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Jamyang Loter Wangpo was an important Rime Sakya master of Ngor Thartse Monastery who played a key role in the Rimé movement. He was a disciple of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and a teacher of Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö. He is well known for compiling the Compendium of Tantras under the inspiration of his guru, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo as well as publishing the very first printed edition of the Explanation for Private Disciples of the Lamdre system of the Sakya School, which before that had been transmitted only orally and was tenuously preserved in manuscript form. Jamyang Loter Wangpo also received Dzogchen instructions from Nyoshul Lungtok. The collection of 139 painted mandala thangkas for the Compendium of Tantras was saved in 1958 by Sonam Gyatso Thartse Khen Rinpoche, and later published in more than one edition. (Source: [https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Jamyang_Loter_Wangpo Rigpa Wiki]) +
Jamyang Rinchen (蔣揚仁欽) moved away from his family in Taiwan at a very young age to become a monk and study at the Dalai Lama’s Institute of Buddhist Dialectics in Dharamsala. He later moved to Boston to complete his doctoral degree at Harvard. He now lives in Dharamsala, India, and travels in the Dalai Lama’s entourage as his principle Chinese translator. ([https://wisdomexperience.org/wisdom-podcast/jamyang-rinchen-1/ Adapted from Source Jan 9, 2025]) +
1708. founds bkra shis 'khyil
rgyal rabs lo tshigs shes bya mang 'dus mkhas pa'i spyi nor (p. 357)
1668. To Dbus and enters 'Bras-spungs Sgo-mang.
1674. Final ordination from 5th DL.
1676. Enters Rgyud Smad.
1680. Meditates at Ri-bo Dge-'phel.
1690. Becomes bla-ma [abbot] of 'Bras-spungs Sgo-mang.
Attempts to make peace between the Sde-srid and Lha-bzang Khan.
1709. Founds the Bkra-shis-'khyil Monastery with the patronage of Ju-nang Dpon.
1720. Granted title PaNDi-ta-e-rti-no-min-han by the Gong-ma Khang-shis Rgyal-po.
Year of death 1721 or 1722 (according to Ming mdzod); dates according to Tshad ma'i 'byung khungs: 1648-1722.
Gsung-'bum in 15 volumes. +
Johannes Cornelis Heesterman (10 November 1925, Amsterdam – 14 April 2014, Leiden) was a Dutch Indologist and historian of religions and professor at the University of Leiden.
He graduated in Hindi and Indian cultures at the University of Utrecht where in 1957 he also took a master's degree under the supervision of J.Gonda.
From 1958 to 1961 he lived in India participating in the project of a historical dictionary in San Cristo. Then he returned to Utrecht to teach at the university, from 1964 to 1990 he was a professor at the University of Leiden of linguistic and cultural history of South Asia after the Islamic invasion. Until his death he was professor emeritus of that university.
His main works include: ''The Broken World of Sacrifice: Study on Ritual in Ancient India'', 1993, Chicago; Italian transl. Milano, Adelphi, 2007) and ''The Inner Conflict of Tradition: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship, and Society'' (1985, Chicago). +
Jan Nattier is an American scholar of Mahāyāna Buddhism. She earned her PhD in Inner Asian and Altaic Studies from Harvard University (1988), and subsequently taught at the University of Hawaii (1988-1990), Stanford University (1990-1992), and Indiana University (1992–2005). She then worked as a research professor at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology, Soka University (2006–2010) before retiring from her position there and beginning a series of visiting professorships at various universities in the U.S.
Nattier is one of a group of scholars who have substantially revised views of the early development of Mahāyāna Buddhism in the last 20 years. They have in common their attention to and re-evaluation of early Chinese translations of texts.
Her first notable contribution was a book based on her PhD thesis which looked at the Chinese Doctrine of the Three Ages with a focus on the third i.e. ''Mofa'' (Chinese: 末法; pinyin: ''Mò Fǎ'') or ''Age of Dharma Decline''. She showed that the latter was a Chinese development with no India parallel. The translation and study of the ''Ugraparipṛcca'' published as ''A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)'' in 2003 also contained an extended essay on working with ancient Buddhist texts, particularly in Chinese.
Nattier's notable articles include a study of the ''Akṣobhyavūhya'' Pure Land texts, which asserts the early importance of this strand of Mahāyāna ideology; an evaluation of early Chinese Translations of Buddhist texts and the issue of attribution (which summarises several earlier articles on the subject); and a detailed re-examination of the origins of the ''Heart Sutra'' (1992), which proposes that the sutra was composed in China.
