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Amgön Rinpoche (1853-1945) was a renowned hermit and yogin at Drikung Til, celebrated for his miraculous powers and eccentric behavior. Popular stories credit him with the ability to transform himself into a young monk and travel instantly to Lhasa. Known for his unconventional conduct, he refused offerings from those who brought them while requesting gifts from empty-handed visitors, and plastered his cell walls with paper money, which he refused to recognize as having value. His seemingly bizarre actions often carried pointed spiritual lessons—when the monastery's disciplinarian called him crazy, Amgön Rinpoche retorted that building a sumptuous residence was the true madness. According to his biography, his disruptive behavior was motivated by tantric practice, particularly teachings from the Hevajra Tantra. Fellow master Drupwang Tseten Rinpoche defended him, stating, "He is not crazy. It is a sign of his having achieved siddhis . . . This is not like ordinary madness." (Source: DiValerio, ''The Holy Madmen of Tibet'', 226) +
Buddhist émigré ācarya who played a major role in the introduction and translation of seminal Buddhist texts belonging to the esoteric tradition or mijiao. His birthplace is uncertain, but many sources allude to his ties to Central Asia. Accompanying his teacher Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra arrived in the Chinese capital of Chang'an in 720–1 and spent most of his career in that cosmopolitan city. In 741, following the death of his mentor, Amoghavajra made an excursion to India and Sri Lanka with the permission of the Tang-dynasty emperor and returned in 746 with new Buddhist texts, many of them esoteric scriptures. Amoghavajra's influence on the Tang court reached its peak when he was summoned by the emperor to construct an abhiṣeka, or consecration, altar on his behalf. Amoghavajra's activities in Chang'an were interrupted by the An Lushan rebellion (655–763), but after the rebellion was quelled, he returned to his work at the capital and established an inner chapel for homa rituals and abhiṣeka in the imperial palace. He was later honored by the emperor with the purple robe, the highest honor for a Buddhist monk and the rank of third degree. Along with Xuanzang, Amoghavajra was one of the most prolific translators and writers in the history of Chinese Buddhism. Among the many texts he translated into Chinese, especially important are the ''Sarvatathāgatasaṃgraha'' and the ''Bhadracarīpraṇidhāna''. (Source: "Amoghavajra." In ''The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism'', 36. Princeton University Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n41q.27.) +
Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa is an associate professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Occidental College. She is the author of ''The Social Life of Tibetan Biography: Textuality, Community, and Authority in the Lineage of Tokden Shakya Shri'' (Lexington, 2014), which explores the trans-Himalayan lineage of Tokden Sakya Sri that spanned communities in eastern Tibet, western China, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Ladakh, and beyond. Her current research focuses on Buddhism, book culture, language, and community formation across the Himalayas. (Source: ''A Gathering of Brilliant Moons'', 329) +
Said to be a teacher from Kashmir, Amṛtākara wrote the ''Catuḥstavasamāsārtha'', a commentary on the ''Catuḥstava'' (Four Hymns) of Nāgārjuna. +
An Xuan (Chinese: 安玄; pinyin: Ānxuán) was a Parthian layman credited with working alongside An Shigao (Chinese: 安世高; pinyin: Ānshìgāo) and Yan Fotiao (Chinese: 嚴佛調; pinyin: Yán Fúdiào) in the translation of early Buddhist texts in Luoyang in Later Han China. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Xuan Source Accessed Aug 30, 2021]) +
Anagarika Govinda (born Ernst Lothar Hoffmann, 17 May 1898 – 14 January 1985) was the founder of the order of the Arya Maitreya Mandala and an expositor of Tibetan Buddhism, Abhidharma, and Buddhist meditation as well as other aspects of Buddhism. He was also a painter and poet. Read more [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagarika_Govinda here]. +
Anam Thubten grew up in Tibet and at an early age began to practice in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Among his many teachers, his most formative guides were Lama Tsurlo, Khenpo Chopel, and Lama Garwang. He is the founder and spiritual advisor of Dharmata Foundation, teaching widely in the U.S. and abroad. He is also the author of various articles and books in both the Tibetan and English language. His books in English include: Choosing Compassion, No Self No Problem, Into the Haunted Ground, and The Citadel of Awareness. To view Anam Thubten’s teaching and retreat schedule, please visit www.dharmata.org/events-calendar. Through the essential wisdom of Buddhism and his personal experience on the spiritual path, Anam Thubten brings alive the timeless teachings and invites everyone to participate. ([https://dharmata.org/teachers/ Official Source: Dharmata Foundation, Accessed January 7, 2025]) +
Theravāda Buddhist monk since 1996; editor, translator, photographer, curator, webmaster. (https://www.facebook.com/anandajoti/)
See many edited and arranged Sanskrit and Pali and English texts here: https://ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/index.htm
Bhikkhu Anandajoti was born near Birmingham in England and spent the better part of his first 35 years there, but is now a resident in the East since 1987, mainly in Sri Lanka, India, and Malaysia. He ordained in the Theravāda tradition in 1995 and received higher ordination the following year. He is currently a resident in Vivekavana Solitude Grove, a remote meditation centre near the top of a mountain in Penang State, Malaysia.
