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Daniel A. Métraux is Professor of Asian Studies at Mary Baldwin College and Adjunct Professor of Asian Culture and History in the graduate program at the Union Institute and University. He has written extensively on Japan's New Religions and other aspects of modern Asian history, including ''Burma's Modern Tragedy'' (2004) and ''The Asian Writings of Jack London'' (2010). He has served as Editor of the ''Southeast Review of Asian Studies'' and as president of the SE Chapter, Association for Asian Studies. (Source: ''The Buddhist World'', notes on contributors, xvi) +
Dan Hirshberg’s study and practice of Tibetan Buddhism began as an undergrad in 1996 and culminated in a PhD at Harvard University (2012) where his dissertation focused on Nyang-rel Nyima Ozer (1124–92), the first of the great Buddhist treasure revealers, and the textual and religious innovations that produced the first biography of Padmasambhava. Dan is now Assistant Professor of Religion at the The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA, where he directs the Contemplative Studies program and serves as associate director of the Leidecker Center for Asian Studies. His first book, Remembering the Lotus-Born: Padmasambhava in the History of Tibet's Golden Age (Wisdom Publications 2016), explores the earliest re/construction of Tibet's most popular narrative, its conversion to Buddhism under the emperors, by means of Tibetan innovations in reincarnation theory, textual revelation, and historiography. It won Honorable Mention for the E. Gene Smith Book Prize from the Association for Asian Studies in 2018. +
Daniel Boucher's scholarly focus is Buddhist studies, particularly the early development of the cluster of Indian Buddhist movements called the Mahayana and their transmission to China in the first few centuries of the Common Era. His related interests include translation as a religious genre, with special focus on the earliest translations of Buddhist texts into Chinese; Buddhist Middle Indo-Aryan, particularly the role of Gandhari Prakrit in the earliest transmission of Buddhism to Central Asia and China; art historical, epigraphical, and archeological materials as sources for the study of religion; and history, theory, and methods in the academic study of religion. ([https://religious-studies.cornell.edu/daniel-boucher Source Accessed May 20, 2021]) +
Dan Cozort grew up in North Dakota, where he ran cross-country and track and was a successful debater and extemporaneous speaker. At Brown University he majored in religious studies, specializing in Christian theology and ethics. At the graduate school of the University of Virginia, he specialized in Buddhism, learned Tibetan and Sanskrit, and began his collaboration with Tibetan lamas. He did a year of fieldwork in India, traveling broadly and staying in Tibetan monasteries. His teaching career began with a two-year appointment at Bates College in Maine. Coming to Dickinson in 1988, he proposed that the College join the South India Term Abroad consortium, which he directed in Madurai, south India, in 1992-93. In 1991 he organized the Festival of Tibet at Dickinson, which included an art exhibit he curated and was the initial occasion in which Tibetan monks constructed a Buddhist sand painting in the Trout Gallery. The monks returned in 1995 to construct another; he collaborated with Prof. Lonna Malmsheimer on a film to document it. In 2000 he began to teach in the Norwich Humanities Programme in England and in 2003-2005 he was its resident director. Prof. Cozort’s teaching is principally in the area of comparative religion, where he offers courses on Buddhism and Hinduism. However, he has also taught about Native American religions, about love and sex in relation to religion, about happiness, and has taught a variety of courses in the theory of religious studies. Currently, in addition to introductory courses, he frequently offers “Contemplative Practices in Asia,” “Buddhism and the Environment,” and “Spiritual Dimensions of Healing,” a course on the relation of religion and medicine. He is the author of six books: Highest Yoga tantra, Buddhist Philosophy, Unique Tenets of the Middle Way Consequence School, Sand Mandala of Vajrabhairava, Sadhana of Mahakala, and Enlightenment Through Imagination. He also edited the Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Ethics.He has also written numerous book chapters and articles and a film script. From 2006 to 2019, he was the Editor of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. ([https://www.dickinson.edu/site/custom_scripts/dc_faculty_profile_index.php?fac=cozort Source Accessed Apr 14, 2021])
Daniel Donnet is professor emeritus at Université catholique de Louvain. +
<h2>Summary</h2>
Daniel Gold has broad interests in South Asian religion and culture, with research specializations in old Hindi poetry, early modern North Indian devotional cultures, and contemporary religious life. He has also written on the study of religion.
