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Shuman Chen’s primary research is Chinese Tiantai Buddhist philosophy. Her secondary research interests include Chan/Zen Buddhism, Buddhist art, and Daoist philosophy. With a hermeneutic approach, her dissertation explores the idea of the Buddha-nature of insentient beings in the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist traditions, with a focus on the philosophy of Jingxi Zhanran in the Tang dynasty. Her dissertation also covers East Asian art with a discussion on how plants are portrayed as sages and why pagodas and relics might be considered sentient. From an environmental perspective, she also examines how to appreciate the insentient world’s Buddha-nature, hoping to increase our awareness of the mutual relationship between human beings and nature. ([https://sites.northwestern.edu/asgc/graduate-students/ Source Accessed Jul 21, 2020]) +
Shunryu Suzuki (鈴木 俊隆 Suzuki Shunryū, dharma name Shōgaku Shunryū 祥岳俊隆) (May 18, 1904–December 4, 1971) was a Sōtō Zen roshi (priest) who popularized Zen Buddhism in the United States, particularly around San Francisco. Born in the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan, Suzuki was occasionally mistaken for the Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki, to which Suzuki would reply, "No, he's the big Suzuki, I'm the little Suzuki."
In 1924 Shunryu enrolled in a Soto preparatory school in Tokyo not far from Shogan-ji, where he lived on the school grounds in the dorm. From 1925 to 1926 Suzuki did Zen training with Dojun Kato in Shizuoka at Kenko-in. He continued his schooling during this period. Here Shunryu became head monk for a 100 day retreat, after which he was no longer merely considered a novice. He had completed his training as a head monk.
In April 1926 Shunryu graduated from preparatory school and entered Komazawa Daigakurin, a university which also taught Soto Zen. During this period he continued his connections with So-on in Zoun-in, going back and forth whenever possible.
Some of his teachers here were discussing how Soto Zen might reach a bigger audience with students and, while Shunryu couldn't comprehend how Western cultures could ever understand Zen, he was intrigued.
On August 26, 1926, at age 22, So-on gave Dharma transmission to Suzuki. Shunryu's father also retired as abbot at Shogan-ji this same year, and moved the family onto the grounds of Zoun-in where he served as inkyo (retired abbot).
Later that year Suzuki spent a short time in the hospital with tuberculosis, but soon recovered. In 1927 an important chapter in Suzuki's life was turned. He went to visit a professor in English he had at Komazawa named Miss Nona Ransom, a woman who had taught English to such people as Jiro Kano and the children of Chinese president Li Yuanhong. She hired him that day to be a translator with others and to help with errands. Through this period he realized she was very ignorant of Japanese culture and the religion of Buddhism. She respected it very little and saw it as idol worship. But one day, when there were no chores to be done, the two had a conversation on Buddhism that changed her mind. She even let Suzuki teach her zazen meditation. This experience is significant in that Suzuki realized that Western ignorance of Buddhism could be transformed if they were educated on exactly what it is.
On January 22, 1929, So-on retired as abbot of Zoun-in and installed Shunryu as its 28th abbot. Sogaku would run the temple for Shunryu. In January 1930 a ceremony called ten'e was held at Zoun-in for Shunryu acknowledging So-on's Dharma transmission to him. A way for the Soto heads to grant him permission to teach as a priest. On April 10, 1930, at age 25, Suzuki graduated from Komazawa Daigakurin with a major in Zen and Buddhist philosophy, and a minor in English.
