John Canti: A Dilettante’s Ramblings on the Uttaratantra, Asaṅga, Mipham, and Buddha-Nature
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Description & Participants
A Dilettante’s Ramblings on the Uttaratantra, Asaṅga, Mipham, and Buddha-Nature
25 June 2022 · 11:00 AM Eastern Standard Time
John Canti, longtime practitioner and translator, founder of Padmakara Translation Group, and Editorial Director at the 84000 Project, will speak with Lopen Dr. Karma Phuntsho about a wide range of topics related to buddha-nature teachings:
- The traditional accounts of Asaṅga receiving the byams chos sde lnga (Five Treatises) from Maitreya
- The rgyud bla ma as sūtra commentary, and its relationship to the other four texts
- The mystery of its apparent disappearance in India between the fifth and tenth centuries
- Mipham’s commentary and its sources
- The “other” less discussed aspects of the rgyud bla ma — its explanations of the Three Jewels, of the qualities and activity
- The impact of Buddha-nature teachings as a Western practitioner
John Canti studied medicine and anthropology at Cambridge University (UK) and qualified as a doctor in 1975. While still a medical student he met and began to study with some of the great Tibetan Buddhist masters of the older generation, especially Kangyur Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. After some years of medical work in northeastern Nepal in the late 1970s he went to the Dordogne, France, to complete two three-year retreats at Chanteloube, and has remained primarily based there ever since.
John is a founding member of the Padmakara Translation Group, was a Tsadra Foundation Fellow from 2001-2014, and was awarded the 2016 Khyentse Foundation Fellowship. In 2009, when 84000 first started, he was appointed Editorial Chair of 84000, and in 2020 has become Editorial Co-Director.
Conversations on Buddha-Nature
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