<h2>Research Focus</h2>
Gold is currently revisiting the early modern Hindi saint-poets known collectively as "sants." Situating the religious cultures that have grown up around particular figures in their separate historical contexts, he seeks to understand factors affecting the diversity of the religious cultures that emerged around specific sants and continuities in the development of their tradition as a whole. ([https://religious-studies.cornell.edu/daniel-gold Source Accessed Feb 13, 2023]) +
University of Vienna, Department of South Asian, Tibetan, and Buddhist Studies +
Daniel Stuart is a scholar of South Asian religions, literary cultures, and meditation traditions who specializes in the texts and practices of the Buddhist tradition. He has worked extensively on sutra literature and Buddhist manuscripts in various Asian languages and scripts. He is particularly interested in the interrelationships between Buddhist practice traditions, theories of mind, and scriptural production in premodern and modern India. ([https://sam.research.sc.edu/uscera/facultyExpertise/cv/32657;jsessionid=F72AFD048453AE0C3FF4F670126B8062 Source Accessed 26 Jan 2015]) +
Daniel Brown is the author of 15 books including Transformations of Consciousness (with Ken Wilbur & Jack Engler), and a book on Mahamudra, Pointing Out the Great Way: The Mahamudra Tradition of Tibetan Meditation-Stages (Wisdom Publications), and two books on public dialogues with H.H. The Dalai Lama. He is also the co-author of a forthcoming book on the Bon A Khrid lineage of Bon Great Completion Meditation.
In graduate school at The University of Chicago he studied Sanskrit with Hans van Beutenen, and also studied Tibetan, Buddhist Sanskrit, and Pali languages in the Buddhist Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison WI. He spent 10 years translating meditation texts for his doctoral dissertation on Tibetan Buddhist Mahamudra meditation.
He has studied meditation practice for about 45 years, beginning with reading Patanjali’s Yogasutras and its main commentaries in the original Sanskrit with the great historian of religion professor Mircea Eliade, as well as practicing Patanjali's stages of meditation directly with Dr. Arwind Vasavada. At the same time, Dr. Brown studied the Burmese Theravadin Buddhist mindfulness meditation, first with Western teachers in the United States like Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and Christopher Titmus, and then directly with the originator of the Burmese mindfulness tradition, Mahasi Sayadaw in Rangoon, Burma and other masters like Tungpulo Sayadaw and Achaan Cha. Read more [https://www.drdanielpbrown.com/buddhist-meditation-teacher here]. +
I have been interested for some time in the sites and economies of practice that mediated religious life in Middle Period China (10th–14th centuries), particularly as they applied to persons who identified themselves (or others) as “Buddhist.” This interest arises from the conviction that religious subjects and their traditions are not static and monolithically constituted entities, but disparate works in progress, the estimations of which are ceaselessly negotiated in relation to a diversity of shifting idioms, obligations, and historical contingencies. To me the key question becomes one of processes and agencies of cultural practice, and that question in turn implies networks, that is to say, the sites and channels through which cultural data move, locate, and come to be collectively embodied.
