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Dr. Constance Kassor is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, where she teaches courses on Buddhist thought and Asian religious traditions. Her research primarily focuses on Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, and she is currently completing a book manuscript on the philosophy of the 15th-century Tibetan scholar Gorampa Sonam Senge.
Connie is also interested in issues related to women and gender minorities in Buddhist traditions, as well as Buddhism and social justice, and she has spent several years living with Buddhist communities in India and Nepal. In addition to her scholarly publications, she has written for Lion’s Roar and Tricycle, and has recently published an audio course on Asian religious traditions for The Great Courses and Audible. ([https://constancekassor.net/ Source Accessed Oct 27, 2021]) +
The late Reverend Bunnō Katō, born in 1888, the translator of ''Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law'', was a priest-scholar of the Nichiren Sect of Japanese Buddhism. He completed this translation after three years of devoted work, when he was studying at Oxford University since 1922, with the help of Rev. William Soothill, professor of Chinese. On returning to Japan in 1925, he soon became a lecturer at Risshō University and editor of the ''Nisshū Shimpō'', then a mnthly bulletin of the Nichiren Sect. Afterwards he was appointed head of the doctrinal department at the headquarters of the Sect. Katō's hopes of having his English translation of the Lotus Sutra published failed to materialize several times because of the costs involved. After his death, the manuscript was donated by his widow to the library of Risshō University, where it was kept for 35 years until turned over to Dr. Wilhelm Schiffer, professor at Sophia University and director of the International Institute of the Study of Religions, in 1967 for further revision. His translation, indeed, saw the light of day after an elapse of 46 years since he completed the translation in Oxford. (Source: book jacket, ''Myōhō-Renge-Kyō, The Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Law'') +
Professor Shōryū Katsura received his training in Sanskrit and Buddhist Studies at Kyoto University and the University of Toronto. From 1974 to 2004 he taught in the Department of Indian Philosophy at Hiroshima University; from 2004 he was Professor of Buddhist Philosophy at Ryukoku University, Kyoto, until his retirement in 2012. He remains active at Ryukoku University, where he is Director of their Research Center for Buddhist Cultures in Asia. He is the author or editor of seven books, and has published over sixty articles on various facets of classical Indian Buddhist thought. He is perhaps best known for his work on Buddhist epistemology—the thought of Dignaga, Dharmakirti, and their commentators—but has also made important contributions to the study of Madhyamaka, Abhidharma, and later Mahayana thought. In addition he serves as chief priest of Kodaiji, a small Jodo-shinshu temple in Shiga Prefecture. ([http://www.wisdompubs.org/author/shoryu-katsura Source Accessed Sept 4, 2015]) +
Kumatarō Kawada was a Japanese philosopher who lived from 1899 to 1981. He was known for his work in comparative philosophy, which involved examining and contrasting Western and Japanese philosophical traditions. Kawada believed that Japanese thinkers should engage in comparative philosophy due to the influence of Western thinking on their culture.
Kawada made significant contributions to the field of philosophy in Japan. In 1960, he presented his conception of the meaning of comparative philosophy at the annual convention of the Japanese Society of Medieval Philosophy. His work also touched on topics such as the nature of truth and Buddhist concepts, as evidenced by his writings on Gotama Buddha and the concept of Dharmadatu.
Kawada's philosophical approach garnered attention from other scholars, with some of his work being discussed in relation to critiques of intuition and scientific empiricism. His ideas continue to be studied and referenced in academic circles, demonstrating the lasting impact of his contributions to comparative philosophy. (Generated by Perplexity Jan 10, 2025) +
Kawagoe Eishin is a 助手 (assistant) in the 文学部 (Faculty of Letters) at 東北大学 (Tohoku University). +
Ekai Kawaguchi (河口慧海, ''Kawaguchi Ekai'') (February 26, 1866 – February 24, 1945) was a Japanese Buddhist monk, famed for his four journeys to Nepal (in 1899, 1903, 1905 and 1913), and two to Tibet (July 4, 1900–June 15, 1902, 1913–1915), being the first recorded Japanese citizen to travel in either country.