Suzuki mentioned to So-on during this period that he might be interested in going to America to teach Zen Buddhism. So-on was adamantly opposed to the idea. Suzuki realized that his teacher felt very close to him and that he would take such a departure as an insult. He did not mention it to him again. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunryu_Suzuki Source Accessed Nov 18 2019])
Onoda Shunzō 小野田俊蔵 is a Professor Emeritus at Bukkyo University, Kyoto. He obtained his PhD on the monastic debate in Tibet from Bukkyo University in 1993. His research focuses on the structures of Tibetan logic (bsdus grwa), and on the technique of Thangka paintings. His main publications are ''Monastic Debate in Tibet: A Study on the History and Structures of bsDus grwa Logic'' (Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Studien, Universität Wien, 1992); “bsDus grwa Literature,” in ''Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre'', ed. José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson (Snow Lion, 1996); “The Meiji Suppression of Buddhism and Its Impact on the Spirit of Exploration and Academism of Buddhist Monks,” in ''Images of Tibet in the 19th and 20th Centuries'', ed. Monica Esposito (EFEO, 2008); “De’u dmar dge bshes’ Knowledge of Basic Color Materials,” in ''Gateways to Tibetan Studies: A Collection of Essays in Honour of David P. Jackson on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday'', ed. Volker Caumanns et al. (Department of Indian and Tibetan Studies, Universität Hamburg, 2021). His current projects are on Tibetan traditional proverbs (''gtam dpe'') and the design of a database of those proverbs. ([https://publications.efeo.fr/en/author/1487_onoda-shunzo Source Accessed Feb 27, 2025]) +
Shuyu Kanaoka is a distinguished Japanese scholar specializing in Buddhist studies, with a particular focus on comparative textual analysis and the transmission of Buddhist texts across different cultural and linguistic contexts. Her scholarly work primarily centers on the ''Bodhicaryāvatāra'', a seminal Mahāyāna Buddhist text attributed to the 8th-century Indian philosopher Śāntideva.
Kanaoka has made significant contributions to the understanding of Buddhist textual traditions, particularly in her meticulous comparative studies of Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Mongolian Buddhist manuscripts. Her research delves deep into the nuanced transmission and interpretation of Buddhist philosophical texts, with a special emphasis on the ''Bodhicaryāvatāra'' and its various regional adaptations.
Her notable publications include several in-depth scholarly articles that explore the textual complexities of Buddhist literature:
*"On the Duplicated Chapter of the Mongolian Bodhicaryāvatāra"
*"A Comparative Study of Sanskrit, Tibetan and Mongolian on Prajñāpāramitā Chapter of Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra"
*"Characteristics of the Buddhist Mongolian Texts: The Lineage of the Bodhicaryāvatāra"
*"Regional Characteristics of Mongolian Buddhism: A Study on the Basis of the Bodhicaryāvatāra"
*"Śāntideva's Attitude towards Vijñāna Theory"
Through her scholarly work, Kanaoka has made important contributions to understanding the intricate transmission and interpretation of Buddhist philosophical texts across different linguistic and cultural traditions, particularly focusing on the Mongolian Buddhist textual landscape. (Generated by Claude AI March 26, 2025) +
Siglinde Dietz PhD, born 1937, is a classical philologist and Indologist. She was a research assistant at the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen from 1980-2002. Her areas of work include Buddhist studies and lexicography. ([https://www.suhrkamp.de/autoren/siglinde_dietz_7404.html Adapted from Source Feb 22, 2021]) +
Simon began studying the Dharma in India in 1996. In 2000 he joined the Dharma and Tibetan language classes at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives and then lived for three years in Drepung Loseling monastery in South India improving his Tibetan and learning the basics of debate. In 2007 he enrolled as a full-time student at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in McLeod Ganj and completed the 16-year Rime Geshe degree of study. His interests lie in how to study in a nonsectarian manner and the larger project of transmission of Buddhism to the west. He has been working at Tsadra Foundation since 2023. +
Simon Paul James came to philosophy by a roundabout route, taking a BSc in Biological Sciences, followed by an MA in the History and Philosophy of Science, before obtaining a PhD for a thesis on environmental ethics in 2001. He is currently an Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University in England.