I am working on several projects at the moment, all of which focus on Song (960–1279) and Yuan period China (1279–1368). ([https://religiousstudies.ku.edu/daniel-stevenson Source Accessed October 22, 2019]) +
Daniel is an experienced business executive with over a decade of insights gathered from corporate and consumer marketing executive roles working for multinationals such as Canon, and large financial firms such as Westpac. While pursuing his marketing career, Daniel continued to foster his life long interest in Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan language, and its literature. This has taken him across Australia, America, India, Nepal, and Tibet to pursue a deeper understanding of Buddhist theory and practice with masters from the living tradition. Daniel also reads Sanskrit and Tibetan and has a PhD in Buddhist Philosophy. ([https://wisdomexperience.org/about/ Source Accessed Apr 9, 2021]) +
[The] ''Ratnarāśī'' was translated by [the] monk named Daogong, in Liangzhou, about 700 km. ESE of Dunhuang on the main road, in modem day Gansu province, right at the end of the fourth or at the very beginning of the fifth century. . . . [. . . ] [T]here are no biographies of Daogong, and we know next to nothing about him.[2] It is not clear if the ''Karuṇapuṇḍarika'' attributed to him is attributed correctly, but this seems to be the less likely conclusion. It seems even less likely that the ''Aṣṭasāhasrika Prajñāpāramitā'' translation is to be accepted as his.
While we may know little about the man, the time and place in which Daogong lived certainly placed him in the middle of one of the most productive, even explosive, periods in Chinese Buddhist history. The monk-translators listed as contemporaries or near contemporaries of Daogong, and residing in the same region, are Fazhong, Sengqietuo, and Dharmakṣema. (Silk, "The Origins and Early History of the Mahāratnakūṭa," 671–72)
<h5>Notes</h5>
2. This was, I have lately noticed, also the conclusion of Bagchi 1927:211. As far as I can tell from the relevant indices, Daogong is not mentioned in the Chinese dynastic histories either. +
Daolang 道朗 wrote comments and exegeses of Dharmakśema's larger ''Nirvāṇa Sūtra''. He wrote a preface to the ''Nirvāṇa Sūtra'' titled ''Da niepan jing xu'' 大涅槃經序 (preserved in T. 2145, 59b5–60a9). This preface was translated and studied by Whalen Lai. +
Daosheng (Chinese: 道生; pinyin: Dàoshēng; Wade–Giles: Tao Sheng), or Zhu Daosheng (Chinese: 竺道生; Wade–Giles: Chu Tao-sheng), was an eminent Six Dynasties era Chinese Buddhist scholar. He is known for advocating the concepts of sudden enlightenment and the universality of the Buddha nature.
Born in Pengcheng, Daosheng left home to become a monk at eleven. He studied in Jiankang under Zhu Fatai, and later at Lushan (Mount Lu) monastery with Huiyuan, and from 405 or 406 under Kumārajīva in Chang'an, where he stayed for some two years perfecting his education. He became one of the foremost scholars of his time, counted among the "fifteen great disciples" of Kumārajīva.
Sengzhao reports that Daosheng assisted Kumārajīva in his translation of the ''Lotus Sutra'', Daosheng wrote commentaries on the ''Lotus Sutra'', the ''Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa Sūtra'' and the ''Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra'' (the last of which has been lost). In 408, he returned to Lushan, and in 409 back to Jiankang, where he remained for some twenty years, staying at the Qingyuan Monastery (青园寺) from 419.
Daosheng controversially ascribed Buddha-nature to the icchantikas, based on his reading on a short version of the ''Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra'', which in that short form appears to deny the Buddha-nature to icchantikas; the long version of the ''Nirvāṇa Sūtra'', however (not yet known to Daosheng), explicitly includes the icchantikas in the universality of the Buddha-nature. Daosheng's bold doctrine of including icchantikas within the purview of the Buddha-nature, even before that explicit teaching had actually been found in the long ''Nirvāṇa Sūtra'', led to the expulsion of Daosheng from the Buddhist community in 428 or 429, and he retreated to Lushan in 430.
With the availability of the long ''Nirvāṇa Sūtra'' after 430, through the translation of Dharmakshema, Daosheng was vindicated and praised for his insight. He remained in Lushan, composing his commentary on the ''Lotus Sūtra'' in 432, until his death in 434.
