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Born in Toyohashi City in Aichi Prefecture on January 21, 1915, Hirakawa studied as an undergraduate and then graduate student (1939-1945) at the Department of Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit Philology, Faculty of Letters, Tokyo Imperial University (now University of Tokyo), and became Research Assistant of that department in 1946. He was appointed Associate Professor of the newly established Department of Indian Philosophy at Hokkaido University in 1950. After teaching for four years in Hokkaido University, he returned to Tokyo in 1954 to become Associate Professor of Buddhist Studies at his alma mater. Hirakawa was granted a full professorship in 1962, a position he held until reaching the University of Tokyo’s mandatory retirement age of 60 in 1975, at which time he received the title of Professor Emeritus. After his retirement he taught for 10 years (1975-1985) Buddhist Studies at Waseda University, Department of Oriental Philosophy, School of Literature. Hirakawa also served as Chairman of the Directors of the Japanese Association of Indian and Buddhist Studies for eight years (1983-1991), where he made tremendous contributions toward the advancement of the Association. In 1993 he was selected to be a member of the Japan Academy. He went on to become Chairman and Professor at the International College for Advanced Buddhist Studies (established in 1996), where in addition to his duties as the director of research and education, he was responsible for the general administration of the College. He held this position until passing away. ([https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/jiabs/article/download/8928/2821/ Source Accessed Dec 5, 2019])
[https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/jiabs/article/download/8928/2821/ See also, ''In Memoriam'', Professor Akira Hirakawa] +
Akira Sadakata, professor at Tokai University, is a specialist in Indian Philosophy and the author of many books on Buddhism. +
Prof. Akira Saito is a faculty member at the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies in Tokyo Japan. He holds an M.A. from the University of Tokyo (1979) and received his Ph.D. from Australian National University (1985). His primary area of specialization is the History of Indian Buddhist Philosophy and Madhyamaka Studies. His teaching activities at ICPBC include: Reading Buddhist Studies in Foreign Languages; Inner Asian Buddhist Philology; Ph.D. Tutorials; and Special topics in Buddhist Studies. ([http://www.icabs.ac.jp/en/research/faculty/saito Adapted from Source Aug 3, 2020]) +
Akira Yuyama earned his M.A. in 1961 from Tokyo University. He has studied Indology at the universities of Osaka, Tokyo, and Leiden, specialising in Buddhist Sanskrit philology. He was a Lecturer in South Asian and Buddhist Studies in the Faculty of Asian Studies, Australian National University. He has published a study of the ''Ratnaguṇasaṃcayagāthā'', ''Systematische Übersicht über die buddhistische Sanskrit-Literatur (Erster Teil: Vinaya-Texte)'', ''Bibliography of Sanskrit Texts of the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra'', and an English translation, authored jointly with Dr Tsugunari Kubo, of Kumārajīva’s Chinese rendition of the same text. According to Paul Harrison, "Professor Yuyama’s contributions to our field were prodigious, and he will long be remembered for his unparalleled command of the Buddhist tradition, his astonishing bibliographical knowledge, the wide range of his interests, his openness and his vision." ([https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/discussions/5570984/passing-professor-akira-yuyama Source Accessed Oct 8, 2024]) +
Tudeng Nima is the 2nd Alak Zenkar Rinpoche. The 1st Alak Zenkar Rinpoche, Pema Ngödrup Rolpai Dorjé, lived from 1881 to 1943. For a short biography, see Tulku Thondup, ''Masters of Meditation and Miracles'' (Shambhala Publications, 1996), 275–77.