His work engages with a wide range of issues in environmental philosophy, from Buddhist approaches to wildlife conservation to our moral relations with rock formations, and from the (so-called) problem of animal minds to the virtue ethical question of whether a good life must be a green life. ([https://www.dur.ac.uk/directory/profile/?id=2390 Adapted from Source May 18, 2021]) +
Senior Researcher at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in the long-termproject of the Union Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts in German Collec-tions, Old Turkic manuscripts from the Turfan findings, Berlin +
Sina Joos received her MA in Tibetan studies, Chinese studies, and the History of Oriental Art in 2009 from the University of Bonn, Germany. Since 2016 she has been a PhD candidate at the Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria, under the supervision of Prof. Klaus-Dieter Mathes. Her research focuses on the ''gzhan stong'' doctrine of the Jonang school, while her teachers are mainly from the bka’ brgyud school of Tibetan Buddhism. Apart from her academic studies, she participated in the Translation Training Program at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu and works at the Kamalashila Institute for Buddhist Studies and Meditation, interpreting for Tibetan lamas as well as translating and editing texts for the practice sessions and seminars. +
Sir Aurel Stein, (born Nov. 26, 1862, Budapest, Hung.—died Oct. 26, 1943, Kabul, Afg.), Hungarian–British archaeologist and geographer whose travels and research in central Asia, particularly in Chinese Turkistan, revealed much about its strategic role in history.<br> Principal of the Oriental College, Lahore, Punjab, India (now in Pakistan; 1888–99), in 1892 he published his Sanskrit edition of the only known surviving ancient Indian historical work, the 12th-century ''Rājataraṅgiṇī'' by Kalhaṇa. His English translation, ''A Chronicle of the Kings of Kaśmīr'', followed in 1900.<br> In that year he began the first of his central Asian expeditions, traveling through westernmost China to Khotan. In the course of this and three other expeditions (1906–08, 1913–16, and 1930), he traced the ancient caravan routes between China and the West, made valuable geographical observations on little-known regions, and collected many documents and artifacts, from Neolithic stone tools to 8th-century-AD grave findings and textiles. Near Tun-huang he discovered the Cave of the Thousand Buddhas, unknown outside China, which, with its extraordinary assemblage of paintings, temple banners, and documents, had been walled up since the 11th century. Many of the treasures he found are in the Asian Antiquities Museum, New Delhi. The results of his work of this period were published in ''Ancient Khotan'', 2 vol. (1907), ''Serindia'', 5 vol. (1921), and ''Innermost Asia'', 4 vol. (1928).<br> Superintendent of the Indian Archaeological Survey (1910–29), Stein was also interested in Greco-Buddhist remains and in tracing Alexander the Great’s eastern campaigns. In 1926, at Pīr Sarāi, near the Indus River, he identified the site of Alexander’s storming of the nearly impregnable Rock of Aornos. Other studies by Stein added to the precise knowledge of Alexander’s movements in Asia. In an effort to elucidate the relationship between Mesopotamian and Indus civilizations, Stein investigated ancient mounds in Iran and Baluchistan. He also carried out an aerial photographic reconnaissance of the Roman frontiers in Iraq. Near his 81st birthday, his long-standing wish to explore in Afghanistan was granted, but he died there before he could commence his work. A British subject from 1904, he was knighted in 1912. ([https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aurel-Stein Source Accessed June 19, 2020])
Sitansusekhar Bagchi was a notable scholar in the field of Sanskrit and Indian studies. Bagchi was associated with the Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit, where he conducted significant research in Sanskrit literature and philosophy. He is known for his work on the ''Suvarṇaprabhāsasūtra'', a Buddhist scripture, which he published in 1967 through the Mithila Institute. Bagchi's research also extended to Indian logic, as evidenced by his contributions to studies on inductive reasoning and its role in Indian logic, although the specific work attributed to him in this area is more commonly associated with other scholars. +
Sofia Stril-Rever has coauthored four books with the Dalai Lama (including his My Spiritual Autobiography, translated in some twenty languages). With lawyers of the Paris Bar, international climate experts and renowned scientists, she has initiated the Better We Better World training program (www.betterwebetterworld.org) to tackle environmental and societal challenges with the practices of compassion and universal responsibility, promoted by the Dalai Lama as keys to human survival in the
twenty-first century. (Source: [https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/sofia-stril-rever-201882194450 HarperCollins Publishers]) +
Venerable Sogan Rinpoche (Tulku Pema Lodoe) was born in 1964 in the Golok region of Amdo, in eastern Tibet. At the age of seventeen he went to Bayan Monastery to start his formal spiritual training. Later, he was recognized by H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama as the 6th Sogan Rinpoche and as a young man was enthroned at Awo Sera Monastery in East Kham (Serta), which he founded during his first incarnation as Sogan Rinpoche. He is also the head of Bayan Monastery in Golok. He assumed responsibility there at the direction of his root guru, Khenpo Munsel, a Dzogchen master and teacher in Tibet throughout most of the twentieth century and a chief disciple of Khenpo Ngag Chung.
