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Prof. Dr. Ravindra Panth got superannuated from his assignment as the Director/ Vice Chancellor of the Nava Nalanda Mahavihara (Deemed University) at Nalanda, Bihar, India where he served from April, 2000 to 31st May, 2016. Besides working as the head of the University he was also engaged in taking M.A. classes and supervising Ph.D students. 2016-17 he worked as Professor of Buddhist Studies in the School of Buddhist Studies and Civilization, Gautam Buddha University in Gautam Buddha Nagar, Greater Noida. Since 2018, he is working as a Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, under Ministry of Culture, Government of India.
Prof. Panth is M.A. History, M.A. Buddhist Studies (Gold Medallist) University of Delhi, M.Phil. and Ph.D. Prior to his joining the Nalanda University, Prof. Panth served as the Director, Vipassana Research Institute for 14 years devoting to Paṭipatti (practice) and Pativedana (experience). He had also been a Member of the Boards of several Universities and Advisor and Executive Member of several International Buddhist Institutions.
Prof. Panth is a widely travelled scholar and has more than 100 Research Papers to his credit presented and published in various National and International Conferences, Seminars and Workshops. He has delivered more than 100 special lectures in India and abroad. He has edited and published more than 20 books.
Due to his achievements in the field of Buddhist Studies, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Government of the Union of Myanmar has conferred the prestigious title of MAHA SADDHAMMA JOTIKADHAJA in recognition of his contribution to the purification, perpetuation and propagation of Buddha’s teaching in 2008.
On 24th August, 2014, was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Festival of Buddhist Heritage of Ladakh 2014, in Leh, for his unique contribution in the promotion and preservation of Ladakh’s rich cultural heritage.
On 1st November, 2014, in recognition for his outstanding leadership and contribution for development of Buddhism he was awarded Buddhism Today Award for Leadership Excellence, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
On 18th April, 2015 The Modern School Old Students’ Association (MSOSA) presented the 5th Modernites’ Conclave and Excellence Awards – 2015, sterling achievements and bringing glory in the field of Education. ([http://lbdfi.org/about/ Source Accessed Mar 25, 2021])
Andrew Rawlinson was a war baby (b.1943) and lived in 17 different places by the time he was six. He got hit early on: Elvis, Jelly Roll Morton, Samuel Johnson, John Keats, Jack Kerouac, Cezanne, Pollock. And Zeus. He added philosophy and Indian traditions to rock’n’roll, jazz and literature. He was a scholar at Cambridge and did a Ph.D on the ''Lotus Sūtra'' at the University of Lancaster. He taught Buddhism for 20 years and put on a course on Altered States of Consciousness at Berkeley and Santa Barbara. He is the author of ''The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers on Eastern Traditions'' (Open Ciourt, 1997) and ''The Hit: Into the Rock’n’Roll Universe and Beyond'' (99 Press, 2014). ([https://explore.scimednet.org/index.php/events/event/the-hit-derangement-and-revelation/ Source Accessed May 19, 2020]) +
Raymond Martin is Dwane W. Crichton Professor of Philosophy and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Union College in Schenectady, New York. Formerly, he taught at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications on the self and personal identity include ''Self-Concern: An Experiential Approach to What Matters in Survival'' (1998), and "What Really Matters" (''Synthese'', 2008). He is also co-author (with John Barresi) of ''Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the Eighteenth Century'' (2000) and ''The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity'' (2006). (Source: ''Pointing at the Moon'') +
Rebecca Redwood French received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her J.D. from the University of Washington. After practicing law for six years, she went on to receive an LL.M. and Ph.D. in legal anthropology from Yale University. She has been an invited member of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, received numerous grants for her work from NSF, SSRC, Werner Gren, Fulbright and a host of other agencies and been asked to speak at many conferences including in Bhutan in the summer of 2018.
Her work is situated at the intersections of law, anthropology, legal theory, religious studies and Buddhist legal systems. Four years of field research in Tibet and India resulted in a study of the Dalai Lama’s pre-1960 legal system, titled The Golden Yoke (Snow Lion: 2002). She also co-edited with Mark Nathan the book Buddhism and Law: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press: 2014), the first comprehensive study of its kind.
In 2015, she founded and is the Editor of the journal, Buddhism, Law & Society, with William S. Hein Publishing, and began a series of conferences on the new sub-discipline at Buffalo every few years. The first conference was in 2006, and the third will be in Buffalo in September 2019 with an international set of scholars attending.
