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Jeffrey Hopkins (1940-2024) was Professor Emeritus of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia where he taught Tibetan Buddhist Studies and Tibetan language for thirty-two years from 1973, retiring in 2005. He received a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1963, trained for five years at the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America in Freewood Acres, New Jersey, USA (now the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in Washington, New Jersey), and received a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin in 1973.
For ten years, from 1979 to 1989, Hopkins served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s chief interpreter into English on lecture tours. At the University of Virginia, he founded the largest academic program in Tibetan and Buddhist studies in the West, and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. He has published forty-eight books, some of which have been translated into a total of twenty-two languages. He published the first translation of the foundational text of the Jo-nang school of Tibetan Buddhism in Mountain Doctrine: Tibet’s Fundamental Treatise on Other-Emptiness and the Buddha-Matrix. He has translated and edited sixteen books from oral teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the last four being How to See Yourself as You Really Are; Becoming Enlightened; How to Be Compassionate; and The Heart of Meditation: Discovering Innermost Awareness.
He is the President and Founder of the UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies. (Source: Updated on July 2, 2024, original content from UMA accessed July 22, 2020)
For ten years, from 1979 to 1989, Hopkins served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s chief interpreter into English on lecture tours. At the University of Virginia, he founded the largest academic program in Tibetan and Buddhist studies in the West, and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. He has published forty-eight books, some of which have been translated into a total of twenty-two languages. He published the first translation of the foundational text of the Jo-nang school of Tibetan Buddhism in Mountain Doctrine: Tibet’s Fundamental Treatise on Other-Emptiness and the Buddha-Matrix. He has translated and edited sixteen books from oral teachings by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the last four being How to See Yourself as You Really Are; Becoming Enlightened; How to Be Compassionate; and The Heart of Meditation: Discovering Innermost Awareness.
He is the President and Founder of the UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies. (Source: Updated on July 2, 2024, original content from UMA accessed July 22, 2020)
His own reflections on his life and career can be found here: https://networks.h-net.org/node/6060/pages/3914200/hopkins-jeffrey
Curriculum Vitae available for download here
Affiliations & relations
- UMA Institute for Tibetan Studies · workplace affiliation
- University of Virginia · secondary affiliation
- nil · religious affiliation
- Dalai Lama, 14th · teacher
- nil · websites