Nattier was married to John R. McRae (1947-2011),[ a professor and researcher who specialized in the study of Chinese Chan Buddhism and was the author of ''The Northern School and the Formation of Early Chan Buddhism'' (University of Hawai`i Press, 1986) and ''Seeing through Zen: Encounter, Transformation, and Genealogy in Chinese Chan Buddhism'' (University of California Press, 2003). ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Nattier Source Accessed Jan 11, 2021])
Jan Christoph Westerhoff is a philosopher and orientalist with specific interests in metaphysics and the philosophy of language. He is currently Professor of Buddhist Philosophy in the Faculty of Theology and Religion of the University of Oxford.
Westerhoff was educated at the Annette-von-Droste-Hülshoff Gymnasium, a Gymnasium in Düsseldorf, Germany. He studied philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1999. He continued his studies of philosophy at Trinity and completed a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) degree in 2000. He undertook postgraduate research at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge; his doctoral supervisor was Michael Potter. He completed his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 2003, with a doctoral thesis titled "An Inquiry into the Notion of an Ontological Category". He undertook research for a second doctorate, this time in Oriental studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS). He completed his second PhD in 2007 with a doctoral thesis titled "Nāgārjuna's Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Investigation".
He is a specialist in metaphysics and Indo-Tibetan philosophy. In particular, his research focuses on the philosophy of the early Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist thinker, Nāgārjuna, with comprehensive books such as ''Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka''. His research interests also include the history of ideas in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His most recent research interests focus on the history of solipsism. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Westerhoff Source Accessed May 12, 2021]) +
J. W. de Jong was born in Leiden. He attended primary school and gymnasium in Leiden, and went on to study at the University of Leiden from 1939–1945, where he began his lifelong study of the "canonical languages" of Buddhism: he took Chinese as his major, while minoring in Japanese and Sanskrit. With the closing of the university in 1940 following the German invasion of the Netherlands, de Jong was forced to continue his studies on his own. With the war's end in 1945, the university reopened and de Jong passed his candidaatsexamen. In 1946, he traveled to the United States as a visiting professor at Harvard University, where he continued his study of Sanskrit texts.
From 1947-1950, he lived in Paris, studying at both the Sorbonne and the Collège de France, where he began studying Tibetan. While still in Paris, he met his future wife Gisèle Bacquès, whom he married in 1949. That same year, he was awarded his PhD from the University of Leiden; his doctoral thesis was a critical translation of Candrakīrti's ''Prasannapadā''. He also began studying Mongolian.
He returned to the Netherlands in 1950 to act as senior research assistant (1950–1954) and continuing academic employee (1954–1956) at the Univ. of Leiden, working at the university's Sinologisch Instituut; in 1956, he became the first Chair of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies when the position was created at the Insituut Kern (the Indological institute at the Univ. of Leiden). In 1957, de Jong founded the Indo-Iranian Journal with Univ. of Leiden colleague F. B. J. Kuijper in 1957 in order to facilitate the publishing of scholarly articles in Indology. In 1965, he moved to Australia to become professor of Indology at the Australian National University in Canberra, a position he held until his retirement in 1986.
De Jong became a corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1978.
De Jong is well known for his amazing linguistic ability having had a command of Dutch, French, English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Danish, Mongolian, Sanskrit, Pāli, and Tibetan, as well as the rather acerbic quality of his reviews. His scholarly publications number more than 800; 700 of these are reviews. He made major contributions to the field of Tibetan studies, including a study of an account of the life of Milarepa by Tsangnyong Heruka Rüpägyäncän (Gtsang-smyon he-ru-ka rus-pa'i-rgyan-can) (1490), and the editing and translation of all Dunhuang fragments apropos of the Rāmāyaṇa story in Tibetan. Furthermore, his work on Madhyamaka philosophy in the 1940s is some of the earliest to treat that topic in detail.
De Jong died in Canberra. In April 2000, some 12,000 items from his personal library (which itself contained over 20,000 volumes) was purchased from his family in Canberra by the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Willem_de_Jong Source Accessed Mar 17, 2020])
Janice Dean Willis, or Jan Willis (born 1948) is Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University, where she has taught since 1977; and the author of books on Tibetan Buddhism. She has been called influential by Time Magazine, Newsweek (cover story), and Ebony Magazine. Aetna Inc.'s 2011 African American History Calendar features professor Willis as one of thirteen distinguished leaders of faith-based health initiatives in the United States.
Willis grew up in Docena, Alabama (near Birmingham), as the daughter of a Baptist deacon and steelworker. While traveling through Asia during the early 1970s, she became the student of Tibetan lama Thubten Yeshe, who encouraged her academic pursuits. She received BA and MA degrees in philosophy from Cornell University (thesis: History, Faith, and Kerygma; A Critique of Bultmann's Existentialist Theology.), and a Ph.D. in Indic and Buddhist Studies from Columbia University (dissertation: A Study of the Chapter on Reality Based Upon the Tattvartha-patalam of Asanga's Bodhisattvabhumi.).
