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Fazang is Zhiyan’s most accomplished and influential student, and became the third patriarch of Huayan. He is responsible for systematizing and extending Zhiyan’s teaching, and for securing the prominence of Huayan-style Buddhism at the imperial court. He is known especially for his definitive commentaries on the ''Avatamsaka Sutra'' and ''Awakening of Faith in Mahayana'', and for making Huayan doctrines accessible to laity with familiar technologies such as mirror halls and wood-block printing. These contributions support the traditional regard for Fazang as the third patriarch of the Huayan School.
Fazang’s ancestors came from Sogdiana (a center for trade along the Silk Road, located in what is now parts of Uzbekistan and Tajikestan), but he was born in the Tang dynasty capital of Chang’an (now Xi’an), where his family had become culturally Chinese. Fazang was a fervently religious adolescent. Following a then-popular custom that took self-immolation as a sign of religious devotion, Fazang burned his fingers before a stupa at the age of 16. After becoming a monk, he assisted Xuanzang—famous for his pilgrimage to India—in translating Buddhist works from Sanskrit into Chinese. Fazang had doctrinal differences with Xuanzang, though, so he later became a disciple of Zhiyan, probably around 663 CE.
Zhiyan’s access to the imperial court gave Fazang access to Empress Wu, with whom he quickly gained favor. He undertook a variety of public services, such as performing rain-prayer rituals and collaborating in various translation projects. He traveled throughout northern China, teaching the ''Avatamsaka Sutra'' and debating Daoists. He intervened in a 697 military confrontation with the Khitans, gaining further favor when Empress Wu ascribed to his ritual services an instrumental role in suppressing the rebellion. In addition, Fazang provided information to undermine plots by some of the empress’ advisors to secure power after her death. This secured Fazang’s status—and the prominence of Huayan teachings—with subsequent rulers. ([https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buddhism-huayan/#Faza643712 Source Accessed Jan 28, 2020])
Felin Chung is a graduate of Rangjung Yeshe Institute's Translator Training Program (TTP). She is a member of the Dharmachakra Translation Committee. +
Feng Zikai (simplified Chinese: 丰子恺; traditional Chinese: 豐子愷; pinyin: Fēng Zǐkǎi; November 9, 1898 – September 15, 1975) was an influential Chinese painter, pioneering manhua (漫画) artist, essayist, and lay Buddhist of 20th-century China. Born just after the First Sino-Japanese War and dying just before the end of the Cultural Revolution, he lived through much of the political and socioeconomic turmoil during the birth of modern China. Much of his literary and artistic work comments on and records the relationship between the changing political landscape and ordinary people's daily lives. Although most famous for his paintings depicting children and the multi-volume collection of Buddhist-inspired art ''Paintings for the Preservation of Life'' (护生画集), Feng was a prolific artist, writer, and intellectual who made strides in the fields of music, art, literature, philosophy, and translation. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_Zikai Source Accessed July 21, 2023]) +
Carmen Dragonetti (born in Argentina, 1937) and Fernando Tola (born in Peru, 1915) are the most prestigious Indologists in the Spanish-speaking world, both being researchers from the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, Argentina. They were President and Vice-President, respectively, of the Institute of Buddhist Studies Foundation (FIEB).
Both were professors at universities in Peru and Argentina. Dedicated to Indology and the study of Buddhism, they published a large number of books and articles in Spanish and English, containing highly reliable translations of Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese and/or Tibetan texts, such as the unsurpassed Tola versions of the ''Gita Govinda'' and the ''Bhagavad Gita'', and Dragonetti's ''Dhammapada'', which are remarkable for their beauty and clarity, one of the most relevant qualities of these authors as writers.
Other translations by the same authors include ''Five Mahayana Sutras'', also published by Primorda Media, the ''Udana'' and ''The Sutra of Infinite Meanings'', ''Wu liang i ching''. ([https://www-librosbudistas-com.translate.goog/autor/carmen-dragonetti-fernando-tola?_x_tr_sch=http&_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en Adapted from Source Oct 4, 2022]) +
Fida Muhammad Hassnain (Urdu فدا حسنین; Srinagar, 1924 – 2016) was a Kashmiri writer, lecturer and Sufi mystic.