Daosheng's exegesis of the ''Nirvāṇa Sūtra'' had an enormous influence on interpretations of the Buddha-nature in Chinese Buddhism that prepared the ground for the Chán school emerging in the 6th century.<br>([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daosheng Source Accessed Sept. 2 2020])
''Dates from The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (Princeton University Press, 2014)''
Dr. Daphna McKnight is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Buddhist Chaplaincy at University of the West. She attended seminary at Upaya (Cohort 3) and is an ordained Buddhist minister with training in Zen and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Daphna has served for many years as a hospice, hospital, and university Buddhist/interfaith chaplain. She also has extensive experience as an educator, curriculum designer, and trainer in higher education and business environments.
Daphna has researched and studied many types of mindfulness and meditative practices, particularly those related to compassion development, such as tonglen. She has taught mindfulness and compassion practices in business, healthcare, and educational settings. ([https://www.upaya.org/person/rev-daphna-mcknight-ph-d/ Source Accessed Mar 24, 2025]) +
John Davenport is a water resources development specialist with wide experience as an aid consultant in South and East Asia and Tibet, including for the Tibetan government-in-exile. He is currently the team leader of the ADB supported Western Basins Water Resources Management Project in Herat, Afghanistan. He has served as vice president of Deer Park Buddhist Center near Madison, Wisconsin. He lives in Eugene, Oregon. Source: ([https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/john-davenport/ Wisdom Publications]) +
David Adams Leeming (born February 26, 1937) is an American philologist who is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, and a specialist in comparative literature of mythology.
Leeming received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1958. In 1959 he did a summer course graduate study at the University of Caen. From New York University he received his M.A. in 1964, and his Ph.D. in 1970.
Leeming was Head of the English Department at Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey from 1958 to 1963. From 1964 to 1967 he was the secretary-assistant of author James Baldwin. Since 1969 Leeming was Assistant Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He eventually became Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, where he in later years has served as Professor Emeritus.
Leeming has written variously in comparative literature of mythology and edited numerous encyclopedias and dictionaries on the subject. He has also written biographies on Beauford Delaney, James Baldwin, and Stephen Spender.
Leeming is a member of the Modern Language Association of America and the Federation of University Teachers. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Adams_Leeming Adapted from Source June 14, 2023]) +
David Bellos gained his doctorate in French literature from Oxford University (UK) and taught subsequently at Edinburgh, Southampton and Manchester before coming to Princeton in 1997. He worked first in nineteenth century studies, particularly on the novel and the history of literary ideas and then developed interests in post-war French writing and film. He is the translator and biographer of Georges Perec and has also written major studies of Jacques Tati and Romain Gary. A well-known translator, he is also the author of an irreverent introduction to translation studies, ''Is That A Fish in Your Ear?'' His most recent book, ''The Novel of the Century'', marks a return to nineteenth century France from a trans-national point of view. He has a joint appointment in French and Comparative Literature and is also Director of the PIIRS Graduate Fellows Program. He has won the French-American Foundation’s translation prize (1988), the Prix Goncourt de la Biographie (1994), the Man Booker International translator’s award (2005) and the Book Award of the American Library in Paris, and holds the rank of officier in the Orde national des Arts et des Lettres. He was the recipient of the 2019 Howard T. Berhman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities. ([https://fit.princeton.edu/people/david-bellos Source Accessed Feb 24, 2023]) +
David Bennett first became involved in Buddhism in 1975 at Samye Ling Buddhist Centre in Scotland. After studying with various teachers he met Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche IX in 1981 in Australia and continued studying and practicing under his guidance until Traleg passed away in 2012. David was Vice-President of Traleg’s main Centre E-Vam Institute in Melbourne Australia for many years. He works as a graphic designer and has used these skills to contribute to Traleg Rinpoche’s ongoing activities since joining the Centre. ([https://www.shogam.com/project/david-bennett/ Source Accessed Dec 6, 2023]) +
David Bubna-Litic is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar with interests in whole of systems thinking applied to individual, organizational, economic, and social change.
He researches the dialogue between mindful ways of being (presence), deep integrity, eastern philosophy, and established western disciplines to create a merged horizon for social and economic change.
He is Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney. ([https://au.linkedin.com/in/david-bubna-litic-1a84259 Adapted from Source June 16, 2023]) +