Since 2006, she has contributed to the group blog On Faith (sponsored by Newsweek and the Washington Post) alongside Elie Wiesel, Desmond Tutu, and Madeleine Albright, among others. In 2003, she was awarded Wesleyan University's Binswanger Prize for Excellence in Teaching. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Willis Source Accessed May 17, 2021]) +
Yūn-hua Jan was Professor of Religion in the Department of Religious Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton. He received a Canada Council Fellowship (1973-74) and has lectured in Chinese Studies at Visva-Bharati University, India. He has been a visiting researcher at the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo (1974). He was the author of ''A Chronicle of Buddhism in China 581-906 A.D.'' (1967) and ''The Autobiography of Ch'i Pai-shih''. He has contributed many articles written in Chinese and English to various journals. He received his Ph.D. from the Visva-Bharati University, India. (Source: Adapted from [https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/content/search?search_in%5B%5D=all&SearchText=the+bodhisattva+doctrine+in+buddhism ''The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhism''], Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press, 1981) +
Jan Sobisch studied Tibetology as main subject at Hamburg University (1985-1992, Prof. Seyfort Ruegg), and the minor subjects Classical Indology (1986-1992, Profs. Schmithausen and Wezler), and Philosophy (1990-1992, Prof. Schnädelbach). During his dissertation (Prof. David Jackson), he worked on a genre of Tibetan literature that debates theories of simultaneously practising without conflicts and within a single mental continuum the ethics and vows of sravakas, bodhisattvas and mantra adepts. During these years (1994-1999) he also worked half time in the Nepal-German Manuscript Preservation Project for Prof. Wezler. While working for the project, he discovered among microfilms made available to us the 30 volumes of the complete works of A mes zhabs (1597-1659), one of the most prolific Tibetan writers on history and mantra.
This enabled him to obtain two stipends from the German Research Council (DFG) for studying the manuscripts of A mes zhabs' works (leading to the publication of a catalogue and study) and his documents of transmission (gsan yig or thob yig). The latter project Sobisch passed on to a successor when he accepted the position of an assistant professor in Copenhagen. Within A mes zhabs' works he found numerous writings on the Hevajra Tantra and the connected Path with Its Fruits cycle (lam 'bras). These he researched in his early years in Copenhagen, leading to the publication of a study of the Indian and Tibetan literatures of these teachings. In 2006, he received tenure in Copenhagen and put much effort into building a study program for Tibetan that included classical, Buddhist, and modern studies. His research in the past ten years focussed on the early 'Bri gung bKa' brgyud pas and their unique dGongs gcig, a text that had a tremendous impact on the formation of the bKa' brgyud pas from the 13th c. onwards. His monograph on this work is accepted for publication in the Indian and Tibetan Buddhist Studies Series of Wisdom Publications.
Unfortunately, the Danish government began a series of dramatic budget cuts that resulted in the dismissal of over 500 persons at the University of Copenhagen. In order to save the larger programs like Chinese and Religious Studies, his institute leadership decided to sacrifice the smaller subjects like Tibetan, Sanskrit and Thai Studies, and Sobisch was laid-off with six months notice in February, 2016. In the same year he was granted the Humboldt Research Award in recognition of his entire achievements in research to date.
([https://ceres.rub.de/de/personen/jsobisch/ Source Accessed Sept 9, 2020])
Janet Gyatso (BA, MA, PhD, University of California at Berkeley) holds the Hershey Professorship in Buddhist Studies in the Divinity School at Harvard University, 2001–present. She is a specialist in Buddhist studies with concentration on Tibetan and South Asian cultural and intellectual history. Her books include ''Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary''; ''In the Mirror of Memory: Reflections on Mindfulness and Remembrance in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism''; and ''Women of Tibet''. She has recently completed a new book, ''Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet'', which focuses upon alternative early modernities and the conjunctions and disjunctions between religious and scientific epistemologies in Tibetan medicine in the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. ([https://conference.tsadra.org/past-event/the-2017-tt-conference/ Source Accessed May 5, 2020]) +
A teacher of Rin chen bzang po, the second gangs dkar bla ma, (b.1317 – d.1383). From 1335 onward, he was active at Gsang phu in Central Tibet. ([https://library.bdrc.io/show/bdr:P1827 Source Accessed Feb 8, 2023]) +
Jangchub Tsemo was a translator of Sanskrit grammatical treatises and Tantric commentaries. A student of Pang Lotsāwa, who was his maternal uncle, he taught grammar and Kālacakra to many of the era's prominent lamas, including Tsongkhapa. +
Jann Ronis is a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism and completed his PhD at the University of Virginia in 2009. His dissertation was about the history of Katok Monastery and Buddhist academy in eastern Tibet, located on one of the major trading routes linking Tibet to China. More recently his research has explored contemporary Tibetan literature. After completing his PhD he held postdocs in Paris and UC Berkeley. He taught at the latter for 7 years until becoming the executive director of the Buddhist Digital Resource Center in 2018. (Source: 2018 Lotsawa Workshop Presenter Bio) +
Jared Rhoton (Sonam Tenzin) devoted his adult life to the welfare of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism and its teachers, texts, and students. He was noted for his humility and his great ability as an interpreter and translator. Jared passed away in 1993 at the age of fifty-two. ([https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/jared-rhoton/ Source Accessed Aug 8, 2023]) +
Jared Lindahl, PhD, is Visiting Assistant Professor in Brown University’s Department of Religious Studies and director of the humanities research track in the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Lab. Since 2014, Dr. Lindahl has been directing the data collection, qualitative analysis, and writing papers for the Varieties of Contemplative Experience research project.
