/lopons/ Source Accessed Jan 7, 2021]) +
Christian Bernert (MA) comes from Austria where he studied Tibetology at the University of Vienna until 2009. He embarked on the Buddhist path in 1999 under the guidance of Khenchen Amipa Rinpoche. Since 2001 he has been studying at IBA, where he currently works as language program coordinator and translator. Christian is a founding member of the Chödung Karmo Translation Group. ([https://conference.tsadra.org/past-event/the-2014-tt-conference/ Source Accessed Jul 20, 2020])
His dissertation was published as a book-length translation: ''Perfect or Perfected? Rongtön on Buddha-Nature: A Commentary on the Fourth Chapter of the Ratnagotravibhāga'' (v v.1.27-95[a]). Kathmandu: Vajra Books, 2018. +
Alexander Berzin (born 1944) grew up in New Jersey, USA. He began his study of Buddhism in 1962 at Rutgers and then Princeton Universities, and received his PhD in 1972 from Harvard University jointly between the Departments of Sanskrit and Indian Studies and Far Eastern Languages (Chinese). Inspired by the process through which Buddhism was transmitted from one Asian civilization to another and how it was translated and adopted, his focus has been, ever since, on bridging traditional Buddhist and modern Western cultures.
Dr. Berzin was resident in India for 29 years, first as a Fulbright Scholar and then with the Translation Bureau, which he helped to found, at the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives in Dharamsala. While in India, he furthered his studies with masters from all four Tibetan Buddhist traditions; however, his main teachers have been His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, and Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. Practicing under their supervision, he completed the major meditation retreats of the Gelug tradition.
For nine years, he was the principal interpreter for Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, accompanying him on his foreign tours and training under him to be a Buddhist teacher in his own right. He has served as occasional interpreter for H.H. the Dalai Lama and has organized several international projects for him. These have included Tibetan medical aid for victims of the Chernobyl radiation disaster; preparation of basic Buddhist texts in colloquial Mongolian to help with the revival of Buddhism in Mongolia; and initiation of a Buddhist-Muslim dialogue in universities in the Islamic world.
Since 1980, Dr. Berzin has traveled the world, lecturing on Buddhism in universities and Buddhist centers in over 70 countries. He was one of the first to teach Buddhism in most of the communist world, throughout Latin America and large parts of Africa. Throughout his travels, he has consistently tried to demystify Buddhism and show the practical application of its teachings in daily life.
A prolific author and translator, Dr. Berzin has published 17 books, including Relating to a Spiritual Teacher, Taking the Kalachakra Initiation, Developing Balanced Sensitivity, and with H.H. the Dalai Lama, The Gelug-Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra.
At the end of 1998, Dr. Berzin returned to the West with about 30,000 pages of unpublished manuscripts of books, articles, and translations he had prepared, transcriptions of teachings of the great masters that he had translated, and notes from all the teachings he had received from these masters. Convinced of the benefit of this material for others and determined that it not be lost, he named it the “Berzin Archives” and settled in Berlin, Germany. There, with the encouragement of H. H. the Dalai Lama, he set out to make this vast material freely available to the world on the Internet, in as many languages as possible.
Thus, the Berzin Archives website went online in December 2001. It has expanded to include Dr. Berzin’s ongoing lectures and is now available in 21 languages. For many of them, especially the six Islamic world languages, it is the pioneering work in the field. The present version of the [https://studybuddhism.com/ website] is the next step in Dr. Berzin’s lifelong commitment to building a bridge between the traditional Buddhist and modern worlds. By guiding the teachings across the bridge and showing their relevance to modern life, his vision has been that they would help to bring emotional balance to the world.
([https://studybuddhism.com/en/dr-alexander-berzin Source Accessed Dec 4, 2019])
Click here for a list of Alexander Berzin's [https://studybuddhism.com/en/dr-alexander-berzin/published-works-of-dr-berzin publications]
Professor Bessenger earned her masters and doctorate degrees from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.
As an undergraduate she designed a major in Anthropology and Asian studies to complete her degree at Mills College in Oakland, California, during which time she also participated in the School for International Training's Tibetan Studies study abroad program. Her doctoral training is in the History of Religions, with areas of expertise in Buddhist Studies, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Hinduism and Chinese religions.