He was born in 1924 in Srinagar, Kashmir, as the child of school teachers. His father fought with the British Indian forces in the Boer War in South Africa in 1902. Fida Hassnain graduated from the University of Punjab and the Aligarh Muslim University, and became a barrister, but the events surrounding the partition of colonial British India made him lose faith in the law, and after a short period of social work he became a lecturer in 1947 at the Sri Patrap (SP) College in Srinagar. In 1954, he became Director of the Kashmir State Archives, retiring in 1983. Fida Hassnain died on 9 July 2016 in Srinagar, Kashmir.
His study tours resulted in the salvaging of several hundred manuscripts in Arabic, Sanskrit and Persian, which were housed in the Archives and Oriental Research Libraries. As an archaeologist, he conducted several excavations.
He has written several books on the subject of Lost years of Jesus and Kashmir,[7] which have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Japanese. He has made frequent guest appearances in documentaries about the tomb of Roza Bal, supporting the teaching of the founder of Ahmadiyya Islam, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1899), that Jesus of Nazareth died in India. Christian theologians have been highly critical of Hassnain's works - Christian academics dismissing these claims include Günter Grönbold, Wilhelm Schneemelcher, Norbert Klatt, Per Beskow, and Gerald O'Collins.
In January 2009 the Jammu Kashmir Government recognized Hassnain for his lifetime contributions. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fida_Muhammad_Hassnain Source Accessed Dec 12, 2024]) +
Fiorella Rizzi has been a student of Buddhism since 1980, when she met the late Geshe Yeshe Tobden. Since 1997, she has been translating and editing texts on Buddhist philosophy and practice and is the founder of the nonprofit cultural association La Ruota del Dharma. She lives in Pomaia, Italy. (Source: [http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Fiorella-Rizzi/451426178 Wisdom Publications]) +
SOLOMON GEORGE FITZHERBERT is Departmental Lecturer in Tibetan and
Himalayan Studies at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Vagrant
Child of Tibet, a study of the early portions of the Tibetan Gesar Epic. +
Florin Deleanu (Professor at the International College for Postgraduate Buddhist Studies, Tokyo, Japan) specializes in Yogācāra and Mainstream Buddhism in India, mainly the history and epistemology of meditation. His publications include ''The Chapter on the Mundane Path (Laukikamārga) in the Śrāvakabhūmi: A Trilingual Edition (Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese), Annotated Translation, and Introductory Study''. Tokyo: The International Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2006; "Agnostic Meditations on Buddhist Meditation." ''Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science''. Vol. 45 (3) (2010): 605-626; "Meditative Practices in the Bodhisattvabhūmi: Quest for and Liberation through the Thing-In-Itself." In Ulrich Timme Kragh ed. ''The Foundation for Yoga Practioners: The Buddhist Yogācārabhūmi Treatise and Its Adaptation in India, East Asia, and Tibet''. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2013; "Reshaping Timelessness: Paradigm Shifts in the Interpretation of Buddhist Meditation." ''Journal of the International College for Advanced Buddhist Studies'' 21 (2017): 1-43; etc. Currently, he works on a monograph dedicated to the formation and evolution of the spiritual cultivation path in Yogācāra Buddhism as well as English translations of the ''Śrāvakabhūmi'' and the ''Laṅkāvatārasūtra''. ([https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/ViewContributor/document/obo-9780195393521/obo-9780195393521-0254.xml?id=con8431 Source Accessed Aug 8, 2025]) +
Floring Giripescu Sutton was Assistant Professor of Oriental Philosophy at Rutgers University. +
*1961 born in Staveren on March 28
*1981-1986 sailor at shipping companies, Rotterdam
*1986-1993 studied Indology at Leiden University
*1991 studied at Hamburg University
*1991-1996 studied philosophy at Leiden University
*1997-2002 research fellow at the CNWS, Leiden University
*2000-2002 substitute lecturer Buddhology and Indian philosophy, Leiden University
*2004 PhD under the supervision of T.E. Vetter and Th.C.W. Oudemans, Leiden University
*2002-present teacher at Stanislas College, Pijnacker
+
Antonino Forte is professor of East Asian religions and thought at the
Istituto Universitario Orientale, Naples, and is concurrently director of
the Italian School of East Asian Studies in Kyoto. He was a member of
the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient between 1976 and 1985. He is the
author of Political Propaganda and Ideology in China at the End of the Seventh
Century and Mingtang and Buddhist Utopias in the History of the Astronomical
Clock, and the editor of Tang China and Beyond. His current research
focuses on East Asian Buddhist philosophies of history and the historical
relevance of the “borderland complex” in East Asian countries.