From an early age Kawaguchi, whose birth name was Sadajiro, was passionate about becoming a monk. In fact, his passion was unusual in a country that was quickly modernizing; he gave serious attention to the monastic vows of vegetarianism, chastity, and temperance even as other monks were happily abandoning them. As a result, he became disgusted with the worldliness and political corruption of the Japanese Buddhist world. Until March, 1891, he worked as the Rector of the Zen Gohyaku rakan Monastery (五百羅漢寺, ''Gohyaku-rakan-ji'') in Tokyo (a large temple which contains 500 ''rakan'' icons). He then spent about 3 years as a hermit in Kyoto studying Chinese Buddhist texts and learning Pali, to no use; he ran into political squabbles even as a hermit. Finding Japanese Buddhism too corrupt, he decided to go to Tibet instead, despite the fact that the region was officially off limits to all foreigners. In fact, unbeknownst to Kawaguchi, Japanese religious scholars had spent most of the 1890s trying to enter Tibet to find rare Buddhist sutras, with the backing of large institutions and scholarships, but had invariably failed.
He left Japan for India in June, 1897, without a guide or map, simply buying his way onto a cargo boat. He had a smattering of English but did not know a word of Hindi or Tibetan. Also, he had no money, having refused the donations of his friends; instead, he made several fishmonger and butcher friends pledge to give up their professions forever and become vegetarian, claiming that the good karma would ensure his success. Success appeared far from guaranteed, but arriving in India with very little money, he somehow entered the good graces of Sarat Chandra Das, an Indian British agent and Tibetan scholar, and was given passage to northern India. Kawaguchi would later be accused of spying for Das, but there is no evidence for this, and a close reading of his diary makes it seem quite unlikely. Kawaguchi stayed in Darjeeling for several months living with a Tibetan family by Das' arrangement. He became fluent in the Tibetan language, which was at that time neither systematically taught to foreigners nor compiled, by talking to children and women on the street.
Crossing over the Himalayas on an unpatrolled dirt road with an untrustworthy guide, Kawaguchi soon found himself alone and lost on the Tibetan plateau. He had the good fortune to befriend every wanderer he met in the countryside, including monks, shepherds, and even bandits, but he still took almost four years to reach Lhasa after stopovers at a number of monasteries and a pilgrimage round sacred Mount Kailash in western Tibet. He posed as a Chinese monk and gained a reputation as an excellent doctor which led to him having an audience with the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (1876 to 1933). He spent some time living in Sera Monastery.
Kawaguchi devoted his entire time in Tibet to Buddhist pilgrimage and study. Although he mastered the difficult terminology of the classical Tibetan language and was able to pass for a Tibetan, he was surprisingly intolerant of Tibetans' minor violations of monastic laws, and of the eating of meat in a country with very little arable farmland. As a result, he did not fit in well in monastic circles, instead finding work as a doctor of Chinese and Western medicine. His services were soon in high demand.
Kawaguchi spent his time in Lhasa in disguise and, following a tip that his cover had been blown, had to flee the country hurriedly. He almost petitioned the government to let him stay as an honest and apolitical monk, but the intimations of high-ranking friends convinced him not to. Even so, several of the people who had sheltered him were horribly tortured and mutilated. Kawaguchi was deeply concerned for his friends, and despite his ill health and lack of funds, after leaving the country he used all his connections to petition the Nepalese Prime Minister Chandra Shumsher Rana for help. On the Prime Minister's recommendation, the Tibetan Government released Kawaguchi's loyal Tibetan friends from jail. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekai_Kawaguchi Source Accessed Mar 19, 2021])
Leslie S. Kawamura was an Assistant Professor, Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary, Alberta. He held a Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, in Far Eastern Studies (1974). He studied at the Kyoto University (Japan) and taught at the Nyingma Institute (Berkeley), Institute of Buddhist Studies (Berkeley), and the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon). His publications include ''Mind in Buddhist Psychology'' (with H.V. Guenther, Dharma Press, 1975) and ''Golden Zephyr'' (Dharma Press, 1975). He was a founding member of the Honpa Buddhist Church of Alberta and the Canada-Mongolia Society. ([https://www.wlupress.wlu.ca/Contributors/K/Kawamura-Leslie Adapted from Source May 18, 2021]) +
Mr. Kazi, a Buddhist from Sikkim, was born in 1925. On finishing his studies in India in 1948, he was appointed by the Government of Sikkim as the Interpreter and Guide during the late His Holiness the XVI Karmapa's first visit to India on pilgrimage. In 1949, he joined the Indian Mission, Lhasa, and with H. E. Richardson, the then Officer-in-Charge, travelled to many important historical places and assisted him
in his translation of the ancient historical edicts of Tibet. Mr. Richardson has acknowledged his help in the Ancient Historical Edicts at Lhasa, published by The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland in 1952. During his seven-year stay in Tibet (1949-56), Mr. Kazi had the unique occasion to meet and receive instructions from many highly realized Dzog-chen Gurus.
