Property:Bio
From Tsadra Commons
This is a property of type Text.
B
Sonam Peldren (bsod nam dpal 'dren) was born on the seventeenth day of the tenth month of the earth male-dragon year (either 1268 or 1328). Her mother was named Nezang Chotso (gnas bzang chos mtsho); her father was named Yondak Ngoli (yon bdag sngo li) and was a descendent of the Tong (stong) clan. She was born in a place called Tashipa Janggyab (bkra shis pa byang rgyab) in Dam Sho ('dam shod), in the Nol (snol) district of U (dbus), near the Nyenchen Tanglha mountain range (gnyen chen thang lha). Her birth name was Gego (ge god); sometime after her marriage at age seventeen she was renamed Sonam Peldren. She was the youngest of four children: she had two elder brothers named Azang (a 'zang) and Kunchog Gyab (dkon mchog skyabs), and one elder sister named Chokyi (chos skyid.)
Little is known of the years between Sonam Peldren's birth and her marriage at age sixteen other than that her mother passed away, her father remarried, and that she was a calm child liked by all. When Sonam Peldren was seventeen years old, her father arranged her marriage, choosing from among three available suitors: Chakdor Kyab (phyag dor skyabs), described simply as a nomad from Kham, and who is more commonly known by the name Rinchen Pel; Ga Yar ('ga' yar), also described only as a nomad from Kham; and Pelek (dpal legs), described as the chief scribe (dpon yig) from a wealthy local family in central Tibet. Sonam Peldren's father, with the strong approval of his wife and extended family, betrothed Sonam Peldren to the scribe Pelek.
Sonam Peldren, however, refused to marry the groom of her family's choice, and instead insisted that she marry Rinchen Pel, claiming that her union with Rinchen Pel was karmically predestined. Sonam Peldren's father, step-mother, sister, brothers, and several other relatives questioned Sonam Peldren's refusal to marry a wealthy man from central Tibet to marry instead a landless man from the "miserable region" (sdugs sa, sic) of Kham. Sonam Peldren's fiancé himself was appalled by the adamant refusal of his betrothed to follow her father's wishes, and eventually withdrew his offer of marriage. Sonam Peldren's family reluctantly returned the gifts received from the scribe and his family; after Rinchen Pel supplied his own gifts, the two were considered married. Following her death it was Rinchen Pel who would promote her teachings and visions, in part with a written narrative of her life.
The biography of Sonam Peldren records only general stories about the events in Sonam Peldren's life between her marriage at age sixteen and the final months of her life before her death at age forty-four. Sonam Peldren lived as a nomad and traveled with her husband and fellow nomads, first in the central Tibetan region of U-Tsang (dbus gtsang) until she was thirty years old, and then in the "eight valley" region (brgyad shod) of eastern Tibet until her death. Sonam Peldren and Rinchen Pel had four children: two sons named Sonam Dondrub (bsod nams don 'grub) and Tsukdor Gyab (gtsug tor skyabs) and two daughters named Gumril or Gumrim (gum ril/m) and Sonam Kyi (bsod nams skyid) The birth order of these children, and Sonam Peldren's age at their birth, is not known.
These years of travel are described in the biography as punctuated by Sonam Peldren's miracles and acts of generosity. For example, her biography recounts that Sonam Peldren gave nearly all of her clothing to beggars, opting to live in a simple cotton piece of clothing without shoes; it was said that while other members of her group developed frostbite underneath their thick clothing, Sonam Peldren, barefoot and wearing only a cotton tunic, walked unimpeded through the snow, melting it with her feet.
Other examples of miracles attributed to Sonam Peldren include the following: when traveling over a snowy mountain pass, she dug a tunnel through the snow covering the mountain pass and traveled straight through to the other side, shocking the other nomads who traveled around the peak by reaching their destination first; she broke up a knife fight by grabbing four men in each of her hands and holding them apart until they ceased quarreling; when a bandit stole most of the nomadic group's horses in the middle of the night, she leapt onto the nearest remaining horse, raced down the road after the fleeing animals, and, grabbing the animals' manes with her left and right hands, led them back to camp; she carried the carcass of a fallen yak up a steep mountainside and back to her nomad encampment for their consumption; when the ice over a river broke beneath the feet of a pack animal, she yanked the yak out of the freezing water by its tail, pulling it to safety; she flung a load of barley off the back of one pack animal and onto another when the animal became lodged in a narrow pass; when a pack animal stumbled and fell over a rocky cliff, she reached down and pulled it up to safety.