Dr. Bessenger lived for a year at Tibet University in Lhasa, Tibet, and received a Fulbright-Hayes to conduct research among Tibetan exile communities in India and Nepal. Her current research is on the Tibetan saint Sonam Peldren; this research is culminating in a book, tentatively titled Echoes of Enlightenment: The Lives of Sonam Peldren, under contract with Oxford University Press.
At Randolph College Dr. Bessenger teaches courses in the history and the auto/biographical culture of Buddhism, gender and Buddhism, the history and visual culture of Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhist culture, and Chinese religions. She enjoys exposing Randolph students to Asian religious thought, and is fascinated by the many ways human beings publicly and privately think about and negotiate this thing called "religion."
Source [http://web.randolphcollege.edu/academics/majors/view_faculty.asp?department=relg] +
Jonathan Best received his PhD from Harvard University in 1976; unusual for its time it was a joint degree from the Department of Fine Arts and the Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations. Subsequently he has taught East Asian art history at the University of Virginia and Wesleyan University, but his research and publications—all focused on early Korea—have addressed religious history, diplomatic and political history, as well as art history. His current research project is an investigation of the manifold chronological problems in the earliest chronicles of Korea and Japan, the ''Samguk sagi'' and the ''Nihon shoki''. Having retired from teaching at Wesleyan in July 2014, he is now happily focused on this intriguing and multidimensional historiographic puzzle. In part preparatory to the four-volume study projected as the culmination of this research program, he published ''A History of the Early Korean Kingdom of Paekche—together with an annotated translation of the Paekche Annals of the Samguk sagi'' (Harvard University East Asia Center, 2006). In addition to enjoying all the rights and privileges attendant to being an emeritus professor at Wesleyan, he is currently an Associate in Research at Yale, a member of the Steering Committee for the Early Korea Project at Harvard (now the Cambridge Institute for the Study of Korea or CISK), and a Member of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. ([https://ceas.yale.edu/people/jonathan-best Source Accessed Sept 10, 2020]) +
Stephan V. Beyer, Ph.D., J.D., is a well-known writer and speaker on shamanism and spirituality. He is also a community builder, peacemaker, and carrier of council. He has been trained and certified in many areas of circle processes, mediation, and nonviolence and has offered peacemaking workshops to a wide variety of audiences, from therapists to theologians, and at Montessori, charter, alternative, and public schools. He has served as a Lecturer in the Department of Criminal Justice at Chicago State University, teaching undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in restorative justice and in the theory and practice of nonviolent resistance. He lives in Chicago. ([https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Stephan-V-Beyer/1382842937 Source Accessed May 11, 2021]) +
Durga Mohan Bhattacharya was an Indian scholar of Sanskrit. He had served as a professor of Sanskrit at the Scottish Church College in Calcutta.
He was a key figure in reviving many manuscripts of the Paippalāda-Saṃhitā and its ancillary literature like the Āṅgirasakalpa after painstaking search over years in Orissa and south-west Bengal. Durgamohan Bhattacharya's discovery of a living tradition of the Paippalāda-Saṃhitā, unknown until then, was hailed in the Indological world as epoch making. Ludwig Alsdorf went so far as to say that it was the greatest event in Indology. Bhattacharya died in 1965 leaving his edition of the text incomplete. This task was completed by his son Dipak, whose critical edition of the first 18 kāṇḍas was published by the Asiatic Society, Calcutta in three volumes in 1997, 2008 and 2011.
'''Early Life'''<br>
In the early 1900 he with other members of his family, migrated to Sahanagar, Lalbag in the district of Murshidabad. The family was poor and could not send its young children to an English medium school. His early education was derived from tols and chatuspathis, where the main subjects taught were Bengali and Sanskrit, the medium of education primarily being Bengali. Durgamohan was an exceptionally brilliant student and by the year 1915 he had appeared at several Sanskrit Upadhi examinations and topped the list of candidates for the several examinations on Sanskrit conducted by the Government of Bengal. He acquired the highest degrees in Kavya, Sankhya and Purana and got the title of Bhagavataratna.
Durgamohan with his widowed mother (Sarada) and only younger brother moved to his maternal uncle's house in Calcutta. Coming to know about the keen desire of Durgamohan to study English, his senior maternal uncle took him to Suresh Chandra Kundu, then the headmaster of Town School, Calcutta, an institution of great reputation. It was an immense task for Durgamohan to achieve as he had already reached the age of 16 and he was required to complete the normal course of ten years in a single year. He successfully completed the task and in 1917 he sat for the Entrance Examination of the University of Calcutta and was declared successful, obtaining a place in the First Division of successful candidates.