Source: [[Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha]] +
Theckchok Dorje was born in the village of Danang in the Kham region of eastern Tibet. He was born in mid-winter, and the histories say that flowers spontaneously blossomed and many rainbows appeared. The baby recited the Sanskrit alphabet. He was recognized by Drukchen Kunzig Chokyi Nangwa, the holder of the thirteenth Karmapa’s letter giving the details of his forthcoming reincarnation. He was enthroned and later ordained by the ninth Tai Situpa. The Karmapa received teachings and the lineage transmissions from Situ Pema Nyinche Wangpo and Drukchen Kunzig Chokyi Nangwa. (Source: [https://kagyuoffice.org/kagyu-lineage/the-golden-rosary/the-14th-karmapa-theckchok-dorje/ Kagyu Office]) +
Francesca Tarocco is Visiting Associate Professor of Buddhist Cultures at NYU Shanghai. Prior to joining NYU Shanghai she was Lecturer in Buddhist Studies and Leverhulme Trust Research Fellow in Chinese History at the University of Manchester, UK.
Tarocco’s research interests are in the cultural history of China, Chinese Buddhism, visual culture and urban Asia. Her books include ''The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma'' (Routledge, 2007 and 2011) and ''The Re-enchantment of Modernity: Buddhism, Photography and Chinese History'' (2018). Her scholarly articles include “The City and the Pagoda: Buddhist Spatial Tactics in Shanghai” (2015), “Terminology and Religious Identity: The Genealogy of the Term Zongjiao,” (2012) and “On the Market: Consumption and Material Culture in Modern Chinese Buddhism” (Religion, 2011).
Tarocco is the co-founder and director of the international research initiative Shanghai Studies Society and a fellow of the Critical Collaborations network at the Institute for Advanced Study (NYU). She is the recipient of awards from the Leverhulme Trust, the Sutasoma Foundation and the Chinese Ministry of Education, among many others. Tarocco is a regular contributor of the contemporary visual culture journals ''Parkett'', ''Flash Art International'' and ''Frieze''.
===Research Interests===
History of Religion in China<br>
Shanghai Buddhism<br>
Buddhist Visual Culture<br>
Chinese Photography<br>
Chinese Diasporic Art<br>
Global Visual Culture
===Education===
PhD, Chinese History, University of London<br>
MA, Chinese Studies, University of London<br>
MA, Chinese and Buddhist Studies, Venice University<br>
([https://shanghai.nyu.edu/academics/faculty/directory/francesca-tarocco Source Accessed Jan 10, 2020]) +
Born in Rome, Italy, in 1965, Francesco Sferra studied philosophy and Indology at the University of Rome “La Sapienza” under the guidance of Prof. Raniero Gnoli, Prof. Raffaele Torella and Prof. Corrado Pensa. He was awarded a Doctorate in Sanskrit by the same University in 1999.
He has a permanent appointment for the teaching of Sanskrit Language and Literature at the University of Naples “L’Orientale.”