Rinpoche has studied with many great masters of all four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. After many years of study, pilgrimage and solitary retreat, Rinpoche left Tibet to continue his studies in India. While there, he studied extensively with prominent teachers and spent several years in retreat.
Rinpoche travels throughout North America and in Europe to teach Buddhism. For many years he has taught in the SF Bay region where Tupten Osel Choling is based. In 2012, his students in northern Italy founded Tupten Osel Ling, another dharma center under his spiritual guidance.
In 2004 Rinpoche established The Sogan Foundation (TSF), a secular non-profit organization which funded the construction of a science and technology facility for high school students in Golok, Tibet. Kunsel Kyetsal opened its doors for the first time in 2007. TSF’s second project has been constructing a basic water system for a community of elderly nomads located near Bayan Monastery. This job was completed during the summer of 2010. For the first time, residents can obtain clear, filtered water and are spared a difficult trek to an open spring which is susceptible to contamination. Rinpoche established The Sogan Foundation with the intent that continuing far into the future, the organization will serve as a vehicle for alleviating the suffering of the poor and the marginalized.
([https://taramandala.secure.retreat.guru/teacher/venerable-sogan-rinpoche/ Source Accessed July 26, 2024])
Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyaltsen was a 16-17th century Nyingma master who was controversial in his opposition to the Gelug regime of the Fifth Dalai Lama. He earned the epithet the Mongol Repeller (''sog bzlog pa'') due to his efforts to turn back the advances of the Mongol army by means of wrathful rites. He was also a formidable polemicist who mounted an influential literary defense of the Nyingma doctrine against their Sarma detractors. For reasons such as those, his written works were at one point banned in Tibet. +
Solvej Hyveled Nielsen was born in Denmark in 1987. She mostly translates Tibetan-English (written and oral). Her mother tongue is Danish, and she understands a little bit of German.
Solvej has a B.A. in Buddhist Studies with Himalayan languages rrom Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Kathmandu University. She also has a B.A. and M.A. in Tibetology from Copenhagen University.
She studied Drikung texts and Tibetan history with Dr. Jan-Ulrich Sobisch and also worked with him on a project about Tibetan divination. Since 2015 she has spent her summers with Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen and the Vikramashila Translation Group at the Milarepa Center, Schneverdingen. ([https://www.drikungtranslation.com/translators/#Solvej Source Accessed Sep 7, 2022]) +
Somtso Bhum is a PhD candidate at Northwestern University. +
Born in 1953, Sonam Dolma Brauen spent the first six years of her life in Tibet. Due to the Chinese occupation of Tibet, she fled across the Himalayan mountains with her family to India in 1959. From the age of seven, Sonam joined her mother in working in road construction to support their family. She began attending school for the first time at age 13, learning English and basic studies at an English Medium School in India. At the age of 19, Sonam and her mother emigrated to Switzerland, where she married Swiss anthropologist and curator Martin Brauen. They have two children.