The Intermediate Examination (F.A.) was achieved in 1919 at the Vidyasagar College, the B.A. Examination with a First Class honours Degree in Sanskrit from the Scottish Church College was gained in 1921 and the master's degree in Sanskrit was obtained in 1923 from the University of Calcutta.
'''Career'''<br>
After completing his studies in the University, Durgamohan decided to take up the educational line as his field of activities. Having served as a Professor of Sanskrit in the Narasinha Dutt College of Howrah for some time, he joined the Scottish Church College as a professor of Sanskrit and Bengali and eventually became the head of the department of Sanskrit in the early thirties. In 1952 he was inducted in the West Bengal Senior Educational Service as Professor of Vedic Language, Literature and Culture in the Postgraduate Training and Research Department of the Sanskrit College, which position he occupied till the date of his death.
He used to be invited by learned societies like the Asiatic Society of Bengal, the Asiatic Society of Bombay, the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, and others to deliver talks on specific topics particularly the Vedas. He was awarded gold medals by the Asiatic Societies for his services in the field of Sanskrit.
'''Work on Paippalāda-Saṃhitā'''<br>
He had come to infer from many sources that of the four Vedas, the Atharva Veda and its practice had not become extinct in India as many scholars of repute used to hold and propagate. To prove his conviction in this regard he visited a large number of places all over India, and, ultimately a few years before his death, he was able to locate a place in Orissa, Guhiapal to be precise where he found the Atharva Veda to be actively practiced and there he discovered several Oriya manuscripts in which the Paippalāda-Saṃhitā, one of the nine versions of the Atharva Veda was faithfully reproduced. The discovery was made known to the world and the belief about the extinction of the practice of Atharva Veda was proved incorrect. He was hailed for his painstaking effort and perseverance in the unearthing of the Paippalāda-Saṃhitā as an epoch making discovery.
He started serious work on the Paippalāda-Saṃhitā, and publications also started which received acclamations from scholars all over the world. But unfortunately Durgamohan fell ill with cancer and died on 12 November 1965. His task was completed by his son Dipak Bhattacharya whose critical edition of the first 18 kāṇḍas published by the Asiatic Society, Calcutta came out in three volumes in 1997, 2008 and 2011. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Mohan_Bhattacharyya Adapted from Source Mar 25, 2022])
Kamaleswar Bhattacharya (born on August 29, 1928, died March 16, 2014) is a French Indianist and Sanskritist of Indian origin.
Kamaleswar Bhattacharya was born in August 1928 in a small village north of Dhaka, capital of present-day Bangladesh, he was educated in Calcutta, Paris and at the Sanskrit University of Varanasi. In September 1955, with a French government academic group, he came to France to work in the Indology sector. In February 1962 he obtained a doctorate of letters (State doctorate) with the "very honorable mention". Domiciled in France in Brunoy, he died on March 16, 2014 in Dhaka.
'''Area of advanced research '''<br>
His two important researches, ''Brahmanic religions in ancient Cambodia, according to Epigraphy and Iconography'' (1961) and ''Researches on the Vocabulary of Sanskrit Inscriptions of Cambodia'' (1964-1991), are considered by scholars of the sector as classics and exemplars of Khmerology. He checked and corrected for the editions the translations of the Cambodian Sanskrit inscriptions of Auguste Barth, Abel Bergaigne, Louis Finot and George Coedès, great French Sanskritists. He is one of the few scholars with acquired knowledge for such a difficult mission.
'''Great specialist in Buddhism'''<br>
After receiving his state doctorate, he turned to more classical branches of Indology, in particular philosophy. His long association with Louis Renou (1956 - 1966) formed his philological point of view and guided all his research. His book ''The Ātman - Brahman in Ancient Buddhism'' (1973), based on extensive studies of the Pali Canon and Sanskrit sources, is the result of his extensive research on Cambodia. And then he touched on late Buddhist philosophy including Madhyamaka philosophy and some aspects of Buddhist epistemology. His translation of ''Vigrahavyāvartanī'' with annotations and his articles on the grammatical elements of Nāgārjuna's thought can serve as models for scholars of future generations.