Tudeng Nima Rinpoche is the Director of the Paltseg Tibetan Rare Texts Research Center, TBRC board member, visiting scholar at the University of Virginia, and board member of the China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture. In 2000-2003, he was a Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University in the East Asian Institute. From 2004 to the present he has been a visiting scholar at the University of Virginia. Tudeng Nima Rinpoche has written many papers for which he has received numerous awards. He has rescued and reproduced thousands of important and rare Tibetan texts. He has made outstanding contributions to Tibetan culture and education and is renowned as one of the world’s leading Tibetan Buddhist scholars. ([https://www.tbrc.org/#!footer/about/board Adapted from BDRC September 17, 2020])
[http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Alak_Zenkar_Rinpoche Rigpa Wiki Bio] +
Dr. Mrs. Alaka Chattopadhyaya obtained her doctorate degrèe of the Calcutta University with her highly acclaimed work based on Tibetan sources published with the title ''Atisa and Tibet''. By
profession she was until recently the principal of the Vidyasagar College of Women, Calcutta. Her other published works include the translation (in Bengali) of the ''Caturasitisiddha-pravrtti''—life of
the 84 Siddhacaryas available hithertobefore only in its Tibetan version, besides many other Tibetan studies. She has extensively toured abroad, delivering lectures in [the] USSR, China, Oxford, Cambridge, Budapast and other places. (Source: inside jacket, ''Tāranātha's History of Buddhism in India'') +
Alan Fox is an Professor of Asian and Comparative Philosophy and Religion in the Philosophy Department at the University of Delaware. He earned his Ph.D. in Religion from Temple University in 1988, and was a Fulbright Scholar in Taiwan in 1986-87. He came to the University in 1990. He received the University of Delaware’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 1995 and 2006, and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Outstanding Teacher Award in 1999. In 2006 he was named Delaware Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement of Teaching and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. In 2008 he was named a finalist for the National Inspiring Integrity Award, and in 2012 he was named a Teaching Fellow by the American Association of Philosophy Teachers. He is a former director of both the University Honors Program and the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program, as well as advisor to the undergraduate Religious Studies Minor. He has also served as President of the Faculty Senate at both the College and University levels. He has published on Buddhism and Chinese Philosophy. His research is currently focused on Philosophical Daoism. ([https://udel.edu/~afox/ Source Accessed May 18, 2021]) +
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]) +
Born in Mexico City in 1961, Alan Murillo studied as a professional translator at the Higher Institute of Interpreters and Translators in Mexico City and has dedicated himself for 25 years to the translation of legal, financial and technical documents.
As part of the Casa Tíbet translation team, he has translated several books on Buddhism into Spanish: ''Buddhism with an Attitude'' by Alan Wallace; ''Iridescent Splendor: The Memoirs of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche''; and ''Geshe Lhundup Söpa's Autobiography'' , as well as numerous texts and teachings for Casa Tíbet México.
A student of Casa Tíbet since 1998, he is part of the group of instructors under the guidance and instruction of his main teacher, Marco Antonio Karam, founder and director of Casa Tíbet México.
As a student of said institution, he has received teachings on the theory and practice of Buddhist teachings, fundamentally the study and analysis of consciousness and the cultivation of human potential based on transcendental values, in order to develop a more meaningful life for the benefit of other beings and oneself.
During this time he has attended short retreats, seminars and teachings of great masters of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, such as Geshe Sopa, Geshe Thabke, Khenpo Pema Wangdak, Alan Wallace, Matthieu Ricard, Dr. Jeffrey Hopkins, Khandro Rinpoché, Marcia Dechen Wangmo, among others.
From 2008 to 2012 he was part of the editorial project at the Autonomous University of Mexico City (UACM) as a translator in the Department of Educational Innovation and Critical Thinking, translating four books on these topics.
He currently coordinates the Editorial Committee of Casa Tíbet México and is the editorial director of the quarterly human development magazine 84 Thousand - Words that wake up. ([https://casatibet.org.mx/2016/09/05/alan-murillo/ Adapted from Source Apr 6, 2021]) +
Albert Grünwedel (31 July 1856 – 28 October 1935) was a German Indologist, Tibetologist, archaeologist, and explorer of Central Asia. He was one of the first scholars to study the Lepcha language.
Grünwedel was born in Munich in 1856, the son of a painter. He studied art history and Asian languages, including Avestan, and in 1883 earned his doctorate at the University of Munich. In 1881 he began work as an assistant at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin and in 1883 he was appointed deputy director of the ethnographic collection. Grünwedel won accolades for his numerous publications on Buddhist art, archaeology Central Asia, and Himalayan languages. Two notable works were'' Buddhist art in India'' (1893) and ''Mythology of Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia'' (1900), which concerned the Greek origins of the Gandharan Greco-Buddhist artistic style and its development in Central Asia.