Without exception, the biography describes these episodes ending with Sonam Peldren glibly attributing her accomplishments to luck or fortuitous circumstances; for example, she explained that a huge wave had actually lifted the yak out of the freezing river. Also without exception, the biography records that her fellow nomads somehow failed to recognize Sonam Peldren's abilities.
In the final year of her life, when she and her fellow nomads were traveling in a Ya Nga near what is now the city of Chamda (bya / lcam mda') in today's Driru ('bri ru) county in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Sonam Peldren gave increasingly explicit religious interpretations of her actions to Rinchen Pel, and described her dreams, visions, and premonitions of death.
In particular, Sonam Peldren described recurring dreams and waking visions in which unnamed various female figures, each with their own retinue, appeared before her. Explaining that a plague would erupt in the nomad community if Sonam Peldren did not accompany them by the fifth month of that year, the female figures demanded that Sonam Peldren leave her nomad group and travel with them. Sonam Peldren interpreted these dreams and visions to mean that she would die in the fifth month.
Following these visions and for the next several months, Sonam Peldren claimed to experience visions, gave increasingly lengthy teachings to Rinchen Pel about the religious nature of her identity and daily activities, and continued to express a conviction that her death was imminent and that relics would be found in her cremation ashes. Many of her teachings, which took the form of spontaneous songs (mgur), focused on basic Buddhist doctrines of impermanence, non-attachment, and so forth. Other speeches made reference to esoteric Buddhist practices and philosophies, such as the Mahāmudrā and other doctrines typically associated with the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. These teachings were noteworthy given the absence of any religious training or practice up to that point, a topic which Sonam Peldren's husband, family, and community returned to repeatedly in their criticisms of her claims.
On the predicted day of the fifth month of the water mouse year, Sonam Peldren declared that she was ready to die. According to her husband's account, she first claimed to see multi-colored maṇḍalas of dākinīs and tutelary deities in the sky, then conducted an offering ritual, and declared that she was ready "to go." Crying "Heek!" her body was said to have shot into the sky, then to have come down and bounced five times, each time higher. Finally, her corpse glowed with white light; gods and goddesses of light poured from her body, and accompanied her consciousness as it departed for a Buddha realm. The corpse descended slowly to earth and landed in a seated posture on the ground. A red drop appeared in the right nostril and a white drop in the left; when Rinchen Pel wiped the drops away with a flat rock, images of a red sow and a deity wearing a tiger skin appeared on the surface of the stone. Rainbows were seen, and that night visions of palaces and various mandalas filled the sky.
The date of her death given in her biography is the twenty-third day of the fifth month of the water male-mouse year (1312 or 1372), meaning she would have been about forty-four years old.
Upon cremation Sonam Peldren's skeleton was said to be found covered with images: ḍākinīs and dharma protectors; multiple images of Vajravārahī (known as Dorje Pakmo in Tibetan), Vajrāpaṇī, the Buddha Śākyamuni, Tārā, Vairocana, Cakrasaṃvara, Vajrasattva, Ratnasambhava, Amitābha, Maitreya, Vajrayoginī, Dīpaṃkara and Vajradhara. Also said to be visible were the thirty-two print and cursive letters of the Tibetan alphabet; multiple and variously-colored sows; an elephant, vajra, conch shell, fish, and bell; and the letter "Ah" as well as the syllable "Tam". On her pelvic bone were signs of the secret wisdom ḍākinī, a triangle, the syllable "Bam," a flower, two ḍākinīs, and three circles of mantras.
For Rinchen Pel, Sonam Peldren's miraculous death vindicated her claims of religious authority; others in her community were not convinced. Beginning seven months after her passing, Rinchen Pel claimed to experience nine posthumous encounters with Sonam Peldren. The nature of these encounters varied. In some, Rinchen Pel asked questions, such as why Sonam Peldren's body had been ugly, inferior, and female during her lifetime; what he was supposed to do with the vast quantity of relics produced from her corpse; how Sonam Peldren had accrued religious knowledge in her lifetime despite no visible study or practice of religion; and what the meaning had been of Sonam Peldren's strange dreams, visions, songs and religious pronouncements in the last months of her life.