'''Rare logician of modern times'''<br>
For the past forty years he has published extensively on various aspects of Indian thought: philosophy, logic, semantics and poetry. He has amply completed his annotated translation concerning the Navya-Nyāya (New Logic), the Siddhañta lakṣaṇa prakaraṇa of the Tattvacintāmaṇi of Gangesa with the Dīdhiti of Raghunātha Śiromaṇi and the Țīkā of Jagadīśa Tarkālamkāra. He also published his edition of the ''Tattvacintāmaṇiprabhā'' (Anumānakhaṇḍa) of the Yajñapati Upādhyāya. This is the first commentary of the well-known ''Tattvacintāmaṇi''. In his research on the texts, he emphasized the close relationship between the science of grammar and philosophical thought in India.
'''Distinguished researcher and professor'''<br>
During his career, he held important chairs and received honorary awards. Thanks to the support of Louis Renou, he entered in 1960 as a research associate at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris where he retired in September 1996 to the rank of first-class research director. During this period he also taught as a visiting professor at Brown University (1967-1969), the University of Toronto (1977-1979), Viśva-Bhāratī University, Santiniketan (1980), and Adyar Library and Research. Center, Madras (1994-1995). After his retirement he was a Mercator-Gast professor at the University of Bonn in Germany. ([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamaleswar_Bhattacharya Source Accessed Feb 23, 2023])
Vidhusekhar Bhattacharya was born in a traditional Sanskrit Pandit family at Harischandrapur village in MaIda district in 1878. In 1905, with the approval of Rabindranath, Bhupendranath Sanyal invited Vidhusekhar to join the asrama. His primary duty was to teach Sanskrit to Rathindranath and Santosh Majumdar, but he also taught the little boys of the school. Rabindranath was impressed with his knowledge in Sanskrit and encouraged him to learn Pali for a fruitful understanding of the Buddhist period. In 1919 when the regular teaching and higher studies programme was launched, Vidhusekhar took charge of the studies in Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit. Later he became Principal of Vidya Bhavana college of higher studies and research. When Visva-Bharati was founded, Vidhusekhar selected the Vedic verse which was to become the motto: ''Yatra visvam bhavatyekaniam''. From 1936 to 1942, he was Professor of Sanskrit at Calcutta University and held the Asutosh Chair. In 1936 he was given the title Mahamahopadhyaya by the government. In 1957 Visva-Bharati conferred on him ''Desikottama'' in recognition of his contribution to Indological studies. ([http://www.visvabharati.ac.in/VidhusekharBhattacharyaSastri.html Source Accessed Jan 20, 2021]) +
Born on 6 January 1897 in a family devoted to Sanskrit learning, Bhattacharyya had his first lessons in Sanskrit with his father Maha-mahopadhyaya Haraprasad Shastri-a great scholar in different branches of Sanskrit literature and an ar,tiquarian. In 1919 he took a first class M.A. in Sanskrit from Calcutta University and in 1925 Ph. D., the first such. from Dacca University. While his father had guided him through the different branches of Sanskrit literature, young Bhattacharyya had in Professor Alfred Foucher his preceptor in matters relating to ancient art forms and archaeology of India. He spent some years studying Sanskrit manuscripts in Nepal. While just thirty he made his mark as a scholar of Tantra and Pratima.
In 1924 Maharaja Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, a great patron of learning and scholarship, took Bhattacharyya to Baroda to be the General Editor of Gaekwad's Oriental Series and after three years made him the Director of Oriental Institute. Baroda. As the General Editor of the Oriental Series and the Director of the Oriental Institute, Bhattacharyya showed extraordinary organizing abilities as well as erudition. Part of his time was devoted to lectures to degree students. The Gaekwad recognized his merits by conferring on him the titles of Rajya Ratna and Jnana Jyoti. He retired in 1952.
Among his publications are: ''The Indian Buddhist Iconography'' (Oxford 1924; revised edition Calcutta 1958); ''Sadhanamala'' (Vol. I Baroda 1925 and Vol. II Baroda 1928); ''Twn Vajrayana Works'' (Baroda 1929); ''Guhyasamaja Tantra'' (Baroda 1931}; ''An Introduction to Buddhist Esoterism'' (Oxford 1932); and ''Nispannayogavali'' (Baroda 1949).