In 1899 Grünwedel was invited to join a Russian archaeological research expedition led by Vasily Radlov into the north of Xinjiang province, China. In the same year he was appointed a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In 1902-1903 Grünwedel led the first German expedition to Turpan, in Xinjiang, becoming the first modern European to study the massive ruins near Gaochang. He recorded the events of this expedition in his book ''Report on Archaeological work in Idikutschahri and Surrounding areas in Winter 1902-1903'' (1905). The next expedition was led by Albert von Le Coq, who became famous for removing large numbers of frescos from sites across Xinjiang. Grünwedel himself headed the third German Turfan expedition in 1905–1907, the results of which were published in ''Ancient Buddhist Religion in Chinese Turkistan'' (1912). Grünwedel's expeditions were largely funded by the Krupp family. Grünwedel was joined by Heinrich Lüders who made major contributions to the epigraphical analysis of the Turpan-Expedition findings after being called to the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Berlin as Professor for oriental languages in 1909.
Grünwedel retired in 1921, and in 1923 moved to Bavaria, where his spent his last years at Bad Tölz writing a number of scientific papers. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Gr%C3%BCnwedel Source Accessed Jan 15, 2024])
Albion M. Butters (Masters of Theological Studies, Harvard Divinity School; Fulbright scholar, India; Ph.D., History of Religion, Columbia University) has a specialization in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. As an Academy of Finland Research Fellow, he is currently engaged in a study on ideological aspects of "Campus Carry" in Texas, focusing in particular on fear and affect, power, and intersections between gun culture and religiosity.
Butters is the editor of Studia Orientalia Electronica, an online peer-reviewed imprint of the Studia Orientalia journal (est. 1917, Finnish Oriental Society). His multidisciplinary research interests include questions of identity and meaning-making, shifting ideologies (religious and secular), and the integration of spiritual themes in popular culture. Forthcoming is his monograph titled Spi-Fi: Spiritual Fiction in Comics, which examines the significance of stories and art for identity construction and personal transformation; supported by the Kone Foundation, this research project was inspired by Butters’ involvement as one of the creators of the graphic novel Mandala (Dark Horse Comics, 2014). ([https://utu.academia.edu/AlbionButters Source Academia.edu]) +
Aleksa Dokic received a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Delhi in 2001. The dissertation was titled "Samādhirāja Sūtra: An English Translation of Chapters I-XX of the Sanskrit Text with Critical Notes." The supervisor for the dissertation was Karam Tej Singh Sarao. Dokic is currently Assistant Director, Government Office for Human Rights and Rights of National Minorities, Croatia. +
Dr. Aleksandra Wenta is Assistant Professor in the School of Buddhist Studies, Philosophy and Comparative Religions. She was trained at Oxford University, Banaras Hindu University, and Jagiellonian University. She was fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla (2012-2014) where she worked on the aesthetics of power in medieval Chidambaram. Her scholarly interests range from Buddhism in India and Tibet, through Sanskrit and history of Śaivism in Kashmir and South India, to the performance theories and emotions in pre-modern India. She is currently working on the history of the transmission of the esoteric Buddhist cult from India to Tibet. ([https://nalandauniv.edu.in/faculties/aleksandra-wenta/ Source Accessed Feb 11, 2021]) +
Alex Catanese earned his PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of ''Buddha in the Marketplace: The Commodification of Buddhist Objects in Tibet'' (UVA Press). He joined Tsadra Foundation staff in 2019 as an editor and content contributor. +
Alexander Gardner is the Director and Chief Editor of the Treasury of Lives, an online biographical encyclopedia of Tibet and the Himalayan Region. He completed his PhD in Buddhist Studies at the University of Michigan in 2007. From 2007 to 2016 he worked at the Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, serving as their Executive Director from 2013 to 2016. His research interests are in Tibetan life writing and the cultural history of Kham in the nineteenth century. He is the author of ''The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great'', published by Shambhala in 2019. Alex served as the writer-in-residence for Tsadra Foundation's Buddha-Nature Project from 2017-2019. +