In another posthumous vision, when Rinchen Pel retreated to a mountainside to petition Sonam Peldren for guidance about whether he should ordain as a monk, Sonam Peldren appeared and sang a verse about emptiness and the nature of mind. In two other visions, Sonam Peldren chastised Rinchen Pel for neglecting her relics, using them to get material gain for himself, and for letting others' doubts about the authenticity of the relics affect his presentation and explanation of them, an accusation which Rinchen Pel denied. In yet other visions, Sonam Peldren simply appeared in the form of Dorje Pakmo before Rinchen Pel, along with rainbows, ḍākinīs, unusual birds, Sanskrit letters on mountain peaks.
Today Sonam Peldren is remembered as an exemplary female practitioner. A nunnery in Driru named Ya Nga Chamda Ganden Khacho Ling Nunnery (ya nga bya mda' btsun dgon dga' ldan mkha' phyod gling), called either Khacho Ling or Ganden Khacho Ling for short, stands on her death site; this nunnery contains a large wall mural depicting events from the lives of both Sonam Peldren and Rinchen Pel. Resident nuns perform and offering ritual to Sonam Peldren three times a month.
Her legacy was strong enough that by the sixteenth or seventeenth century a text describing the history of Tibet's only female reincarnation lineage, the Samding Dorje Pakmo (bsam lding rdo rje phag mo), could name her as an early figure in the lineage, both an incarnation of Dorje Pakmo and a pre-incarnation of Chokyi Drolma, the First Samding Dorje Pakmo (bsam sdings rdo rje phag mo 01 chos kyi sgron ma, 1422-1467/1468). However, it is worthwhile to point out that at Ganden Khacho Ling she is not regarded as belonging to the Samding Dorje Pakmo incarnation line, nor is she considered to have been an incarnation of Dorje Pakmo.
At least one twentieth-century woman claimed to be an incarnation of Sonam Peldren: Khandro Kunsang (mkha' 'gro kun bzang, d. 2004), a woman affiliated with the Kagyu tradition who gained great regional fame as a tantric practitioner and healer.
Source [http://treasuryoflives.org/biographies/view/bsod-nam-dpal-dren//13196]
Served as Khenpo at Kathok during the time of the sixth drung rabs of Rdo rje 'od zer. +
Buddhabhadra (佛馱跋陀羅, 359–429) means enlightenment worthy. Born in northern India, he was a descendent of King Amṛtodana, who was the youngest of the three uncles of Śākyamuni Buddha (circa 563–483 BCE). He renounced family life at age seventeen and became a monk. Studying hard, he mastered meditation and the Vinaya.
In 408, the tenth year of the Hongshi (弘始) years of the Later Qin Dynasty (後秦 or 姚秦, 384–417), one of the Sixteen Kingdoms (304–439), he went to its capital, Chang-an. The illustrious translator Kumārajīva (鳩摩羅什, 344–413) had arrived there in 401. However, Buddhabhadra did not like Kumārajīva’s students. Together with his own forty-some students, he went to the Lu Mountain (廬山, in present-day Jiangxi Province) and stayed with Master Huiyuan (慧遠, 334–416), the first patriarch of the Pure Land School of China.
In 415, the eleventh year of the Yixi (義熙) years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (東晉, 317–420), Buddhabhadra went south to its capital, Jiankong (建康), present-day Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. He stayed at the Daochang Temple (道場寺) and began his translation work. Altogether, he translated from Sanskrit into Chinese thirteen texts in 125 fascicles. For example, texts 376 and 1425 were translated jointly by him and Faxian (法顯, circa 337–422). Text 376 (T12n0376) in 6 fascicles is the earliest of the three Chinese versions of the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra; text 1425 (T22n1425) in 40 fascicles is the Chinese version of the Mahāsaṅghika Vinaya. Texts 278 and 666 were translated by him alone probably between years 418 and 421. Text 278 (T09n0278) is the 60-fascicle Chinese version of the Mahāvaipulya Sūtra of Buddha Adornment (Buddhāvataṁsaka-mahāvaipulya-sūtra); text 666 (T16n0666) in one fascicle is the first of the two extant Chinese versions of the Mahāvaipulya Sūtra of the Tathāgata Store.