Jared holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His ongoing research examines contemplative practices in a range of contexts—from classical Greece, India, and Tibet to Buddhist modernism and the mindfulness movement in the United States—and attempts to integrate historical and textual studies of contemplative traditions with phenomenological and neurobiological approaches in order to investigate the relationship between contemplative practices, resultant experiences, and culturally situated appraisals of meaning and value. ([https://insightla.org/teacher/jared-lindahl-2/ Source Accessed Nov 14, 2023]) +
Dr. Jarosław Zapart is an Indologist and buddhologist whose research interests revolve mainly around early literature and philosophy of Mahāyāna Buddhism. He is especially concerned with origins of the tathāgatagarbha concept, its evolution in Indian sources and its earliest history in China. His second field of interest encompasses the Hindi Sant thought & literature as well as the North Indian Bhakti. He is also involved in the study of Indian aesthetics and poetics and the aesthetics of Indian & Western classical music. ([https://jagiellonian.academia.edu/JaroslawZapart Adapted from Source April 16, 2020]) +
Jason A. Carbine's primary area of scholarly expertise is Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, with a research specialization in Sri Lanka and Myanmar, and also with an emerging comparative focus on Southwest China. He has conducted field research in Myanmar and Sri Lanka, with an emphasis on ritual and practice, and has also traveled (sometimes leading study abroad programs and trips) in various parts of Asia, including Sri Lanka, Myanmar and China. Overall, his teaching and research in the study of Theravāda Buddhism, other forms of Buddhism, and other Asian religions combines historical and ethnographic methodologies, and draws from an interdisciplinary body of research pertaining to the history of religions, textual studies, anthropology, comparative religious ethics, and most recently, environmental studies and ethics. He teaches a range of courses dealing with Asian religions from India to Japan, method and theory in the study of religion, South and Southeast Asian religion and society, globalization, and the environment. ([https://www.whittier.edu/academics/religious/Carbine#:~:text=Jason%20A.,comparative%20focus%20on%20Southwest%20China. Source Accessed Nov 20 2023]) +
Jason Sanche is an editor and translator associated with the Dharmasāgara Translation Group, which operates under the patronage and supervision of 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha.
He has been involved with the Dharmasāgara Translation Group since June 2014, contributing as an editor and translator to various Buddhist texts. He has worked on translations such as ''The Nectar of Speech'' (Toh 197) and ''Questions on Selflessness'' (Toh 173), among other texts. These translations are based on Tibetan sources, including the Degé Kangyur and other comparative editions.
Jason Sanche collaborates with other scholars and translators, including Raktrul Ngawang Kunga Rinpoche, Rebecca Hufen, Shanshan Jia, and Arne Schelling, and receives support from experts like Prof. Harunaga Isaacson of the University of Hamburg. +
Dr. Jason M. Wirth is professor of philosophy at Seattle University and works and teaches in the areas of Continental Philosophy, Buddhist Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Environmental Philosophy. His recent books include Nietzsche and Other Buddhas: Philosophy after Comparative Philosophy (Indiana 2019), Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis (SUNY 2017), a monograph on Milan Kundera (Commiserating with Devastated Things, Fordham 2015), Schelling’s Practice of the Wild (SUNY 2015), and the co-edited volume (with Bret Davis and Brian Schroeder), Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (Indiana 2011).
He is the associate editor and book review editor of the journal, Comparative and Continental Philosophy. He is currently completing a manuscript on the cinema of Terrence Malick as well as a work of ecological philosophy called Turtle Island Anarchy. He was ordained in 2010 in Japan as a priest in the Soto Zen lineage and is the founder and co-director of the Seattle University EcoSangha (www.ecosangha.net). ([https://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/about/directory/profile/jason-wirth.html Source Accessed May 28, 2023]) +