She has also worked extensively with Tibetans and Indonesians on immigration and cultural issues and has delivered public lectures for Amnesty International, the Tibetan Conference, the International Association of Tibetan Studies, Tibet House as well as in many scholarly forums.
From 2008 to 2010, French served as Director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo School of Law, an endowed academic center for interdisciplinary research on law and legal institutions. She joined the School of Law faculty after serving as an associate professor of law at the University of Colorado from 1992 to 2001. ([https://www.law.buffalo.edu/faculty/facultyDirectory/FrenchRebeccaR.html Source Accessed Nov 20, 2023])
Rebecca Hufen has been involved with Buddhism since her childhood and with yoga for over 15 years. She studied Tibetology, classical Indology and comparative religions sciences at the University of Hamburg as well as at the College for Higher Tibetan Studies in Sarah, India. After completing her studies with the Magister Artium she taught for four years as a Tibetan lecturer at the University of Hamburg. She also taught several Tibetan Intensive Courses at the Institut Tibétain Yeuntenling in Belgium and supported the team of the "Khyentse Center for Tibetan Buddhist Textual Scholarship" at workshops in India and Bhutan. She is a translator in the international 84,000 project and, after a three-year apprenticeship, became a certified and state-approved yoga teacher (AYA). ([https://en.aryatara.net/teacher Source Accessed June 10, 2021]) +
Rebecca Novick is a writer who specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, its culture, and the plight of the exiled Tibetans. She has written or edited several books on Buddhism, including ''Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism'' and ''Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment'', the latter with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. ([https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2265425/rebecca-mcclen-novick/ Source Accessed Jan 8, 2025]) +
Patriarch of the Kagyu lineage. The so-called "moon-like“ disciple and foremost heart son of Milarepa. He met Milarepa at the age of eleven and spent many years studying and practising under the guidance of his master. He was a Repa (ras pa) like Milarepa, unlike Gampopa, who was a fully ordained monk. At one time he even was married to a local princess for a while, before taking to the homeless life of a wandering yogin again. Rechungpa travelled to India three times and obtained teachings and transmissions which Marpa had not managed to receive in his time. In fact he was prophecied by Naropa, who said to Marpa that a descendant of his lineage would eventually come to receive more instructions on certain teachings.... (continue reading on [https://rywiki.tsadra.org/index.php/Rechungpa RYWiki]) +
Bill Porter (born October 3, 1943) is an American author and translator of Chinese and Sanskrit works who writes under the name Red Pine (Chi Song). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Porter_(author) Source]
*2018: Porter, 74, a translator of Chinese poetry and author, has been awarded the American Academy of Arts & Letters Thornton Wilder Prize for translation. He writes under the name Red Pine (Chi Song) and has lived in Port Townsend since the late 1980s. ([https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/port-townsend-translator-of-chinese-poets-wins-national-prize/ Source Accessed May 8, 2020]) +
Reginald Ray (born 1942) is an American Buddhist academic and teacher.
Ray studied Tibetan Buddhism, traditional shamanic wisdom, and yogic-contemplative practices with the Tibetan refugee and recognized Vajrayana traditional-wisdom holder Chögyam Trungpa; and later studied under the tutelage of traditional Dagara teacher from Burkina Faso, Malidoma Somé.