He returned to Sikkim in early 1956 and joined the Cultural Department of the Indian Political Office. In the same year, during the official visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to India, when India was celebrating the 2500th Anniversary of the Birth of Lord Buddha, Mr. Kazi acted as Chief Interpreter. When the Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959, Mr. Kazi joined the Indian officials who met him at the border. From then until 1972, he held the post of Official Interpreter, Government of India, attached to the Dalai Lama.
During this period, he was also the translator into English of His Holiness' memoir, My Land and My People (1963); as an art expert attached to Tibet House Museum, New Delhi, he produced three art catalogues for the museum and one for the Tibetan Art Exhibition in Tokyo; at the behest of His Holiness, he organized the editing and publishing of the 130-volume Encyclopedia Tibetica for Tibet House Library, New Delhi.
In 1969, he began publishing the Nga-gyur Nying-may Sung-rab Series on his own, consisting of over 100 volumes of rare books on Dzog-chen that were fast disappearing from Tibet. He also directed and helped produce six documentary films for the French Radio-Television on rare, secret Tantric performances by the highest ranking Tibetan Gurus from the four schools of Tibet.
He first visited the United States in 1967, at the invitation of the U.S. Department of State, under the Council on Leaders and Specialists of the Experiment in International Living. During that time, he attended the Twenty-Seventh Orientalists' Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as one of twenty-two invitees from India.
In 1968, when the late Father Thomas Merton visited India, Mr. Kazi was instrumental in introducing Dzog-chen to him, as recorded in Merton's Asian Journal.
His second visit to the United States was in 1969, at the invitation of the late Alan Watts, head of the Society for Comparative Philosophy, San Francisco, under the sponsorship of Douglas A. Campbell. He held joint conferences on meditation with Alan Watts and others at Esalen, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York. He and his family, which included his daughter, Jetsün Rinpoche, the heart reincarnation of the late Most Reverend Shugseb Jetsün Lochen Rinpoche of Tibet, stayed for a week at the San Francisco Zen Center as guests of the late Suzuki-roshi. It was during this visit to the United States that he organized the Long-chen Nying-tig Buddhist Society, the first Dzog-chen meditation center in New York, sponsored by a group of Dharma seekers headed by Paul M. Postal.
In 1971, a second center was opened in Philadelphia, sponsored by Barry and Marilyn Peril. In the winter of that year, Mr. Kazi was able to invite the late His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche to New York for the first time to bless the students of these two centers. With the appreciable initial help of Allan and Roberta Ehrlich and later with the help of Marleen Pennison, Mr. Kazi continued to teach a group of students in New York for over thirty years.
When His Holiness the Dalai Lama delivered Dzog-chen teachings for the first time in this country, on October 8 and 9, 1989, in San Jose, he specially asked Mr. Kazi to attend in order to translate talks on Dzog-chen. On the occasion of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s visit to London in September 1994, Mr. Kazi was also invited by His Holiness to attend a special reunion lunch with a small group of people who had had the privilege to live, visit, and work in Tibet prior to the Chinese invasion of the country in 1950. Members exchanged their experiences and memories of that time and prepared an informal statement testifying to Tibet’s prior independence.