His main research areas are: tantric traditions in pre-13th century South Asia, especially Vajrayāna Buddhism; Śaivism; and classical Indian philosophy of language. ([https://www.tantric-studies.uni-hamburg.de/people/prof-francesco-sferra-naples.html Source Accessed Dec 17, 2019])
[http://docenti.unior.it/index2.php?content_id=18425&content_id_start=1 Curriculum Vitae] +
Francis Brassard is from Quebec, Canada. He received his PhD from McGill University in religious studies. He also studied at the Institut für Kultur und Geschichte Indiens und Tibets, Hamburg University. His research interests include Buddhist philosophy and psychology, comparative religions and philosophies, and interreligious dialogue. His book, ''The Concept of Bodhicitta in Śāntideva's Bodhicaryāvatāra'', was published by the State University of New York Press (2000). Some of his other publication titles include: "Buddhism" in A Catholic Engagement with the World Religions, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Book (2010), “Asking the Right Question” in Asian Texts - Asian Contexts: Encountering the Philosophies and Religions of Asia., Albany: SUNY Press (2010), “On the Origin of Religious Discourse” in The Dialectics of the Religious & the Secular: Studies on the Future of Religion. Koninklijke Brill NV (2014) and “Ruđer Bošković and the Structure of the Experience of Scientific Discovery” in Cadmus, Vol. 2, 6, (May 2016). He has taught at Berry College in Rome, Georgia (USA) and Miyazaki International College in Japan. Francis Brassard is a Lecturer at RIT Croatia (Dubrovnik campus). ([https://www.linkedin.com/in/francis-brassard-50992339/ Source Accessed Jan 6, 2021]) +
Francis Dojun Cook was born and raised in a very small town in upstate New York in 1930. He was lucky to be an ordinary kid with ordinary parents. By means of true grit and luck, he managed to acquire several academic degrees and learn something about Buddhism. More luck in the form of a Fulbright Fellowship enabled him to study in Kyoto, Japan, for a year and a half, where he would have learned more had he not spent so much time admiring temple gardens. He now teaches Buddhism at the University of California, Riverside, and is director of translations at the Institute for Transcultural Studies in Los Angeles. He remains ordinary, but to his credit it can be said that he raised four good kids, has a great love for animals, and cooks pretty well. A sign that at last he is becoming more intelligent is that he became a student of Maezumi Roshi several years ago, the best thing he ever did. He is also the author of ''Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra'', and of various articles on Buddhism in scholarly journals. ([https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/francis-dojun-cook/ Source Accessed Mar 18, 2021]) +
Francis Woodman Cleaves (born in Boston in 1911 and died in New Hampshire on December 31, 1995) was a Sinologist, linguist, and historian who taught at Harvard University, and was the founder of Sino-Mongolian studies in America. He is well known for his translation of ''The Secret History of the Mongols''.
Cleaves received his undergraduate degree in Classics from Dartmouth College, and then enrolled in the graduate program in Comparative Philology at Harvard, but transferred to the study of Far Eastern Languages under Serge Elisséeff in the mid-1930s, prior to the formal establishment of the department.
In 1935, on a fellowship from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Cleaves went first to Paris, where he studied Mongolian and other Central Asian languages with the Sinologist Paul Pelliot for three years, then to Beijing where he studied with the Mongolist Antoine Mostaert S.J. Always an avid book collector, he also roamed the stalls and shops in Liulichang, the street for books and antiques. There he accumulated an extensive collection not only in Chinese and Mongolian, his own interests, but also in Manchu, which he did not plan to use himself. The books in Manchu were particularly rare and form the core of Harvard's Manchu collection.
Cleaves returned to Harvard in 1941 and taught Chinese in the Department of Far Eastern Languages as well as worked on the Harvard-Yenching Institute Chinese-English dictionary project. In the following year he received his Ph.D. with a dissertation entitled “A Sino-Mongolian Inscription on 1362,” and offered Harvard’s first course on the Mongolian language. Cleaves enlisted in the United States Navy and served in the Pacific. After the war ended, he helped to relocate Japanese citizens who had lived in China back to Japan and sorted through the books they left behind to find those suitable for shipping to the Harvard-Yenching Library.
In 1946, Cleaves returned to Harvard and proceeded to teach Chinese and Mongolian, without interruption, for the next thirty-five years. He is unique for being the only professor in the history of the department never to take a sabbatical. He trained his students in the traditional European sinology of his mentors. Among his best-known disciples were Joseph Fletcher, the distinguished Mongolist and historian, and Elizabeth Endicott-West, author of basic studies on the Yuan dynasty and History of Mongolia.
Cleaves had an especially close relation with William Hung, a preeminent scholar who had become his friend and mentor when they met in China in the 1930s. A mutual friend recalled that Cleaves was "an old-fashioned gentleman perhaps more at home with his cows, horses, and fellow farmers in New Hampshire than with the academic intrigues of Cambridge," while Hung was a "pragmatic Confucianist." The two would meet every weekday at three to sip tea and perhaps read from the Chinese classics or dynastic histories. Cleaves introduced Hung to the Mongol histories, and Hung published several articles in this field. Hung's article on the ''Secret History of the Mongols'', however, drew conclusions which Cleaves did not feel were correct. Out of respect for his friend, Cleaves did not publish his own translation until 1985, after Hung's death.
