Colleagues, friends and institutions dedicated to Buddhist studies and Tibetan culture around the world have paid tribute in recent days to the late scholar Jeffrey Hopkins, who died July 1 at the age of 83 from complications related to a cancer. Hopkins was a professor emeritus in Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he mentored many leading minds in Buddhist academia for three decades.
Writing for H-Buddhism, the H-Net for the study of Buddhism, Paul Hackett, editor-in-chief of the American Institute for Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, wrote:
Born Paul Jeffrey Hopkins in Barrington, Rhode Island in 1940, Hopkins attended Pomfret Preparatory School, after which he enrolled at Harvard University. It was there that he met fellow student Robert Thurman, who in turn encouraged him to continue their joint studies with Geshe Wangyal in Freewood Acres, New Jersey.
After four years of study with Geshe Wangyal and his community of scholars and practitioners, Hopkins enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison to pursue graduate studies in Buddhist studies under the direction of Richard Robinson. Working closely with the former abbot of Gomang College at Drepung Monastic University, Kensur Ngawang Lekden, as well as other scholars of the Tibetan tradition, Hopkins earned his doctorate in 1973, "Meditation on Emptiness." , a detailed response to TRV Murti's assertion that the meditation in Prāsaṅgika-Mādhyamika lacked object, a work which was eventually published by Wisdom Publications in 1983.
(H-Buddhism)
Hopkins wrote about his early life experiences, in which he recalled a past life as a monk in Tibet and spoke an inner language other than English. After meeting and studying with a Tibetan monk, Hopkins realized that his childhood inner language was Tibetan. As a scholar, he has written, edited or translated more than 50 books, providing unparalleled insight into the practice and philosophy of Tibetan Buddhism.
Maitripa College has published this reflection from visiting professor Roger Jackson emeritus of Asian Studies and Religion at Carleton College:
With the passing of Jeffrey Hopkins on July 1, 2024, those of us who study or practice Tibetan Buddhism have lost one of our great guides. Over the course of his half-century career, he published countless volumes on the thought and practice of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly as seen through the prism of the Geluk tradition – including, perhaps, Meditation on the void (Wisdom) and Maps of the Deep (Snow Lion). He became friends with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, sometimes performing his oral teachings (as at the Kālacakra initiation near Madison in 1981) and often helping to bring His Holiness's writings to a Western audience through collaborative translations. And he developed the still-essential Buddhist studies program at the University of Virginia, where he trained several generations of scholars who have gone on to exert great influence in the field, including (to name just a few- uns) Donald Lopez, Anne Klein, Elizabeth Napper, Guy Newland, Georges Dreyfus, Bill Magee and Paul Hackett.
(Facebook)
Anne Klein, professor and former director of religious studies at Rice University, was a Hopkins student. She writes :
During his incredibly productive tenure at the University of Virginia from 1974 to 2005, in addition to teaching his famously information-rich courses, he read individually and weekly with each of his eighteen graduate students for a year or two each, an academic generosity that I have never seen matched in all my years in academia.
(Facebook)
Joan Duncan Oliver, contributing editor for Tricyclewrote for the magazine:
He didn't say much about spirituality. “There is a tradition of not talking openly about one's own achievements and one's own deep experiences, and I don't even talk about it to my friends,” he told a Mandala reporter . “One of the wonderful benefits I gained from my travels with the Dalai Lama,” he wrote in an article for Tricycle (summer 1999), was hearing His Holiness' message repeatedly that everyone wants happiness and does not want suffering. “I understood that on a personal and practical level, I had to integrate this orientation into my behavior at every moment. This requires paying attention to the feelings of others rather than their color and shape. Yet "for compassion to develop toward a wide range of people, mere knowledge of how beings suffer is not enough," he wrote for the Summer 2002 issue of Tricycle. “There needs to be a feeling of closeness towards each being. »
(Tricycle: The Buddhist Review)
Robert A. F. Thurman, professor emeritus at Columbia University and an early friend of Hopkins, wrote:
Professor Jeffrey Hopkins has made considerable contributions during his long career, serving His Holiness the Dalai Lama for years as a leading English translator, editing numerous books for His Holiness, and translating and writing himself. even numerous works, and diligently mentoring many excellent students who today keep the lamp burning and teach throughout the world. In particular, his profound and profound insight into liberating emptiness and responsible altruism has helped many scholars of Buddhism access the extraordinarily deep and sophisticated Indo-Tibetan refinements of critical wisdom philosophy and sciences which are among the humanity's most precious treasures. We will miss him as a friend and colleague, but we will continue to benefit from his vast legacy of wisdom and compassion.
(The lion's roar)
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Christof Spitz (Facebook)
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Jeffrey Hopkins: The Life of a Buddhist Scholar (Wisdom)
Famous Buddhist scholar Jeffrey Hopkins, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, diesTricycle: The Buddhist Review)
Hopkins, Jeffrey: A Walk Through My Life and Career (H-Buddhism)
AnneCarolyn Klein RigzinDrolma (Facebook)
Jeffrey Hopkins, American Tibetologist and Tibetan translator, dies (Lion's Roar)
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