As founder of Diamond Lotus Publishing, Mr. Kazi translated several books as part of the Nga-gyur Nying-may Sung-rab English Translation Series. Kün-zang La-may Zhal-lung, Part One and Kün-zang La-may Zhal-lung, Part Two & Part Three, Volumes IV and V in the series, are the first volumes to be published. ([https://diamondlotusfoundation.com/the-translator.html Source Accessed April 18, 2025])
Assistant Professor Malcolm Keating’s research focuses on Indian philosophy, primarily Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya, with a secondary focus on their Buddhist interlocutors. He is concerned with philosophy of language and related topics such as epistemology and argumentation. His work inquires into questions such as how hearers interpret non-literal speech acts, what the boundary is between what is said and what is meant, how and whether we can know that we know, and what the role of pragmatics is in argumentation. He seeks to cross cultural and disciplinary boundaries by engaging across Indian and modern analytic Anglophone philosophy and by enlarging the scope of attention within Indian philosophy to include texts characterised as part of the “aesthetic” or Alaṃkāra tradition. ([https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/about/faculty/malcolm-keating/ Source Accessed Oct 27, 2021]) +
Christopher “Doc” Kelley received a PhD in Religion from Columbia University where he studied Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with Robert A. F. Thurman. He is a scholar of Buddhism and an adjunct professor in religious studies at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School University. He is also the co-founder of Consciousness Hacking NYC, and a founder and co-facilitator of Psychedelic Sangha. ([https://menla.org/teachers/dr-christopher-kelley/ Source Accessed May 13, 2021]) +
Casey Forgues (Kemp) is a PhD candidate at the University of Vienna and editorial director of Khyentse Vision Project. Casey received her MPhil in Tibetan Studies at the University of Oxford and has translated sūtras for 84000. Her research focuses on tantric philosophical views of the luminous nature of mind in the early Mahāmudrā tradition (eleventh-thirteenth centuries). She is the co-editor of Buddha Nature across Asia and has published on topics including death and dying in tantric Buddhism, buddha nature, the six yogas of Nāropa, and the Kalācakra tradition. [https://www.khyentsevision.org/team/casey-forgues/ Source: Khyentse Vision Project Accessed July 22, 2024]. +
Ching Keng 耿晴 is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, National Chengchi University, Taipei, Taiwan. His field of research is Yogâcāra and Tathāgatagarbha thought in India and China during the medieval period. He has been part of various research projects studying Dharmapāla’s ''Commentary on the Viṃśikā of Vasubandhu'' and Dharmapāla’s ''Commentary on the Ālambanaparīkṣā of Dignāga'', Wŏnch’uk’s ''Commentary on the Saṃdhinirmocana-sūtra'', and the development of the Three-Nature theory (''trisvabhāva-nirdeśa'') in Yogâcāra. Among his publications are: his PhD dissertation, entitled “Yogâcāra Buddhism Transmitted or Transformed? Paramârtha (499-569 CE) and His Chinese Disciples” (2009); and journal articles such as "A Fundamental Difficulty Embedded in the Soteriology of Tathāgatagarbha Thought? – An Investigation Focusing on the ''Ratnagotravibhāga'' (2013), and "The Dharma-body as the Disclosure of Thusness: On the Characterization of the Dharma-body in the ''Nengduan jin’gang banruo boluomi jing shi''." (2014) (both written in Chinese). (Source: [https://buddhanature.tsadra.org/index.php/Books/A_Distant_Mirror ''A Distant Mirror''], 530–31) +
Professor Emeritus of Buddhist Ethics at the University of London, Goldsmiths. Research Interests include: Buddhist ethics: theoretical foundations and normative applications, with particular reference to medicine and biotechnology. ([https://www.gold.ac.uk/history/staff/d-keown/ Source: University Website Accessed June 25, 2020])
[https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/pages/3571741/keown-damien H-Buddhism GENERATIONS OF BUDDHIST STUDIES Article] +
Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern (6 April 1833 – 4 July 1917) was a Dutch linguist and Orientalist. In the literature, he is usually referred to as H. Kern or Hendrik Kern; a few other scholars bear the same surname. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan_Hendrik_Caspar_Kern Source Accessed Aug 11, 2021]) +
Barry Kerzin is a medical doctor, an Affiliate Prof at the Univ. of Washington Tacoma, an Affiliate Prof at the Univ. of Pittsburgh (pending), a Visiting Prof at Central University of Tibetan Studies in Varanasi, India, an Adjunct Prof at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), an Honorary Professor at the Mongolian National University of Medical Science, and a former Assist. Prof. of Medicine at the Univ. of Washington. Barry is a fellow at the Mind and Life Institute and consults for the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig on compassion training.
He is founder and president of the Altruism in Medicine Institute (AIMI) and founder and chairman of the Human Values Institute (HVI) in Japan.
For over 30 years, he has been providing free medical care to the poor up to the highest lamas, including HH Dalai Lama. Barry has completed many meditation retreats including a three-year retreat. His brain was studied at Princeton Univ. and the Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, as a long-term meditator. He was ordained as a Buddhist monk synthesizing monk and doctor work through harmonizing mind and body, lecturing around the world in Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Mongolia, India, Korea, Europe, and North America. ([https://altruismmedicine.org/about/ Source Accessed Jan 7, 2026]) +
Kathleen McDonald (Venerable Sangye Khadro) was born in California in 1952, and took her first courses in Buddhism in Dharamsala, India in 1973.