Godwin Samararatne was his first Dhamma teacher and his first Buddhist meditation teacher, so he has proved to be one of the most influential people in his life. (Source Accessed September 12, 2024: [https://www.dhammawiki.com/index.php/Anandajoti,_Bhikkhu Dhamma Wiki: Anandajoti, Bhikkhu]) +
Anders holds a Bachelors degree from Naropa University and joined the Centre for Buddhist Studies in 2006. At CBS Anders graduated with a BA in Buddhist Studies in 2010 and afterwards joined the MA program.
His thesis supervisor was Dr. Karin Meyers and the external reader was Prof. Dr. Klaus-Dieter Mathes from the University of Vienna, Austria.
Anders also secured a Tsadra foundation scholarship for his MA studies and recently took ordination. ([http://ryi-student-blog.blogspot.com/2012/12/congratulations-anders-bjonback.html Source Accessed Aug 12, 2020]) +
Andrea Miller is the deputy editor of ''Lion's Roar'' magazine (formerly the Shambhala Sun) and the author of two picture books: ''The Day the Buddha Woke Up'' and ''My First Book of Canadian Birds''. She's also the editor of three anthologies, most recently ''All the Rage: Buddhist Wisdom on Anger and Acceptance''. ([https://newbooksnetwork.com/andrea-miller-the-day-the-buddha-woke-up-wisdom-publications-2018/ Source Accessed July 28, 2020]) +
PhD Dissertation: 2016 [https://refubium.fu-berlin.de/handle/fub188/4734 On the Bodhisattva Path in Gandhāra]: Edition of Fragment 4 and 11 from the Bajaur Collection of Kharoṣṭhī Manuscripts.
2022 Book: [https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295750736/three-early-mahayana-treatises-from-gandhara/ Three Early Mahāyāna Treatises from Gandhāra]: Bajaur Kharoṣṭhī Fragments 4, 6, and 11. Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, Volume 7. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
https://www.indologie.uni-muenchen.de/personen/4_mitarbeiter/schlosser/index.html
https://lmu-munich.academia.edu/AndreaSchlosser +
Andreas Doctor (PhD 2004, University of Calgary) is the director of the Dharmachakra Translation Committee and the editorial co-director of 84000.
For a number of years, Andreas has studied Buddhist history and philosophy under the guidance of Tibetan monks and lamas, mostly in Nepal at Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery. As a founding member of Rangjung Yeshe Institute, he spent fifteen years teaching at the Institute and for most of this period he served as director of studies at Kathmandu University’s Centre for Buddhist Studies, located at Rangjung Yeshe Institute.
As director of the Dharmachakra Translation Committee, Andreas has participated in numerous translation projects, most recently in translating sūtras and tantras from the Tibetan canon. He is also a founding member of Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, Denmark. ([https://www.khyentsevision.org/team/dr-andreas-doctor/ Adapted from Source Oct 1, 2022]) +
Senior translator and student of Khenpo Chöga (b.1965) – a teacher at Shri Singha Shedra. Known online for translation of Khenpo Kunpal’s Commentary on Shantideva’s ''Bodhicaryavatara'', part of which can be found [https://www.yumpu.com/en/kunpal.com here]. +
Andrei-Valentin Bacrău's work is focused on extrapolating a theory of ethics from Wittgenstein's views on language. Previously, he was at Nālandā University in Bihar, India, working on comparative ethics. As an undergraduate, he studied at the George Washington University in DC, where he double-majored in International Affairs (Security Policy), and Philosophy (Public Affairs). ([https://uzh.academia.edu/AndreiValentinBacr%C4%83u Adapted from Source Feb 11, 2021]) +
Jensine Andresen (Ph.D., [[Harvard University]], 1997) is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Religion at [[Columbia University]] in NYC. She previously taught at comparative world religions and religion and science at both [[Boston University]] and the [[University of Vermont]]. Dr. Andresen holds a B.S.E. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University; a Certificate from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at [[Princeton University]]; an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology focusing on China from Columbia University; and an A.M. and Ph.D. from the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University, where she focused on medieval Buddhist philosophy and practice in India and Tibet.
