The Translator - Jeffrey Hopkins

Jeffrey Hopkins (September 30, 1940 - July 1, 2024) graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1963. He studied for five years at the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America in Freewood Acres, New Jersey; and in 1968, entered the Buddhist studies program at the University of Wisconsin. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1973, he began teaching at the University of Virginia, and established a successful graduate program in Buddhist studies. Prof. Hopkins has worked extensively with Tibetan scholars in India and America.

As translator for his Holiness the Dalai Lama, from 1979 to 1989, he accompanied him on his visits to the US, Canada, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Great Britain in 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, and 1984. He returned to Australia in 1983 for a three-week lecture tour. For the academic year 1983-84, he was visiting Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

He has authored more than thirty-five books about Tibetan Buddhism among them the highly influential Meditation on Emptiness, (his doctoral thesis) appeared in 1983, offering a pioneering exposition of Prasangika-Madyamika thought in the Geluk tradition. In 2006, he published his English translation of a major work by the Jonangpa lama, Dolpopa, on Buddha Nature and Emptiness called Mountain Doctrine.

He was Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he founded the largest academic program in Tibetan Buddhist studies in the West.

Jeffrey's prodigious efforts, academic skills and generosity as a teacher, translator and author have brought tremendous benefit to countless beings.