Memorial for Luis Óscar Gómez

Luis Gómez passed away in Mexico City on September 3, 2017. He received his B.A. degree in 1963 from Universidad de Puerto Rico, enrolling there at age sixteen.  He received his Ph.D. degree in Buddhist Studies, Indic Philology, and Japanese Language and Literature from Yale University in 1967. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1973, teaching there until his retirement in 2008. He founded Michigan’s highly regarded Ph.D. program in Buddhist Studies, which has produced several generations of outstanding scholars. That his students specialized in Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Indian, Thai, and Burmese Buddhism testifies to his wide-ranging knowledge, as well as his high level of proficiency in Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as Latin, French, German, and Italian (in addition to his native Spanish).

Luis Gómez’s scholarship on Buddhism covered a remarkable range of important topics over his career, including Indian, Tibetan, Chinese, and pan-Asian Buddhism, with a particular emphasis on the literature and religious vision of the Mahayana. He wrote groundbreaking articles on such topics as proto-Madhyamaka in the Pali Canon and the  “sudden vs. gradual” dichotomy in both early Chinese Chan and at the Samye Debate in Tibet. Among his books, his Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light is considered the definitive study of this highly influential Buddhist scripture

After his retirement from the University of Michigan, he remained fully active as a scholar and teacher. He made major contributions to the Norton Anthology of World Religions, including a complete translation of the Bodhicaryāvatāra, a work that he regarded as a guide for his life. At the time of his death, he was working with Paul Harrison of Stanford on an English translation of the Sanskrit text of the Vimalakīrtinirdeśa and Luis left a number of unpublished works, including an introduction to Buddhism and a book-length study of the Samye Debate.

Over the past decade, he divided his time between the Mangalam Research Institute for Buddhist Languages in Berkeley and El Colegio de México in Mexico City, where he laid the foundations for a new generation of Latin American scholars of Buddhism.

In June 2017, knowing that he had just a few months to live, he decided to give his final lecture at the Translation and Transmission Conference.

To honor his memory, the University of Michigan is seeking raise an endowment to establish the Luis Gomez Memorial Lecture Fund, which would support an annual lecture in Luis’s honor, bringing a major scholar of Buddhism to campus.  Generous donations from students of Luis and from Buddhist organizations from around the world have helped raise more than half of the fundraising goal. To help reach the goal, please consider making a donation here.

Obituary written by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Publications and Contributions of Note

• The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Buddhism (Norton, 2015)
• Buddhist Studies – The Legacy of Gadjin M. Nagao (Motilal Banarsidass, 2008)
• The Land of Bliss: The Paradise of the Buddha of Measureless Light (University of Hawai’i Press, 1996)
• Buddhism in Practice (Princeton University Press, 1995)
• Sudden and Gradual (Motilal Banarsidass, 1991)
• Studies in the Literature of the Great Vehicle (Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1989)
• Studies in Ch’an and Hua-yen (University of Hawai’i Press, 1985)
• Barabudur: History and Significance of a Buddhist Monument (Asian Humanities Press, 1981)
• Prajñāpāramitā and Related Systems (University of California and The Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1977)

The Shantarakshita Award for Excellence in Translation

Tsadra Foundation launched an award to honor excellence in the field of translating Tibetan texts into English in 2014. In order to make the award meaningful to the whole community of translators, a committee of twelve respected translators, scholars, and editors formed to review publications and choose the award winners. After an exhaustive search of translations from Tibetan to English published between 2012 and 2015, an international committee of scholars and translators voted and reduced that large number to a “shortlist,” from which twelve finalists were chosen for detailed review (see list below). Each book was then read and reviewed by the twelve-person committee and rated on values such as quality of word choice, overall flow of text, translation accuracy, perceived importance of the contribution to the field, and eight other measures. The award was first presented at the 2017 Translation & Transmission Conference to first ($5,000), second ($2,500), and third place ($2,500) winners. The next award will be presented in 2020.