Cleaves was renowned for his meticulously annotated translations of Chinese and Old Mongolian texts, and consistently emphasized literal philological accuracy over aesthetic beauty. He published over seventy books and articles, many of which were on bilingual Sino-Mongolian stele inscriptions from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. His largest project was a complete annotated translation of the ''Secret History of the Mongols'', of which only the first volume was ever published. In order to give readers the flavor of the original, Cleaves restricted the vocabulary to words used in Elizabethan English, a decision which made the text hard for some readers to comprehend. In 1984, Paul Kahn published a translation based on Cleaves but using contemporary English.
A deeply committed teacher, Cleaves reluctantly retired in 1980, and continued his scholarship on Mongolian history. Much of his work, including notes on the remaining sections of the ''Secret History'' and manuscripts for dozens of additional articles, remained unpublished at the time of his death in 1995. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Woodman_Cleaves Source Accessed Mar 12, 2021])
Franciscus Bernardus Jacobus Kuiper (July 7, 1907 – November 14, 2003) was a distinguished scholar in Indology, and "one of the last great Indologists of the past century ... His very innovative work covers virtually all the fields of Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan philology, linguistics, mythology and theater, as well as Indo-European, Dravidian, Munda and Pan-Indian linguistics."
Kuiper was born in The Hague, studied Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Indo-European linguistics at Leiden University, and in 1934 completed his doctoral thesis on the nasal presents in Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages. After [serving] years as a high school teacher of Latin and Greek at the lyceum of Batavia (Jakarta), Indonesia, in 1939 he was appointed Professor of Sanskrit at Leiden University.
Kuiper was a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences between 1937 and 1939, when he resigned. He became a member again in 1948. He was a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He died in Zeist and was buried in the Rijnhof cemetery at Leiden. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciscus_Bernardus_Jacobus_Kuiper Source Accessed July 3, 2023]) +
Reynolds, who died on Jan. 9 at age 88, was a leading expert in Theravada Buddhism, a religion predominantly practiced in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. He is remembered not only for his lasting impact on the field, but for his work as a teacher and mentor during his 34 years on the UChicago faculty. . . .<br>
An ordained Baptist minister, Reynolds, AM’63, PhD’71, spent three years teaching at a university in Thailand before becoming a UChicago graduate student. His experience working with Christians, Buddhists and Muslims in Bangkok led him to seek a non-sectarian, empirically oriented approach to religious studies.<br>
In 1967, Reynolds joined the faculty at the University of Chicago, where his interests ranged from Thai civic religion to religious studies in the liberal arts. But Reynolds was held in particularly high regard for his work to deepen knowledge of Theravada Buddhism.<br>
Reynolds held editorial responsibilities for various academic publications, including a decades-long stint as co-editor of the ''History of Religions Journal''. Along with wife Mani Bloch he published a translation of a 14th-century Thai Buddhist cosmology, ''The Three Worlds of King Ruang'' (1982).<br>
He retired in 2001 as Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions and Buddhist Studies in the Divinity School and the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations.<br>
In 2010, Reynolds received the Norman Maclean Faculty Award from UChicago in recognition of his outstanding contributions to teaching and to the student experience of life on campus. Reynolds’ mentorship extended to colleagues as well, with Doniger calling him “the finest teacher I’ve ever known.” ([https://news.uchicago.edu/story/frank-e-reynolds-leading-scholar-buddhism-and-revered-teacher-1930-2019 Adapted from Source Sept 16, 2020])
François Chenique is a French essayist and author of studies on esotericism. He was a professor of computer science at Sciences-Po Paris and participated in the creation of one of the first computer management services within the Society of Pont-à-Mousson. He is a specialist in classical and modern logic and has written several books on this subject.
Chenique also held a doctorate in Religious Sciences from the University of Strasbourg. He devoted himself mainly to the study of Christian esotericism in the traditionalist tradition initiated by René Guénon. ([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Chenique Source Accessed Oct 18, 2019]) +
