Jeffrey Hopkins

For the football player, see Jeff Hopkins.

Jeffrey Hopkins (1940 – July 1, 2024) was an American Tibetologist. He was Emeritus professor of Tibetan and Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he taught for more than three decades beginning in 1973.[1] He authored more than twenty-five books about Tibetan Buddhism, among them the highly influential Meditation on Emptiness,[2] which appeared in 1983, offering a pioneering exposition of Prasangika-Madyamika thought in the Geluk tradition. From 1979 to 1989 he was the Dalai Lama's chief interpreter into English[3] and he played a significant role in the development of the Free Tibet Movement.[4] In 2006 he published his English translation of a major work by the Jonangpa lama, Dolpopa, on the Buddha Nature and Emptiness called Mountain Doctrine.[5] Hopkins died on July 1, 2024, at the age of 83. He graduated from Harvard College (BA) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD).[6]

  1. ^ Three Decades and Eighteen PhDs: The Tibetan and Buddhist Studies Legacy of Jeffrey Hopkins at the University of Virginia Archived 2019-08-10 at the Wayback Machine by David Germano
  2. ^ Jeffrey Hopkins, Meditation on Emptiness, Wisdom Publication, 1996, ISBN 0-86171-110-6, critically reviewed Archived 2018-12-09 at the Wayback Machine by Matthew Kapstein in Philosophy East and West, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1986), pp. 68-71.
  3. ^ Jeffrey Hopkins Bio at the Dalai Lama Foundation site. Archived 2007-05-15 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ John Powers, The Free Tibet Movement: A Selective Narrative Archived 2007-07-05 at the Wayback Machine, Journal of Buddhist Ethics 7,2000
  5. ^ Jeffrey Hopkins, Mountain Doctrine: Tibet's Fundamental Treatise on Other-Emptiness and the Buddha Matrix, Snow Lion, 2006
  6. ^ "Renowned Buddhist Scholar Jeffrey Hopkins, Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, Has Died". Archived from the original on 2024-07-02. Retrieved 2024-07-03.