A founding academic member of Naropa University, Ray was a longtime senior teacher in Vajradhatu (renamed Shambhala International in 2000) and from 1996 to 2004 was teacher-in-residence at the Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center (which became Shambhala Mountain Center in February 2000). He left the Shambhala organization to found his own teaching center in 2005, Dharma Ocean. Dharma Ocean, in addition to teaching meditation programs and hosting intensive retreats, is a non-profit foundation "dedicated to the practice, study and preservation of the teachings of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Ray Source Accessed Dec 19, 2024]) +
Reiko Ohnuma is professor and chair of the Department of Religion at Dartmouth College, where she is also affiliated with the Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages Program and the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Her research focuses on South Asian Buddhist narrative literature preserved in Sanskrit and Pali, and she is the author of ''Head, Eyes, Flesh, and Blood: Giving Away the Body in Indian Buddhist Literature'' (Columbia, 2007); ''Ties That Bind: Maternal Imagery and Discourse in Indian Buddhism'' (Oxford, 2012); and ''Unfortunate Destiny: Animals in the Indian Buddhist Imagination'' (Oxford, 2017). (Source: ''Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice'', 285) +
Venerable René Feusi trained as a florist for the purpose of taking over the family business of flower shops in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1979, while on a spiritual quest in India and Nepal, he met Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, who were to become his main teachers, at the month-long November course at Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu Valley. Until his ordination he would spend half the year working in the family business and the other half receiving teachings and doing retreats. At the advice of Lama Zopa Rinpoche in 1985, he took ordination as a novice monk from Losang Nyingma Rinpoche, abbot of Namgyal Monastery, and then a year later full ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He spent two more years in India and Nepal receiving teachings and doing retreats before joining Nalanda Monastery in the south of France. Khensur Rinpoche Geshe Tekchog was the abbot and teacher at that time. In his four years there, he studied a number of texts on the graduated path to enlightenment, mind training, as well as various philosophical texts. (Source: [https://wisdomexperience.org/product/beautiful-way-life/ Wisdom Publications]) +
Rev. Blayne Higa is the Resident Minister of the Kona Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Kealakekua on the Big Island of Hawaii. He holds a Master of Divinity from the Institute of Buddhist Studies in Berkeley, California with a focus on Shin Buddhist ministry and chaplaincy. He has been a contributor to Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, and Buddhadharma, and is a frequent speaker and seminar leader at Buddhist communities in Hawaii and around the nation.
Rev. Blayne received Tokudo ordination and Kyoshi certification from the Jodo Shinshu Hongwanji-ha in Kyoto, Japan. He is the Chair of the Committee on Social Concerns and Ministerial Training Committee for the Honpa Hongwanji Mission of Hawaii. He was also a co-planner for the 2022 Future of American Buddhism Conference.
Prior to entering ministry, he had careers in state government and the non-profit sector for over seventeen-years. He holds a Master of Public Administration and a certificate in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received a BA from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Committed to civic engagement, Rev. Blayne serves on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii and Vibrant Hawaii. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of The Interfaith Alliance Hawaii. You can learn more about his work at www.blaynehiga.com. ([https://www.blaynehiga.com/about Source Accessed April 25, 2024]) +
Rev. George Kosho Finch is a Shingon Buddhist minister. Rev. Finch took Tokudo (Initiation) in Shingon Buddhism in 1999. In 2000 he traveled to Japan for the Jukai (Reciept of Precepts on Mt. Koya), and in 2006 he completed Denpo-Kanjo (Final Ordination) on Mt. Koya, Japan. In 2009 Rev. Finch completed the Ichiryu Denju, complete transmission of the teachings.
Since that time he has led meditation groups in Portland Oregon, and served as assistant minister with the Koyasan Shingon Mission of Hawaii. Rev. Finch earned his Bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University, and his Juris Doctorate from Willamette University College of Law.
Rev. Finch’s goal, and the purpose of the [Shingon Buddhist] Foundation, is to maintain the lineage and traditional Shingon practice, while finding new and innovative ways to share the teachings (such as through yoga and qigong) with those are who are new to Buddhism, and those who may have practiced their whole lives.
In 2019, Rev. Finch began leading Henjyoji Shingon Buddhist Temple in Portland, Oregon. Henjyoji Temple has been in its current location since 1951. Ensuring the temple continues to offer opportunities for spiritual growth and development into a new millennia. ([https://www.shingonbuddhism.org/about-us-2/ Adapted from Source Nov 19, 2020]) +
Rev. Jōshō Adrian Cîrlea (Adrian Gheorghe Cîrlea) is the representative of Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Community from Romania, and founder of Amidaj International temple. He is also the author of ''Buddhism of Compassion'', 2007, ''The Path of Acceptance – Commentary on Tannisho'', 2011, ''Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Teachings'', 2012, ''The True Teaching on Amida Buddha and His Pure Land'', 2015, ''The Four Profound Thoughts Which Turn the Mind Towards Amida Dharma'', 2018, ''The Meaning of Faith and Nembutsu in Jodo Shinshu Buddhism'', 2018, ''Commentary on the Sutra on the Buddha of Infinite Life'', 2020, ''Amida Dharma'', 2020. +
Reverend Konin Cardenas, also known as Ven. Dhammadipa, started the practice of Zen in 1987 and was ordained as a nun in 2007. She has trained at Hosshinji in Japan, at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and at the Zen Center in San Francisco. She received Dharma Transmission in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage. Ven. Dhammadipa serves as the Principal Teacher of Ekan Zen Studies Center, a virtual sangha. She currently resides in Aloka Vihara Monastery of the Forest, a Theravada training center for nuns.
