Archives: Authors
Richard K. Payne
Richard K. Payne finished his training and received ordination as a Shingon priest in 1982. He currently serves as the dean of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, which is affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union and with Ryukoku University in Kyoto. He is the author of Tantric Buddhism in East Asia (Wisdom Publications).
Ayya Khema
Ayya Khema, born Ilse Ledermann in Berlin in 1923, was a pioneering Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition from her ordination in 1979 to her death in 1997. The author of more than two dozen books, she established Buddhist centers in Australia, Sri Lanka and Germany, and was instrumental in the creation of Sakyadhita, a worldwide Buddhist women's organization.
Ajahn Brahmavamso
Ajahn Brahmavamso was born in London in 1951. After completing a degree in theoretical physics and teaching for a year, he traveled to Thailand to become a monk. He was ordained at age 23 and he spent the next nine years studying and training in the forest meditation tradition under Venerable Ajahn Chah. In 1983, he was asked to assist in establishing a forest monastery near Perth, Western Australia. Ajahn Brahm is now the abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery and the spiritual director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia.
Bhante Bodhidhamma
Bhante Bodhidhamma is a British Theravadin monk trained in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw. He is a former resident teacher of Gaia House Meditation Centre in Devon, England, and currently the spiritual director of Satipanya Buddhist Trust, which is in the process of raising funds to set up a Mahasi meditation center in Wales.
Andrew Olendzki
Andrew Olendzki, PhD, was trained in Buddhist Studies at Lancaster University in England, as well as at Harvard and the University of Sri Lanka. Olendzki is the former executive director of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS) in Barre, Massachusetts, and former executive editor of the Insight Journal. He is a professor at Lesley University, and the Director of their Mindfulness Studies program.
Sayadaw U Silananda
Sayadaw U Silananda was born in Burma(now Myanmar) and became a novice monk at age 16. In 1979, while traveling in the US with Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw, U Silananda was requested to remain in San Francisco to serve the Burmese community there. Currently he is Spiritual Advisor to the Theravada Buddhist Society of America (TBSA), which has a growing meditation center in Half Moon Bay, California, and Spiritual Director for a number of centers in California and Florida. U Silananda is the author of The Four Foundations of Mindfulness and many articles in both English and Burmese.
Bhikkhu Bodhi
Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American Buddhist monk, president of the Buddhist Association of the United States, and the founder and chair of Buddhist Global Relief, as well as the former editor and president of the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy, Sri Lanka. His extensive translations of the Pali canon have informed dharma practice in the English-speaking world for decades.
Ajahn Jayasaro
Ajahn Jayasaro was ordained as a monk by Ajahn Chah in 1980. From 1997 to 2002 he served as abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat, an international monastery in the Thai Forest Tradition. Currently he lives in a hermitage in central Thailand.
Robin Kornman
Robin Kornman, PH.D., was a professor of comparative literature and a Tibetan Buddhist translator. He studied Slavic literature and Eastern European government, and was a Library of Congress fellow in international studies.
Erik Braun
Erik Braun is the author of <em>The Birth of Insight: Meditation, Modern Buddhism, and the Burmese Monk Ledi Sayadaw</em>, published by University of Chicago Press, November 2013. He is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia
Bruce Tift
Bruce Tift, MA, LMFT has been in private practice since 1979, taught at Naropa University for 25 years, and has given presentations in the US, Mexico, and Japan. He has been practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism for more than 35 years.
Thupten Jinpa
Thupten Jinpa Langri was educated in the classical Tibetan monastic academia and received the highest academic degree of Geshe Lharam (equivalent to a doctorate in divinity). Jinpa also holds a BA in philosophy and a PhD in religious studies, both from the University of Cambridge, England. Since 1985, he has been the principal translator to the Dalai Lama, accompanying him to the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has translated and edited many books by the Dalai Lama, including The World of Tibetan Buddhism, Essence of the Heart Sutra, and the New York Times bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium. Jinpa has published scholarly articles on various aspects of Tibetan culture, Buddhism, and philosophy, and books such as Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Poems of Awakening and Insight (co-authored) and Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Thought. He serves on the advisory board of numerous educational and cultural organizations in North America, Europe, and India. He is currently the president and the editor-in-chief of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to translating key Tibetan classics into contemporary languages. And he also currently chairs the Mind and Life Institute and the Compassion Institute.
David Chadwick
David Chadwick is the author of Crooked Cucumber, a biography of Shunryu Suzuki, and Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki. His website, cuke.com, is an archive of the world of Suzuki Roshi and those who knew him.
Colleen Morton Busch
Colleen Morton Busch holds an MFA in poetry, but she also writes nonfiction and fiction. Her work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including literary magazines, HuffPost, the Washington Post, Yoga Journal, Wild Hope and Orion. She’s the author of Fire Monks: Zen Mind Meets Wildfire, an acclaimed narrative account of the 2008 fire that threatened to destroy Tassajara monastery. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Karen Connelly
Karen Connelly is an award-winning Canadian author. For the full story of her brother’s accident, visit gofundme.com/BringDaveyHome.
Stephen Holoviak
Stephen Holoviak is a professor of management at Penn State University, Mont Alto, and the father of four children, one of whom has autism. He lives in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.
Rachel Neumann
Rachel Neumann is a literary agent and the director of strategy at Idea Architects. She’s the author of <em>Not Quite Nirvana: A Skeptic’s Journey to Mindfulness</em>.