In 429, the sixth year of the Yuanjia (元嘉) years of the Liu Song Dynasty (劉宋, 420–79), Buddhabhadra died, at age seventy-one. People called him the Indian Meditation Master. He is one of the eighteen exalted ones of the Lu Mountain. ([http://www.sutrasmantras.info/translators.html#kumarajiva Source Accessed Aug 19, 2021])
Buddhaghosa. (S. Buddhaghosa) (fl. c. 370-450 ce). The preeminent Pāli commentator, who translated into Pāli the Sinhalese commentaries to the Pāli canon and wrote the ''Visuddhimagga'' ("Path of Purification"), the definitive outline of Theravāda doctrine. There are several conflicting accounts of Buddhaghosa's origins, none of which can be dated earlier than the thirteenth Century. The Mon of Lower Burma claim him as a native son, although the best-known story, which is found in the Cūḷavaṃsa (chapter 37), describes Buddhaghosa as an Indian brāhmana who grew up in the environs of the Mahābodhi temple in northern India. According to this account, his father served as a purohita (brāhmaṇa priest) for King Saṅgāma, while he himself became proficient in the Vedas and related Brahmanical Sciences at an early age. One day, he was defeated in a debate by a Buddhist monk named Revata, whereupon he entered the Buddhist saṃgha to learn more about the Buddha's teachings. He received his monk's name Buddhaghosa, which means "Voice of the Buddha," because of his sonorous voice and impressive rhetorical skills. Buddhaghosa took Revata as his teacher and began writing commentaries even while a student. Works written at this time included the ''Ñāṇodaya'' and ''Aṭṭhasālinī''. To deepen his understanding (or according to some versions of his story, as punishment for his intellectual pride), Buddhaghosa was sent to Sri Lanka to study the Sinhalese commentaries on the Pāli Buddhist canon (P. tipiṭaka; S. Tripiṭaka). These commentaries were said to have been brought to Sri Lanka in the third Century BCE, where they were translated from Pāli into Sinhalese and subsequently preserved at the Mahāvihāra monastery in the Sri Lankan Capital of Anurādhapura. At the Mahāvihāra, Buddhaghosa studied under the guidance of the scholar-monk Saṅghapāla. Upon completing his studies, he wrote the great compendium of Theravāda teachings, ''Visuddhimagga'', which summarizes the contents of the Pāli tipiṭaka under the threefold heading of morality (sīla; S. śīla), meditative absorption (samādhi), and wisdom (paññā; S. prajñā). Impressed with his expertise, the elders of the Mahāvihāra allowed Buddhaghosa to translate the Sinhalese commentaries back into Pāli, the canonical language of the Theravāda tipiṭaka. Attributed to Buddhaghosa are the vinaya commentaries, ''Samantapāsādikā'' and ''Kaṅkhāvitaraṇī''; the commentaries to the Suttapiṭaka, ''Sumaṅgalavilāsinī'', ''Papañcasūdanī'', ''Sāratthappakāsinī'', and ''Manorathapūraṇī''; also attributed to him is the ''Paramatthajotikā'' (the commentary to the ''Khuddakapāṭha'' and ''Suttanīpāta''). Buddhaghosa's commentaries on the Abhidhammapiṭaka (see Abhidharma) include the ''Sammohavinodanī'' and ''Pañcappakaraṇaṭṭihakathā'', along with the ''Aṭṭhasālinī''. Of these many works, Buddhaghosa is almost certainly author of the ''Visuddhimagga'' and translator of the commentaries to the four nikāyas, but the remainder are probably later attributions. Regardless of attribution, the body of work associated with Buddhaghosa was profoundly influential on the entire subsequent history of Buddhist scholasticism in the Theravāda traditions of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. (Source: "Buddhaghosa." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 152. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.)