The 2017 Shantarakshita Award Winners

The inaugural award presentation of the Shantarakshita Award was presented by Eric Colombel and Marcus Perman of Tsadra Foundation and received by Gavin Kilty (1st) for A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages (Library of Tibetan Classics, Wisdom Publications, 2013), Wulstan Fletcher and Helena Blankleder (2nd) for Treasury of Precious Qualities: Book Two (Shambhala Publications, 2013), and Bryan Cuevas (3rd) for The All-Pervading Melodious Drumbeat (Penguin Random House, 2015).

As the first place winner of the inaugural award, Gavin Kilty addressed the assembly with heartfelt words of thanks to his teachers, employers and editors (Thupten Jinpa and David Kittelstrom) and shared a bit about his love of translation and of the great masters who influenced him.

Translating the Treasury of Precious Instructions

Following completion of the translation of Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Tayé’s 10-volume Treasury of Knowledge, Tsadra Foundation has embarked on the translation of Kongtrul’s 18-volume Treasury of Precious Instructions: Essential Teachings of the Eight Practice Lineages of Tibetan Buddhism (gdams ngag rin po che’i mdzod).

We are happy to announce that the first volume of this collection to be translated has been published early in 2016. This volume concerns the teachings from the lineage of Severance (Chöd).

The Treasury of Precious Instructions or Dam-ngak Rinpoché Dzö is one of Jamgön Kongtrul’s Five Treasuries. It can be considered one of the most important contributions to Tibetan literature, and a further statement of Jamgön Kongtrul’s non-sectarian values, because it contains the collected transmissions and esoteric instructions of the eight principal practice lineages of Tibetan Buddhism that trace their lineages back to India. The project to translate all eighteen volumes of The Treasury of Precious Instructions will take many years and involve numerous translators experienced in the different traditions represented in the collection.

Sarah Harding has completed the Chöd (Severance Lineage) volume and is working on the Zhijé (Pacification Lineage) volume, and Richard Barron (Chökyi Nyima) is finishing the first Nyingma volume. To mark the official beginning of this project, Tsadra Foundation printed Richard Barron’s initial translation of Kongtrul’s Catalog (dkar chag) of The Treasury, which is freely available for download on this page. Elizabeth Callahan is currently working on the seventh volume and the Dharmachakra Translation Committee is working on the tenth volume, both of the Marpa Kagyu Lineage. Stephen Gethin of the Padmakara Translation Group is working on the sixteenth volume (Miscellaneous Collections). Gyurme Dorje is working on the 18th volume (Jonang Tradition).

The 18 volumes of The Treasury of Precious Instructions comprise:

• Secret Mantra of the Nyingma – Two Volumes (876 pages) (gsang sngags rnying ma)
• Kadampa Tradition – Two Volumes (1190 pages) (bka’ gdams)
• Sakya Tradition’s Path & Result – Two Volumes (930 pages) (sa skya lam ‘bras)
• Marpa Kagyu – Four Volumes (1567 pages) (mar pa bka’ brgyud)
• Shangpa Kagyu – Two Volumes (1304 pages) (shangs pa bka’ brgyud)
• Pacification & Severance – Two Volumes (900 pages) (zhi byed dang bchod)
• Kalacakra & Orgyen Nyendrup – One Volume (626 pages) (dus ‘khor dang o rgyan bsnyen sgrub)
• Miscellaneous Teachings – Two Volumes (1088 pages) (khri skor sna tshogs)
• Jonang Tradition & Catalog – One Volume (630 pages) (jo nang khrid brgya dang dkar chag brgyud yig)

The Damngak Dzö Catalog

A Tsadra Foundation Project

This catalog presents the eighteen volumes of Jamgon Kongtrul’s Treasury of Precious Instructions: Essential Teachings of the Eight Practice Lineages of Tibet (gdams ngag rin po che’i mdzod). Through this collection Jamgon Kongtrul and Khyentse Wangpo encouraged respect for the principal transmission lineages of practice that came from India. The catalog includes detailed information about each text such as size, location, lists of people associated with each text, lineage data, lists of translations available, and comparisons with previous catalogs. For research purposes, all colophons, text titles, and author names are recorded in both Extended Wylie and Unicode Tibetan.