Rory Lindsay

Rory Lindsay

Rory Lindsay is an editor at 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha and a visiting scholar at UC Santa Barbara, where he lectures on Tibetan religions. He is also the Inner Asia area editor for the Religious Studies Review. He received his doctorate in Tibetan studies from Harvard University, and was Buddhadharma’s reviews editor from 2013–18. His new book, Agency and the Afterlife in Tibetan Buddhism, is forthcoming in 2021.

Recent Articles

The Longstanding Debate over Vegetarianism in Tibet

In his review of Geoffrey Barstow’s "The Faults of Meat," Rory Lindsay examines the little-known teachings around vegetarianism in Tibetan Buddhism.

The Rice Seedling Sutra

The Rice Seedling Sutra is one of the most important Buddhist sutras on the topic of dependent arising, the basic Buddhist doctrine that everything depends on something else for its existence. Spoken by the bodhisattva Maitreya, it recounts a teaching that the Buddha had given while gazing at a rice seedling. “Whoever sees dependent arising…

Buddhadharma Book Briefs for Winter 2018

Rory Lindsay reviews "Spontaneous Creativity," by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, "In the Cool Shade of Compassion" by Kamala Tiyanavich, and more.

Painting of Indian monk Vasubandhu.

Book Briefs for Winter 2016

We review "When Awareness Becomes Natural," "Inside Vasubandhu's Yogacara," "Passing Through the Gateless Barrier," and more.

Book Briefs for Fall 2016

Rory Lindsay reviews "Dream Yoga," "Gods of Medieval Japan," "The Spirit of Tibetan Buddhism," and more.

Buddhadharma, Lion's Roar, Reviews

Book Briefs for Spring 2016

David M. DiValerio’s The Holy Madmen of Tibet (Oxford 2015) examines some of Tibetan history’s most fascinating figures. Diving straight into the grotesque for which these fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Kagyu “madmen” became known, DiValerio begins by describing Tsangnyon Heruka’s use of human remains as clothing and Drukpa Kunle’s verse about paying homage “not to the Buddha,…

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Book Briefs for Winter, 2015

Rory Lindsay reviews "A Historical Atlas of Tibet," "The Buddha on Wall Street," "Buddhisms: An Introduction," "The Chan Whip Anthology," and more.

Reviews: Buddhism — A to Z

Rory Lindsay reviews "The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism" by Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Buddhist protector Mahakala

Review: The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism

There once stood a buddha coated in spiders, scorpions, and snakes. He had nine vile heads, enormous wings, eighteen hands clasping fearsome instruments, and spat fire as he trampled the beings underneath him.