Jñānapāda (autonym: Buddhajñāna, also referred to as Buddhaśrījñāna, *Buddhajñānapāda, *Śrījñānapāda; fl. c. 770–820 CE), was one of the most influential figures of mature Indian esoteric Buddhism. He is remembered first and foremost as the founder of the earlier of the two most important exegetical schools of the Guhyasamājatantra (→BEB I, Guhyasamāja), but he was also very likely a guru of some note in the Pāla court, the dominant power in East India at the time, and the first warden of the famous Vikramaśīla monastery. (Source: [https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/search?s.f.s2_parent=s.f.book.encyclopedia-of-buddhism&search-go=&s.q=J%C3%B1%C4%81nap%C4%81da Brill Encyclopedia of Buddhism Online]) +
Buddhapālita. (T. Sangs rgyas bskyang) (c. 470—540). An Indian Buddhist scholar of the Madhyamaka school, who is regarded in Tibet as a key figure of what was dubbed the Prāsaṅgika school of Madhyamaka. Little is known about the life of Buddhapālita. He is best known for his commentary on Nāgārjuna's ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'', a commentary that was thought to survive only in Tibetan translation, until the recent rediscovery of a Sanskrit manuscript. Buddhapālita's commentary bears a close relation in some chapters to the ''Akutobhayā'', another commentary on Nāgārjuna's ''Mūlamadhyamakakārikā'' of uncertain authorship, which is sometimes attributed to Nāgārjuna himself. In his commentary, Buddhapālita does not adopt some of the assumptions of the Buddhist logical tradition of the day, including the need to state one's position in the form
of an autonomous inference (''svatantrānumāna''). Instead, Buddhapālita merely states an absurd consequence (''prasaṅga'')
that follows from the opponent's position. In his own commentary on the first chapter of Nāgārjuna's text, Bhāvaviveka criticizes Buddhapālita's method, arguing for the need for the Madhyamaka adept to state his own position after refuting the position of the opponent. In his commentary on the same chapter, Candrakīrti in turn defended the approach of Buddhapālita and criticized Bhāvaviveka. It was on the basis of these three commentaries that later Tibetan exegetes identified two schools within Madhyamaka, the Svātantrika, in which they included Bhāvaviveka, and the Prāsaṅgika, in which they included Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti. (Source: "Buddhapālita." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 154–55. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.) +
Buddhayaśas. (C. Fotuoyeshe; J. Butsudayasha; K. Pult'ayasa 佛陀耶舍) (d.u.; fl. c. early fifth century). A monk from Kashmir . . . who became an important early translator of Indic Buddhist texts into Chinese. Buddhayaśas is said to have memorized several million words worth of both mainstream and Mahāyāna materials and became a renowned teacher in his homeland. He later taught the Sarvāstivāda vinaya to the preeminent translator Kumārajīva and later joined his star pupil in China, traveling to the capital of Chang'an at Kumãrajīva's invitation in 408. While in China, he collaborated with the Chinese monk Zhu Fonian (d.u.) in the translation of two massive texts of the mainstream Buddhist tradition: the Sifen Lü ("Four-Part Vinaya," in sixty rolls), the vinaya collection of the Dharmaguptaka school, which would become the definitive vinaya used within the Chinese tradition; and the Dīrghāgama, also generally presumed to be associated with the Dharmaguptakas. Even after returning to Kashmir four years later, Buddhayaśas is said to have continued with his translation work, eventually sending back to China his rendering of the ''Ākāśagarbhasūtra''. (Source: "Buddhayaśas." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 157. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.) +
Buddhaśrī was an important Sakya master active in western central Tibet in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century. He was an important Lamdre master who passed on that teaching cycle to Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo. +
Buddhaśānta. A north Indian *monk who went to *China in 511 CE where he cooperated with *Bodhiruci in translating the *''Daśabhumika Sūtra''. Later he worked on a version of the *''Mahāyāna-saṃgraha'' and other texts. (Source: "Buddhaśānta." In ''A Dictionary of Buddhism'', 45. Oxford University Press, 2003) +
The late Reverend Bunnō Katō, born in 1888, the translator of ''Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law'', was a priest-scholar of the Nichiren Sect of Japanese Buddhism. He completed this translation after three years of devoted work, when he was studying at Oxford University since 1922, with the help of Rev. William Soothill, professor of Chinese. On returning to Japan in 1925, he soon became a lecturer at Risshō University and editor of the ''Nisshū Shimpō'', then a mnthly bulletin of the Nichiren Sect. Afterwards he was appointed head of the doctrinal department at the headquarters of the Sect. Katō's hopes of having his English translation of the Lotus Sutra published failed to materialize several times because of the costs involved. After his death, the manuscript was donated by his widow to the library of Risshō University, where it was kept for 35 years until turned over to Dr. Wilhelm Schiffer, professor at Sophia University and director of the International Institute of the Study of Religions, in 1967 for further revision. His translation, indeed, saw the light of day after an elapse of 46 years since he completed the translation in Oxford. (Source: book jacket, ''Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law'') +
Nanjo Bunyu, or Nanjō Bun'yū (南条文雄) (1 July 1849 – 9 November 1927) was a Buddhist priest and one of the most important modern Japanese scholars of Buddhism. Nanjō was born to the abbot of Seiunji Temple (誓運寺), part of the Shinshu Ōtani sect (真宗大谷派) of the Higashi Honganji (東本願寺) branch of Jodo Shinshu.