At Boston University, where the ‘Issues for the Millennium’ conference took place, Dr. Andresen taught in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Her research there focused on bioethics as it relates to social justice and humanitarian concerns, such as those that surround the AIDS crisis in Africa and the world. Her work at BU addressed the interface of theology and public policy as it relates to xenotransplantation, gene therapy, human cloning, stem cell research, and intellectual property rights. Also while at BU, she conducted research on the role of the frontal lobes in mediating the relationship between spirituality and health. While at BU, Dr. Andresen also edited two volumes on the interface of cognitive science and religious experience, Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Spiritual Models and Cognitive Maps: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Religious Experience (London: Imprint Academic, 2000). She also served as Director of InterFASE (International Faith & Science Exchange) , an organization committed to furthering dialogue between science and religion in the Boston area and elsewhere throughout the world.
At Columbia University, Dr. Andresen has been focusing on developing a psychoanalytic interpretation of Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana doctrine and practice as she has worked on translating the Sanskrit commentary on a medieval Indian Buddhist Vajrayana text called the Srilaghu Kalacakratantra. She has also worked extensively on the relationship between the phenomenology of contemplation in the Tibetan ‘Rdzgoschen’ (Great Perfection) system as it relates to contemporary findings in physics. Combining psychoanalytic, postmodern, and phenomenological approaches to the encounter of so-called self and other, she works to understand the interpenetrative arising of cosmology, biology, and awareness. [http://www.counterbalance.net/bio/andres-body.html Source]
'''Works by Jensine Andresen'''<br>
Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience<br>
Cambridge, UK ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2001.<br>
ISBN-10: 0521801524<br>
ISBN-13: 978-0521801522<br>
Andrew Quintman is a scholar of Buddhist traditions in Tibet and the Himalayan world focusing on Buddhist literature and history, sacred geography and pilgrimage, and visual cultures of the wider Himalaya. His work addresses the intersections of Buddhist literary production, circulation, and reception; the reciprocal influences of textual and visual narratives; and the formation of religious subjectivities and institutional identities. He is also engaged in developing new digital tools for the study and teaching of religion. His book, The Yogin and the Madman: Reading the Biographical Corpus of Tibet’s Great Saint Milarepa (Columbia University Press 2014), won the American Academy of Religion’s 2014 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, the 2015 Heyman Prize for outstanding scholarship from Yale University, and received honorable mention for the 2016 E. Gene Smith Book Prize at the Association of Asian Studies. In 2010 his new English translation of the Life of Milarepa was published by Penguin Classics. He is currently working on two new projects, one exploring Buddhist religious and literary culture in the borderlands of Tibet and Nepal, and the other examining the Life of the Buddha through visual and literary materials associated with the seventeenth-century Jonang Monastery in western Tibet. ([https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/aquintman/profile.html Source: Wesleyan Website])
Quintman currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors of the [https://www.tbrc.org/#!footer/about/newhome Buddhist Digital Resource Center] (BDRC). He is former Co-Chair of the [http://campuspress.yale.edu/thrg/ Tibetan and Himalayan Religions Group of the American Academy of Religion] and co-leads an ongoing collaborative workshop on [http://tibetanlit.org/ Religion and the Literary in Tibet].
You can see an amazing example of Quintman's [http://lotb.iath.virginia.edu/ contributions to digital scholarship on the Life of the Buddha project website]. +
Andrew Skilton is a scholar of the Buddhist history and literature of South, Southeast Asia. He studied Buddhism and Buddhist languages at the universities of Bristol and Oxford, where he did his Ph.D. on the ''Samādhirājasūtra'', a major Mahāyāna scripture, examining its Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit recensions. He was senior lecturer in Buddhist studies at Cardiff University and associate lecturer and research fellow at SOAS, London. He is now senior research fellow in Buddhist studies in the Theology and Religious Studies Department at King’s College, London, and also manages the Revealing Hidden Collections Project at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. His publications include ''A Concise History of Buddhism'', ''The Bodhicaryāvatāra'' (with Kate Crosby), and ''How the Nāgas Were Pleased''. ([http://www.ubcpress.ca/andrew-skilton Source Accessed Jan 7, 2021]) +
André Bareau (December 31, 1921- March 2, 1993) was a prominent French Buddhologist and a leader in the establishment of the field of Buddhist Studies in the 20th century. He was a professor at the Collège de France from 1971 to 1991 and Director of the Study of Buddhist Philosophy at L'École Pratique des Hautes Études. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Bareau Source Accessed Apr 8, 2022]) +
André Chédel, born in Neuchâtel in 1915 and died in Le Locle in 1984, was a self-taught Swiss philosopher and researcher, writer, orientalist and journalist.