Konin Cardenas, también conocida como Ven. Dhammadipa, comenzó la práctica del Zen en 1987 y fue ordenada en 2007. Entrenó en el Templo Hosshinji en Japón, en el monasterio Zen de Tassajara y en el Centro Zen de San Francisco. Recibió la transmisión del Dharma en el linaje Shunryu Suzuki. Sirve como Maestra Principal de Ekan Centro de Estudios Zen, una Sangha virtual, y actualmente reside en Aloka Vihara Monasterio del Bosque, un centro de entrenamiento Theravada para monjas Budistas. ([https://www.sfzc.org/teachers/ven-dhammadipa-konin-cardenas Source Accessed April 25, 2024]) +
Richard was born on 10 October 1845 in Ffaldybrenin, Carmarthenshire in south Wales, the son of Timothy and Eleanor Richard, a devout Baptist farming family. Inspired by the Second Evangelical Awakening to become a missionary, Richard left teaching to enter Haverfordwest Theological College in 1865. There he dedicated himself to China, where he had an active role in relief operations during the Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879, and was instrumental in promoting anti-foot binding and gender equality in China.<br> Richard applied to the newly formed China Inland Mission, but Hudson Taylor considered that he would be of better service to the denominational Baptist missions. In 1869 the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) accepted Richard's application, and assigned him to Yantai (Chefoo), Shandong Province.<br> In 1897 Richard undertook a journey to India to discover the conditions of the Christian mission there. Travelling with a young missionary, Arthur Gostick Shorrock, they visited Ceylon, Madras, Agra, Benares, Delhi, Calcutta and finally Bombay.<br> Timothy Richard helped the Qing government to deal with the aftermath of the Taiyuan massacre during the Boxer Rebellion. He thought the main cause of the Boxer Rebellion was due to lack of education of the population, so he proposed to Qing court official Li Hongzhang to establish a modern university in Taiyuan with Boxer Indemnity to the Great Britain, and his proposal was approved later. In 1902, Timothy Richard represented the British government to establish Shanxi University, one of the three earliest modern universities in China. Timothy Richard was in charge of the fund to build Shanxi University until ten years later in 1912. During that period, he also served as the head of the College of Western Studies in Shanxi University.<br> Richard's other works include: ''Some Hints for Rising Statesman'' (1905); ''Calendar of the Gods in China'' (1906); ''Conversion by the Million in China: Being Biographies and Articles'', 2 vols. (1907); and ''Forty-Five Years in China'' (1916). ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Richard Source Accessed May 20, 2020])
John Myrdhin Reynolds, aka Vajranatha, studied History of Religions, Anthropology, Arabic, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the University of Washington at Seattle. At the former he pursued Islamic Studies under Prof. Arthur Jeffrey and Iranian Studies under Prof. J. Duchesne-Guillemin. He did his PhD research in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Buddhist Philosophy under Prof. Edward Conze, the world-renowned scholar of the Buddhist Prajnaparamita literature.
He then spent more than ten years in India and Nepal doing field research at various Hindu Ashrams in South India and at Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Nepal. At these latter locales, he researched the literature, rituals, and meditation practices of the Nyingmapa and Kagyudpa schools of Tibetan Buddhism. His Lama teachers included Dezhung Rinpoche, Kangyur Rinpoche, Chatral Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, Gyalwa Karmapa, and many others. His special study was Dzogchen and the Buddhist Tantras, both in their own terms, and in comparison with Gnosticism and other mystical traditions of the West. As a result, he translated into English many original Tibetan texts belonging to the Nyingmapa and Kagyudpa traditions, and more recently texts from the Bon tradition. In Nepal he researched the techniques and lore of Tibetan shamanism, including rites of exorcism and soul retrieval, employed and practiced among Ngakpa Lamas belonging to the Nyingmapa school. The thrust of this research was experiential and participatory, and not just restricted to texts. He has been initiated into both the Nyingmapa and the Kagyudpa orders of Tibetan Buddhism and in 1974 in Kalimpong he received ordination from HH Dudjom Rinpoche as a Ngakpa or Buddhist Tantric Yogin of the Nyingmapa order, receiving the name Vajranatha (Rigdzin Dorje Gonpo). With the inspiration and permission of His Holiness, he began in-depth research into the Ngakpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism stemming from Guru Padmasambhava and Nubchen Sangye Yeshe in the 8th century of our era.