Ven. Sangye Khadro ordained as a Buddhist nun at Kopan Monastery in 1974, and is a longtime friend and colleague of Abbey founder Ven. Thubten Chodron.
Ven. Sangye Khadro took the full (bhikshuni) ordination in 1988. While studying at Nalanda Monastery in France in the 1980s, she helped to start the Dorje Pamo Nunnery, along with Ven. Chodron.
Ven. Sangye Khadro has studied Buddhism with many great masters including Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Lama Yeshe, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey, and Khensur Jampa Tegchok. She followed the Masters Program at Lama Tsong Khapa Institute in Italy from 2008 – 2013, and was resident teacher at the FPMT center in Denmark from 2016–2017.
She began teaching in 1979 and was a resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore for 11 years. Ven. Sangye Khadro has taught several retreats and courses at Sravasti Abbey, including Dealing with Difficult Emotions in 2017, Meditative Concentration retreat in 2018, and Peaceful Living, Peaceful Dying courses in 2019 and 2020.
Ven. Sangye Khadro has authored several books, often under the name '''Kathleen McDonald''', including the best-selling, ''How to Meditate'', now in its 17th printing, which has been translated into thirteen languages. ([https://sravastiabbey.org/community-member/sangye-khadro/ Source Accessed Nov 8, 2021]) +
A student of the the Fifth Tatsak Jedrung, Ngawang Chökyi Wangchuk, and the Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso. +
Khamlung Rinpoche studied English in America under Geshe Wangyal’s guidance in New Jersey. He along with Sharpa Tulku was the student of Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. With Alexander Berzin, he helped to found the Translation Bureau at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. +
Mindrolling Jetsün Khandro Rinpoche aka Tsering Paldrön (Tib. ཚེ་རིང་དཔལ་སྒྲོན་, Wyl. tshe ring dpal sgron) (b.1967) is the daughter of Kyabjé Minling Trichen Rinpoche and one of the most renowned Tibetan teachers currently teaching in the West.
She was recognized at the age of two by His Holiness the 16th Karmapa as the reincarnation of the great dakini of Tsurphu, Khandro Ugyen Tsomo, one of the most renowned female masters of her time. The present Khandro Rinpoche holds the lineages of both the Nyingma and Kagyü traditions.
Khandro Rinpoche has received teachings and transmissions from some of the most accomplished masters of the 20th century, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Minling Trichen, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Trulshik Rinpoche, Tenga Rinpoche, Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche and Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche.
[Khandro] Rinpoche maintains a rigorous schedule, teaching from both the Kagyü and Nyingma traditions in the USA including Hawaii, Canada, Denmark, Norway, Spain, Germany, France, the Czech Republic and Greece. She has established and heads the Samten Tse Retreat Center in Mussoori, India, which is home to 30 nuns and also provides a place of study and retreat for monastics and western lay practitioners. [Khandro] Rinpoche is also resident teacher at the Lotus Garden Retreat Center in Virginia, USA, which she established to provide retreat practice, the study of important Buddhist texts, and visiting teachers from all lineages. [Khandro] Rinpoche is also actively involved with the Mindroling Monastery in Dehra Dun, India.
She also heads a variety of charitable projects that supply health care and Buddhist education for monastics and lay practitioners who work side by side in a variety of challenging settings—including a leprosy project. ([https://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Mindrolling_Jets%C3%BCn_Khandro_Rinpoche Source Accessed Oct 14, 2020]) +
Sangye Khandro became a practicing Buddhist in 1972 and a translator of the dharma in 1976. Under the guidance of her root masters Kyabjé Dudjom Rinpoche and Sangyum Kusho, together with Gyatrul Rinpoche, she established dharma centers in the United States and Mexico. She has been a translator for many prominent masters and is now an accomplished teacher. Sangye was the spiritual companion of the Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche for over thirty years, studied with and translated for Kyabjé Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, and has been the principal translator for Khenchen Namdrol Rinpoche since 1996. Sangye Khandro is one of the founders of Light of Berotsana and translates classical Tibetan literature into English, often working with [[Lama Chonam]]. (Source:[https://www.berotsana.org/pages/sangye-khandro Light of Berotsana] Official Communication, June 14, 2024.) +