The only child of a family from Le Locle, he had a great interest in Eastern languages and civilizations from a very young age. He first studied as an autodidact and then in Paris at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, at the School of Oriental Languages and at the Sorbonne between 1936 and 1939.
Fascinated by the East and interested in philosophical, spiritual and religious ideas, in 1944 he composed an anthology of Eastern religious and sacred texts, then several essays, in particular ''Judaism and Christianity: the bases of an agreement between Jews and Christians, towards a spiritualist religion'' (1951), ''For a secular humanism'' (1963), ''On the threshold of Solomon's temple: reflections on Freemasonry'' (1977) and finally ''The absolute, this research: analysis of monotheistic religions'' (1980). His literary activity is rich, varied and accessible. Among other things, he also wrote a novel, ''The Rise to Carmel'' (1958), a collection of short stories ''Contes et portraits'' (1958), a set of short texts ''Vagabondages: evocations and reflections'' (1974), as well as various travel stories.
At the same time, he translated numerous texts into French, in particular works in Russian (''La Russie face à l'Occident'' by Dostoyevsky in 1945, ''Les Nouvelles'' by Anton Chekhov in 1959), in ancient Greek (''Les Perses d' Eschyle'' in 1946), in Arabic (''Choice of Tales from the Arabian Nights'' in 1949), in Sanskrit (''Bhagavad-Gîtâ'' in 1971 ). In addition, he wrote several prefaces.
In addition to his abundant publications, André Chédel was also a freelance journalist and collaborated with numerous daily newspapers and reviews: the Journal de Genève, the Gazette de Lausanne, L'Essor (of which he was the head from 1950 to 1952), L'Impartial, La Revue de Suisse, La Vie protestante, and others.
André Chédel was a Freemason, a member of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina.
He finally received several prizes and distinctions, he is notably Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa from the University of Neuchâtel in 1962. From the French Academy, he received the Louis-Paul-Miller Prize in 1972 for his book ''Vers l'Universalité''. ([https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Ch%C3%A9del Source Accessed Apr 7, 2022])
For the last 25 years, Andy Rotman has engaged in textual and ethnographic work on the role of narratives, images and markets in South Asia and the religious, social and political functions that they serve. This focus is apparent in his research on early Indian Buddhism, South Asian media and the modern economies of the North Indian bazaar.
His recent publications include ''Amar Akbar Anthony: Bollywood, Brotherhood, and the Nation'' (Harvard University Press, 2015), co-written with William Elison and Christian Novetzke, which offers a multiperspectival exegesis of one of India’s most popular films; ''Thus Have I Seen: Visualizing Faith in Early Indian Buddhism'' (Oxford University Press, 2009), which considers the construction of faith as a visual practice in Buddhism, and how seeing and believing function as part of intersecting visual and moral systems; and ''Divine Stories: Translations from the Divyāvadāna, part 1'' (Wisdom Publications, 2008), the first half of a two-part translation of an important collection of ancient Buddhist narratives. This volume inaugurated a new translation series from Wisdom Publications called Classics of Indian Buddhism, of which he is also the chief editor. The second volume, ''Divine Stories: Translations from the Divyāvadāna, part 2'', was published with Wisdom Publications in 2017.
Rotman's current research focuses on two book projects, both of which explore the intersection of religion and the market, and the role of mercantilism in creating and resisting moral worlds: (1) ''Bazaar Religion: Marketing and Moral Economics in Modern India'' (Harvard University Press, under contract), a longitudinal study of the main bazaars in Varanasi, which examines the moral economy behind the objective economy of visible transactions and the ways that it creates, mediates and sacralizes various moods and modes of behavior; and (2) ''Saving the World through Commerce? Buddhists, Merchants, and Mercantilism in Early India'', which chronicles the close relationship that Buddhism had with merchants and mercantilism in the early centuries of the Common Era, and how the market left its imprint on the foundations of Buddhism, particularly on Buddhist conceptions of morality.
Rotman's courses are concerned with South Asian religion, both premodern and modern, and though he believes that religious studies offer an important heuristic for penetrating the complexities of many social phenomena, he likes to teach materials from a variety of disciplines as a way of triangulating issues. He was trained to examine problems as a scholar of religion and as a philologist, anthropologist and cultural historian, and he trains his students to do the same. Rotman also likes to use nontraditional media in the classroom, such as chromolithographs, advertisements, video archives and devotional recordings to offer insight into under-represented aspects of South Asian religious life, contextualize traditional materials and animate discussions. ([https://www.smith.edu/academics/faculty/andy-rotman Source Accessed July 28, 2021])