Nanjō studied Classical Chinese texts and Buddhist doctrine in his youth before being sent to Europe in 1876 to study Sanskrit and Indian philosophy from European scholars, including Max Müller, under whom Bunyu studied in England. While there he met the Chinese Buddhist Yang Wenhui, whom he helped to acquire some three hundred Chinese Buddhist texts that had been lost in China to be reprinted at Yang's printing house in Nanjing.
In September 1880, Nanjō examined and cataloged a complete edition of the Chinese translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka that had been gifted to the India Office Library in London by the Japanese government. He determined that the India Office Library collection contained the same works as those mentioned in the oldest Catalogue of the Chinese Translation of the Buddhist Tripitaka compiled in 520 AD.
He returned to Japan in 1884 and served as a professor or head of a number of Buddhist seminaries and universities until his death. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjo_Bunyu Source Accessed Jan 13, 2022]) +
Burton Dewitt Watson (June 13, 1925 – April 1, 2017) was an American sinologist, translator, and writer known for his English translations of Chinese and Japanese literature. Watson's translations received many awards, including the Gold Medal Award of the Translation Center at Columbia University in 1979, the PEN Translation Prize in 1982 for his translation with Hiroaki Sato of ''From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry'', and again in 1995 for ''Selected Poems of Su Tung-p'o''. In 2015, at age 88, Watson was awarded the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation for his long and prolific translation career. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_Watson Source Accessed June 7, 2021] +
C
C. Pierce Salguero is an interdisciplinary humanities scholar interested in the role of Buddhism in the cross-cultural exchange of medical ideas worldwide. He has a PhD in the history of medicine from Johns Hopkins University, and is associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State University's Abington College. He is the author of ''Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China'' (2014), and a number of articles on Buddhism and medicine in Asian history. (''Buddhism and Medicine'', 672) +
Prof. Dr. C. Upender Rao is now working as a Professor in the School of Sanskrit and Indic Studies, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the senior most professor in the school at present. He was the Chairperson of Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies at J N U. He specialized in Sanskrit Language and literature and poetics, Pali and Early Buddhist literature. He recently taught Sanskrit for a month (June, 2018) in Hue Quang Buddhist monastery of Hochiminh city in Vietnam. Prof. Rao was a Visiting professor in Cambodia on ICCR chair, Govt. of India.<br><br>He is holding Ph. D. (1996) from the dept. of Sanskrit, Osmania University, Hyderabad on “Philosophical Ideas in Dīghanikāya”. He passed M.A. in Sanskrit with distinction (Gold Medal) and M. A. in Pali first class (Gold Medal) from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, did M. Phil (Sanskrit) on “Study of Simile in Shishupala-vadham” and B. Ed. He passed exams of Prakrit in All India Summer School‟ in Prākrit Language and Literature, Elementary Course 1992, Advanced Course, 1996, in Bhogilal Leherchand Institute of Indology, Delhi.<br><br>He has edited and authored 22 books. At present he is working on some important Indic issues such as Sanskrit, Pali and Ramayana in Sanskrit inscriptions of south East Asia, mainly, Cambodia. He is member of Global encyclopedia of Ramayana of Ayodhya Research Institute, U. P. He recently presented his paper in Vietnam on “Indian Culture in Sanskrit inscriptions of Cambodia” and on „Akshara Philosophy‟ in Dallas, USA (August, 2018). He has extensively written and published research papers and books in
Sanskrit, Pali, Hindi, Telugu and English languages. He received number of awards and certificates of honors from various institutions in India and abroad. (http://www.jnu.ac.in/Faculty/curao/CV_Rao.pdf Source Accessed Apr 2, 2021]) +
[C. W. "Sandy"] Huntington was known foremost for his work in Mahayana Buddhist thought, in particular the Madhyamaka philosophy of India and Tibet. More recently, he published a novel, Maya (Wisdom Publications 2015), set in India in the 1970s, and wrote an article, “The Triumph of Narcissism: Theravāda Buddhist Meditation in the Marketplace,” critiquing certain psychotherapeutic models of teaching and understanding vipassanā meditation found in the West today.*
Until his death, Huntington served as a professor of religious studies at Hartwick College, in Oneonta, New York, where he won both the Margaret L. Bunn Award for Excellence in Teaching (2004) and the Teacher/Scholar Award (2019). Before teaching at Hartwick, Huntington worked at the University of Michigan, his alma mater, as well as Denison College and Antioch University’s Buddhist Studies in India program, based in Bodh Gaya.