Alex is an executive coach and life coach to senior business executives, including two CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, as well as movie stars and rock musicians. He also serves the global Performance Leadership practice at McKinsey & Company, helping the world’s leading companies build performance cultures that are aligned with their strategic objectives, and coaching executives and managers through personal transformations that support business goals and also bring greater meaning and purpose to their lives. He is currently serving clients on four continents. Alex was formerly a Professor of Business Administration in London and Copenhagen, teaching leadership on MBA programs. He holds a Ph.D. in Strategy and Organizational Behaviour from London University and an M.A. in Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University. He has been awarded a Natwest Fellowship to the London Business School and a Fulbright Fellowship to the Harvard Business School. Alex has transcribed and edited Khyentse Rinpoche’s Madhyamakavatara teachings given in France from 1996-2000, and organized them into Khyentse Foundation’s first publication, the Madhyamakavatara Commentary. He is now editing Rinpoche’s cycle of ''Uttaratantra'' teachings. Alex serves as a teaching assistant at select Khyentse Rinpoche teachings. (Source: [https://khyentsefoundation.org/project/alex-trisoglio/ Khyentse Foundation]) +
Wayman joined Columbia in 1966 as a visiting associate professor of religion. In 1967, he was appointed professor of Sanskrit in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures, a position he held until his retirement in 1991. During his tenure, Wayman taught classes in classical Sanskrit, Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit, Indian and Tibetan Religions and the history of astrology.
While at Columbia, he was a member of the administrative committee of the Southern Asian Institute. He also served as senior editor of The Buddhist Traditions Series (with 30 volumes to date) published by Motilal Banarsidass in Delhi, India.
Wayman authored 12 books, including ''Buddhist Tantric Systems'', ''Untying the Knots in Buddhism'', ''Enlightenment of Vairocana'', and ''A Millennium of Buddhist Logic''. He co-authored a translation of the 3rd-century Buddhist scripture ''Lion's Roar of Queen Shrimala'' with his wife, Hideko. Her knowledge of Chinese and Japanese sources complemented his research and translation of Sanskrit and Tibetan sources.
An honorary volume, titled ''Researches in Indian and Buddhist Philosophy (essays in honor of Prof. Alex Wayman)'', edited by Ram Karan Sharma, was published in 1993 to commemorate the many years that Wayman devoted to scholarly research on Indian topics. ([https://lists.h-net.org/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-asia&month=0411&week=b&msg=Mjh17lJ%2B2gHmOKM2On16yg&user=&pw= Source Accessed Aug 10, 2020])] +
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]
Sándor Csoma de Kőrös (Hungarian: [ˈʃaːndor ˈkøːrøʃi ˈt͡ʃomɒ]; born Sándor Csoma; 27 March 1784/8 – 11 April 1842) was a Hungarian philologist and Orientalist, author of the first Tibetan–English dictionary and grammar book. He was called Phyi-glin-gi-grwa-pa in Tibetan, meaning "the foreign pupil", and was declared a bosatsu or bodhisattva by the Japanese in 1933.[2] He was born in Kőrös, Grand Principality of Transylvania (today part of Covasna, Romania). His birth date is often given as 4 April, although this is actually his baptism day and the year of his birth is debated by some authors who put it at 1787 or 1788 rather than 1784. The Magyar ethnic group, the Székelys, to which he belonged believed that they were derived from a branch of Attila's Huns who had settled in Transylvania in the fifth century. Hoping to study the claim and to find the place of origin of the Székelys and the Magyars by studying language kinship, he set off to Asia in 1820 and spent his lifetime studying the Tibetan language and Buddhist philosophy. Csoma de Kőrös is considered as the founder of Tibetology. He was said to have been able to read in seventeen languages. He died in Darjeeling while attempting to make a trip to Lhasa in 1842 and a memorial was erected in his honour by the Asiatic Society of Bengal. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1ndor_K%C5%91r%C3%B6si_Csoma Source Accessed May 5, 2022]) +
The Alexander Csoma de Kőrös Translation Group consists of Karma Dorje (Rabjampa), Zsuzsa Majer, Krisztina Teleki, William Dewey, and Beáta Kakas. ([https://84000.co/grants Source Accessed Sep 30, 2022]) +