In his study of the Tantras Bhattacharyya began with no particular sympathy for the mystic practices and rituals as is evident from his earlier writings. With the progress of his studies in Brahmanical. Jain and Buddhist sources he came to an acceptance of the higher values of the Tantras. While he was among the first to assert that the Hindu Tantra borrowed much from the Vajrayana and even debased many Vajrayana practices. Bhattacharyya very firmly held that later Mahayana pantheon deliberately and consciously incorporated a number of Hindu deities. From medieval Hindu tradition he identified the Mahayana deity Prajna with the Hindu deity Sakti. He was as firm on this as about the nomenclature Ohyani Buddha being ancient and correct.
The symposium on Tantras opened in this number of the Bulletin will no doubt be poorer because Bhattacharyya can no longer join issue. He had also advised us to organize in our pages a probe into the nomenclature Dhyani Buddha. Namgyal Institute of Tibetology benefited much from his advice regarding identification of images and figures on scrolls. The publication RGYAN-DRUG MCHOG-GNYIS had his guidance as our next publication on iconography was to have the same.
In retirement that is since 1 952 Bhattacharyya spent his time on finding remedies and systematic cure for physical and mental ailments in the Tantric lore. A large number of difficult cases were cured. Bhattacharyya c!aimed to have freely used Hindu and Buddhist. Indian and Tibetan, formulae and spells He published some books on tele-therapy: The Science of Tridosha (New York 1951), Gem Therapy (Calcutta 1958: 1963). and Magnet Dowsing (Calcutta 1960), For strictly academic class he wrote a paper entitled "Scientific Background of the Buddhist Tantras" in Buddha Jayanti Special Number of the ''Indian Historical Quarterly'' (Calcutta 1956).
As an academician of highest discipline and as an authority on Indian esoteric systems and iconography Bhattacharyya was held in esteem in connected circles all over the world. Those who came into intimate contact with him found him more a Bodhisattva than a Pandita. ([https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/bot/pdf/bot_01_02_obituary.pdf Source Accessed Feb 24, 2024])
Venerable Saddhāloka was born in Germany in 1938. His mother passed away at his age of two; he then grew up in the loves of his father and paternal grandparents. Since childhood, he already had the character of a nature lover; he honoured the life of every creature around such as leaves, grass, and small animals like birds, livestock, and poultry. Being studious, he read a lot of books at a young age, especially the books concerning the Buddha's teachings.
In 1964, he was officially ordained as a novice (sāmaṇera) of the Theravāda tradition in the United Kingdom. His preceptor (upajjhāya) was a Sri Lankan master, Venerable Saddhātissa. He studied Buddhism in England for two years, then continued his study at Buddhist Centre in Canada for one year. Later, he went to Thailand to acquire more knowledge of Buddhist doctrine and some languages, Thai, Pāli, and Sanskrit, in order to study Buddhism directly from authentic scriptures. He also had a chance to practice meditation. He was staying in Thailand for a couple of years and was fully ordained as a bhikkhu there in 1967 with Venerable Buddhadāsa as his preceptor.
In 1969, he made up his decision to go to China to continue his studies, however he was not granted an entry visa at that time, so that he kept staying in Hong Kong. While being in Hong Kong, he taught Buddhism and treated patients with Chinese herbal medicines.
During 1970s, Venerable Saddhāloka translated Buddhist texts from Chinese language into English for a Buddhist magazine, Visakhapūjā. Some of his works are known as: The Question of Deva, The Discourse on the Foundation of Mindfulness (Chu Ching Nien), The Twelve Kings of Birth and Death: A Dialogue Between And Ha-Shan Shih-te (B.E. 2509 - 2516), v.v...
From 1982 to 1997, Venerable Saddhāloka, having compassion for the Vietnamese boatpeople being desperate and hopeless in closed camps and detention centers, did not mind long roads going back and forth to the centers with heavy loads of foods, beverages, medicines, books, etc. Everyday he got up in the early morning at three o’ clock to prepare then bring the goods to the people in needs. With bare-feet and shaved-head, on sunny or raining days, he patiently kept his routine, visiting the suffering people. In hot afternoons in summer seasons, his brown robes got wet with sweats, but his gentle smiles were always blown on his lips. For 16 years long, he was not only taking his great care of material needs for the detained refugees but also concerning about their spiritual practice, helping them learning the Buddha’s teachings and preserving Vietnamese culture. Therefore, Vietnamese boatpeople in Hong Kong affectionately call him as "Thay Tay Duc." ([https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/saddhaloka.pdf Source Accessed Aug 10, 2021])
Sumanapal Bhikkhu studies Buddhist Philosophy and Manuscriptology, History, and Philosophy. +