Since then he has continued his researches and lectured widely in India, Europe, and America. He has taught History of Religions and Buddhist Studies at Shanti Ashram (South India), at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), at the University of California (Santa Cruz), and more recently at the College of New Rochelle in New York City. Furthermore, he has taught in various countries of Europe, lecturing and presenting seminars on Buddhism, meditation, Tibetan shamanism, and psychological development in Amsterdam, Den Haag, Groningen, Copenhagen, Malmo, Oslo, Devon, and London, as well as in Italy, Greece, Mallorca, Poland, Hungary, and Jugoslavia.
In the past two decades he has worked closely with Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, the foremost exponent of Dzogchen practice in the West, on a number of translations of important Nyingmapa Dzogchen texts. Since 1989, he has worked closely with Lopon Tenzin Namdak, the foremost scholar of the Bonpo tradition outside of Tibet, on the translation into English of a large number of ancient and rare Bonpo Dzogchen texts, including the Zhang-zhung Nyan-gyud, and also the Ma Gyud, the Bonpo Mother Tantra. As his principal focus, he continues his research into the historical origins of Dzogchen in both the Nyingmapa and the Bon traditions, and especially into the connections of Dzogchen and the Bon tradition with the Iranian religious culture of ancient Central Asia and the West, including Iranian Buddhism, Mithraism, and Gnosticism. This research into original texts in Tibetan and Sanskrit, as well as comparative studies in terms of religion, mysticism, and magic, and the producing of monographs thereon, is known as the Vidyadhara Project.
Publications
His publications include The Alchemy of Realization (1978, Simhanada Publications),
Tibetan Astrological Calendar and Almanac (1978, Kalachakra Publications),
The Cycle of Day and Night (1984, 1987, Station Hill Press),
The Golden Rosary of Tara (1985, Shang Shung Edizione), The Adamantine Essence of Life (1987, Vidyadhara Publications),
Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness (1989, 2000 Snow Lion),
The Secret Book of Simhamukha (1990, 2001, Vidyadhara Publications),
Wicca, Paganism, and Tantra (1994, Vidyadhara Publications),
Path of the Clear Light (forthcoming 2006- 2007),
The Golden Letters (1996, Snow Lion), and Space, Awareness, and Energy (forthcoming with Snow Lion).
As the Bonpo Translation Project of the Bonpo Research Foundation, he has privately published a series of monographs on Bonpo Dzogchen and Tantra, and as Simhanada Publications, he has privately published a series of monographs and practice texts (sadhanas) from the Nyingmapa and Kagyudpa traditions of Tibetan Buddhism relating to Dzogchen and Buddhist Tantra. In San Diego, California, he established the Vidyadhara Institute for Comparative Studies in Mysticism and the Esoteric Traditions which, in the near future, will publish or republish a series of monographs on Buddhist and Tibetan Studies and also on various topics from the History of Religions, focusing on a comparive study of Buddhism and Bon with other mystical traditions such as Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, Early Christianity, Kabalah, and Sufism, as well as dealing with the questions of East-West Psychology and meditation practice.
([http://vajranatha.com/bio.html Source Accessed April 11, 2016])
Read more:
*http://vajranatha.com/
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Myrdhin_Reynolds
Gya Tsöndru Senge was an elder translator who had spent time studying at Vikramaśīla. He is said to have been intimately involved in bringing Atiśa to Tibet. ([https://kagyuoffice.org/the-gyalwang-karmapa-teaching-on-the-life-of-atisha-session-3/ Source Accessed ug 25, 2025]) +
Ria was born in a R.C. family in Utrecht briefly before the end of World War II. She entered Utrecht University in 1964 to read Law for two years, and Indian Languages and Cultures with the famous Prof. Jan Gonda for six years, to which she added courses in Religious Studies and Cultural Anthropology in Leiden University. In later life, she fondly remembered seminars in Leiden by Prof. Fokke Sierksma, the rebellious disciple of Van der Leeuw and first post-Christian scholar of religions in Dutch Faculties of Theology, on themes such as hair as symbol of sex and gender, and on messianic and apocalyptic movements. She earned her MA-degree in Indian Languages and Cultures in 1970 with a major in Buddhism, Sanskrit and Pali, and
minors in Comparative Religion, Ancient Javanese and Tibetan, and an MA-thesis on Suicide in Buddhism, in which she investigated the recent public self-immolations of Buddhist monks in Vietnam in protest against the war.