Sonam began her training in 1990, studying at Art School Bern with Arthur Freuler, Leopold Schropp, Mariann Bissegger, and most significantly, Serge Fausto Sommer. The majority of her paintings are abstract. They are illusory appearances following the Buddhist belief that all appearance is ultimately illusory.
After moving to New York City in 2008, where she lived for four years, she began working more with installations using materials and objects like used monk robes from Asia, plaster, empty amunition shells. Provocative works utilize teeth and used ammunition in pieces that comment on contemporary society.
Her installations express ongoing themes that preoccupy her: Machoism and its relation to power, money and war; and the political situation in her home country Tibet.
Her work has been shown worldwide alongside artists such as Bill Viola and Zhang Huan, Jenny Holzer, Kiki Smith and Robert Longo among others. ([https://www.sonambrauen.net/bio Source Accessed Oct. 31, 2023]) +
Research Interests
My research interests lie in the history of philosophy, with special attention to the history of Buddhist philosophy in South Asia. Topics of particular interest to me include the philosophy of mind, action and philosophical anthropology. I believe the history of Buddhist philosophy in South Asia is best pursued keeping in view the long conversations of Buddhist and non-Buddhist philosophers in South Asia, and also the importance of narrative thought for the history of ideas. I am currently working on two book length monographs: one on the philosopher Vasubandhu, and his monograph in Twenty Verses; and another on the Buddhist poet Asvaghosa, and his narrative lyric, Beautiful Nanda. ([https://religiousstudies.as.virginia.edu/faculty/profile/sk3hp Source: UVa Faculty Profile]
Selected Publications
“Is Madness Anything Like Dying? Vasubandhu on Madness and the Fragility of Our Ways of Being Alive.” (forthcoming)
“Of Vasubandhu, and Why Ordinary Language Can and Does Take Care of Itself.” (forthcoming)
“What is it Like to Become a Likeness of Oneself? Gestures of Light, Motion and Mind at the Surfaces of Representation.” Essays of the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin (2015).
“The Meaning of Love: Insights from Medieval South Asia.” Available online at the website of The History of Emotions: Insights into Research. Berlin: Max Planck Institute for Human Development, 2014.
“The Last Embrace of Color and Leaf: Introducing Asvaghosa's Disjunctive Style.” Almost Island, Special Issue: On Style (2012).
Sonam Kachru is an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies, University of Virginia. A student of the history of philosophy, with a particular focus on the history of Buddhist philosophy in South Asia, he is especially interested in the history of such concepts as minds, persons, and selves. He is currently working on a monograph on the Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, tentatively titled More and Less Than Human: Life and Mind in Indian Buddhism. (Source: ''Readings of Śāntideva's Guide to Bodhisattva Practice'', 285)
Sonam Spitz was born in 1984 in Germany. From 2006 - 09 he studied at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu/Nepal and graduated with a BA degree in Buddhist Studies with Himalayan Language. From 2009 he studied Classical Indology at the university of Hamburg/Germany and graduated there with another BA in 2012 and a MA in 2015. Since 2009 he is also working as an interpreter for Tibetan speaking Buddhist teachers and as translator of written texts of the Drikung Kagyu lineage. Sonam Spitz speaks German, English and Tibetan and works to a considerable extend with Sanskrit sources. From 2016-17 he was employed as a lecturer for Tibetan and Sanskrit at the university of Copenhagen. Since 2015 he participates in the Vikramashila Translation Commitee under the guidance of Khenchen Nyima Gyaltsen. ([https://www.drikungtranslation.com/translators/#Sonam Source Accessed June 10, 2021]) +
Mr. Kazi, a Buddhist from Sikkim, was born in 1925. On finishing his studies in India in 1948, he was appointed by the Government of Sikkim as the Interpreter and Guide during the late His Holiness the XVI Karmapa's first visit to India on pilgrimage. In 1949, he joined the Indian Mission, Lhasa, and with H. E. Richardson, the then Officer-in-Charge, travelled to many important historical places and assisted him
in his translation of the ancient historical edicts of Tibet. Mr. Richardson has acknowledged his help in the Ancient Historical Edicts at Lhasa, published by The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1952. During his seven-year stay in Tibet (1949-56), Mr. Kazi had the unique occasion to meet and receive instructions from many highly realized Dzog-chen Gurus.