As a doctoral student, Huntington was guided at the University of Michigan by Luis Gómez, himself a beloved and prolific scholar of Indian Buddhist thought. During this time, Huntington traveled to India to study Sanskrit and Tibetan with the great masters of the day, returning many times over his career. On one such visit, he translated Candrakīrti’s Madhyamakāvatāra with Geshé Namgyal Wangchen, later published as The Emptiness of Emptiness (Hawaii University Press 1989), a pioneering text in Buddhist philosophy. Huntington went on to work closely with fellow scholars on topics of hermeneutics and methodology in the study of Buddhist philosophy, asking scholars to look not only at what the texts mean, but what presuppositions and attitudes were influencing their own interpretations and understandings. ([https://www.buddhistdoor.net/news/buddhist-scholar-cw-sandy-huntington-dies-aged-71 Source Accessed May 26, 2021]) +
17th cent. explorer; Portuguese +
Caitlin Collins, when living in Los Angeles in 1979, had the good fortune to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama on his first visit to America. She has been practising the Dharma ever since under the guidance of His Holiness and other wonderful teachers from the four main Tibetan traditions, as well as Theravada and Zen. Cait has been studying with Ringu Tulku Rinpoche since 1996, and started the first Bodhicharya group, Bodhicharya Bosham group in West Sussex, in 1998, under his direction. She now lives in the Exmoor National Park with three horses and a dog, where she looks after Bodhicharya Somerset and tries to live a quiet life of semi-retreat except when enticed out by eco-activism or cream teas. ([https://bodhicharya.org/uk/people/ Source Accessed Jan 7, 2025]) +
Camillo Formigatti studied Indology and Sanskrit as a secondary subject when he was studying Classics at the “Università Statale” in Milan. After that he spent ten years in Germany, learning Tibetan and textual criticism in Marburg and manuscript studies in Hamburg. From June 2008 to May 2011, he worked as a research associate on the project: ''In the Margins of the Text: Annotated Manuscripts from Northern India and Nepal'', in Hamburg. From November 2011 to November 2014 he worked as a Research Associate on the ''Sanskrit Manuscripts Project'' in Cambridge and later as a collaborator in the project ''Transforming Tibetan and Buddhist Book Culture''. After having briefly taught Sanskrit at SOAS, since February 2016 he is the John Clay Sanskrit Librarian at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. ([https://sanskritreadingroom.wordpress.com/2017/10/28/session-3-dr-camillo-formigatti/ Source Accessed July 22, 2021]) +
Candida Bastos is a translator of Buddhist works into Portuguese. She has translated a number of works by by Chagdud Tulku, including ''Portões da Prática Budista: Ensinamentos Essenciais de um Lama Tibetano'', ''O senhor da dança: a autobiografia de um lama tibetano'', ''Para Abrir o Coração: Treinamento para Paz'', ''Comentários sobre Tara Vermelha'', and ''Vida e morte no Budismo Tibetano''. She has also co-translated, with Manoel Vidal, ''O caminho do bodisatva'', a Portuguese translation of the revised edition of the English translation of the ''Bodhicaryāvatāra'' made by the Padmakara Translation Group. She lives in São Paulo, Brazil. +
Candragomin. (T. Btsun pa zla ba). Fifth-century CE Indian lay poet and grammarian, who made substantial contributions to Sanskrit grammar, founding what was known as the Cāndra school. A junior contemporary of the great Kālidāsa, Candragomin was one of the most accomplished poets in the history of Indian Buddhism. His play ''Lokānanda'', which tells the story of the bodhisattva king Maṇicūḍa, is the oldest extant Buddhist play and was widely performed in the centuries after
its composition. He was a devotee of Tārā and composed several works in her praise. Tibetan works describe him as a proponent of Vijñānavãda who engaged in debate with Candrakīrti, but there is little philosophical content in his works that can be confidently ascribed to him. Among those works are the "Letter to a Disciple" (''Śiṣyalekha''), the "Confessional Praise" (''Deśanāstava''), and perhaps the "Twenty Verses on the Bodhisattva Precepts" (''Bodhisattvasaṃvaraviṃśaka''). (Source: "Candragomin." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 165. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.) +