She was appointed a junior lecturer in Buddhism in the Faculty of Theology of Utrecht University in 1970. Under Gonda’s guidance, she continued to work on ‘the concept of the ''Paccekabuddha'' in Pali canonical and commentarial literature’, on which she earned her PhD-degree in 1974. It dealt with the Buddhist ascetic who is ‘an enlightened one by himself’: he dies without having taught ''dhamma'' to others. It was her second publication, for in 1973 she had published already a critical edition of ''Catuşparişatsūtra'', the ''Sūtra on the Foundation of the Buddhist Order.'' She loved this kind of philological work but was quite fastidious in it by demanding from herself and her students that translations not only reflect accurately the contents of a text but also its literary qualities. In this vein she published a translation into Dutch of Sāntideva’s ''Bodhicaryāvatāra'' (‘The Path of the Bodhisattva’) from the Sanskrit in 1980, and, with her students, the ''Bhagavadgita'' in 1997, also from the Sanskrit, and ''Theratherigatha'', ‘The Verses of the ''Theri'' ’, (enlightened males and females), from the Pali in 1998 and 2000. Two more unfinished translation projects will be completed by one of her former students.
Ria became a Senior Lecturer in the Utrecht Faculty of Theology in 1975, but also taught part time at Tilburg University from 1978 to 1981, and from 1981 to 1984 at the University of Groningen. She became a full professor in Living Religions and the Comparative Study of Religions in 1988 in the Utrecht Faculty, the first woman ever to hold a full professorship in a Dutch faculty of theology. In her inaugural address she discussed the Buddha as ‘the teacher of the world and the trainer of humans’. She herself was also an excellent teacher. She knew how to join the Buddhist past and its historical diversity with modern developments in Asia and Europe, e.g. by inviting a Buddhist monk or nun, or a Dutch lay Buddhist, into her classes as examples how Buddhism might permeate a person’s life also in modern Western societies. Though many of the Utrecht students were hardly receptive to critical scholarship on religions because of the orthodox Christian theology they espoused, a few were much inspired by it. For them, Ria was much more than merely an inspiring teacher. She invited some into her home for all night discussions, music and dance, and a breakfast in her garden in the early morning. For others she conducted, at their request, travel tours to Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand where she was conducting research. Ria supervised ten PhDs, four of which were awarded a ''cum laude''. ([https://jangplatvoet.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Ria-Kloppenborg.In-Memoriam.pdf Source Accessed Mar 19, 2021])
Ribur Rinpoche was born in the Kham region of Tibet in 1923, and was recognized by the Thirteenth Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the head lama of Ribur Monastery. After studying at Sera Me Monastery, where he received numerous teachings from his root guru, Pabongka Rinpoche, Rinpoche received his geshe degree in 1948. Rinpoche was then confined in Lhasa from 1959 until 1976, during which time he experienced relentless interrogation and torture during thirty-five of the infamous struggle sessions. “If I told you what happened on a regular basis, you would find it hard to believe.”
At the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Ribur Rinpoche spent more than 10 years in Chinese labor camps and was given a job with the Religious Affairs Office in Tibet. On one of his trips to China, he worked with the Panchen Lama and recovered holy objects – including the famous Shakyamuni Buddha statue in the Ramoche temple – that had been dismantled and shipped to China. He also re-established the destroyed stupa of Lama Tsongkhapa, which contained some of Lama Tsongkhapa’s bodily relics.
Since his exile to India in 1985, Ribur Rinpoche wrote numerous biographies of great lamas such as the Thirteenth Dalai Lama and an extensive history of Tibet, which includes his autobiography. Ribur Rinpoche spent many years living in northern California, USA where he gave teachings and led retreats, before returning to India, where he passed away in 2006.
Recognized Incarnation:<br>
Tenzin Pasang Rinpoche, the current incarnation of Ribur Rinpoche, was recognized by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and was initially enthroned as the incarnation in Bodhgaya, India, in 2010 by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Woser Rinpoche, and formally enthroned at Sera Mey Monastery, India, in May 2013. ([https://fpmt.org/teachers/lineage-lamas/ribur/ Source Accessed Jan 14, 2025]) +