He returned to Sikkim in early 1956 and joined the Cultural Department of the Indian Political Office. In the same year, during the official visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to India, when India was celebrating the 2500th Anniversary of the Birth of Lord Buddha, Mr. Kazi acted as Chief Interpreter. When the Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959, Mr. Kazi joined the Indian officials who met him at the border. From then until 1972, he held the post of Official Interpreter, Government of India, attached to the Dalai Lama.
During this period, he was also the translator into English of His Holiness' memoir, My Land and My People (1963); as an art expert attached to Tibet House Museum, New Delhi, he produced three art catalogues for the museum and one for the Tibetan Art Exhibition in Tokyo; at the behest of His Holiness, he organized the editing and publishing of the 130-volume Encyclopedia Tibetica for Tibet House Library, New Delhi.
In 1969, he began publishing the Nga-gyur Nying-may Sung-rab Series on his own, consisting of over 100 volumes of rare books on Dzog-chen that were fast disappearing from Tibet. He also directed and helped produce six documentary films for the French Radio-Television on rare, secret Tantric performances by the highest ranking Tibetan Gurus from the four schools of Tibet.
He first visited the United States in 1967, at the invitation of the U.S. Department of State, under the Council on Leaders and Specialists of the Experiment in International Living. During that time, he attended the Twenty-Seventh Orientalists' Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as one of twenty-two invitees from India.
In 1968, when the late Father Thomas Merton visited India, Mr. Kazi was instrumental in introducing Dzog-chen to him, as recorded in Merton's Asian Journal.
His second visit to the United States was in 1969, at the invitation of the late Alan Watts, head of the Society for Comparative Philosophy, San Francisco, under the sponsorship of Douglas A. Campbell. He held joint conferences on meditation with Alan Watts and others at Esalen, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. He and his family, which included his daughter, Jetsün Rinpoche, the heart reincarnation of the late Most Reverend Shugseb Jetsün Lochen Rinpoche of Tibet, stayed for a week at the San Francisco Zen Center as guests of the late Suzuki-roshi. It was during this visit to the United States that he organized the Long-chen Nying-tig Buddhist Society, the first Dzog-chen meditation center in New York, sponsored by a group of Dharma seekers headed by Paul M. Postal.
In 1971, a second center was opened in Philadelphia, sponsored by Barry and Marilyn Peril. In the winter of that year, Mr. Kazi was able to invite the late His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche to New York for the first time to bless the students of these two centers. With the appreciable initial help of Allan and Roberta Ehrlich and later with the help of Marleen Pennison, Mr. Kazi continued to teach a group of students in New York for over thirty years.
When His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivered Dzog-chen teachings for the first time in this country, on October 8 and 9, 1989, in San Jose, he specially asked Mr. Kazi to attend in order to translate talks on Dzog-chen. On the occasion of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s visit to London in September 1994, Mr. Kazi was also invited by His Holiness to attend a special reunion lunch with a small group of people who had had the privilege to live, visit, and work in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion of the country in 1950. Members exchanged their experiences and memories of that time and prepared an informal statement testifying to Tibet’s prior independence.
As founder of Diamond Lotus Publishing, Mr. Kazi translated several books as part of the Nga-gyur Nying-may Sung-rab English Translation Series. Kün-zang La-may Zhal-lung, Part One and Kün-zang La-may Zhal-lung, Part Two & Part Three, Volumes IV and V in the series, are the first volumes to be published. ([https://diamondlotusfoundation.com/the-translator.html Source Accessed April 18, 2025])
