Donald S. Lopez Jr.

Donald S. Lopez Jr.
Personal
Born	1952 Washington, D.C
Religion	Tibetan Buddhism
Education	University of Virginia
Occupation	Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies Author
Senior posting
Based in	University of Michigan

Donald Sewell Lopez Jr. (born 1952) is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures.

Life

Lopez was born in Washington, D.C. and is the son of U.S. Air Force pilot and Smithsonian Institution official Donald Lopez. He was educated at the University of Virginia, receiving a B.A. (Hons) in Religious Studies in 1974, an M.A. in Buddhist Studies in 1977, and his doctorate in Buddhist Studies in 1982. He is married to another prominent Religious Studies scholar, Tomoko Masuzawa.

Lopez is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has written and edited many books on various aspects of the religions of Asia. He specializes in late Indian Mahayana Buddhism and in Tibetan Buddhism and commands classical and colloquial Tibetan. In 2008 he gave a four talks on The Scientific Buddha: Past, Present, Future as part of a Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale University. In 2012 he delivered the Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures at Harvard, "The White Lama Ippolito".

He is a long-term associate of Yale professor of New Testament studies Dale Martin.

Books published

• From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha, The University of Chicago Press, 2013.
• The Madman’s Middle Way, The University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide, Penguin UK, 2001; published in US as The Story of Buddhism, Harper: San Francisco, 2001; Italian edition, 2002; Czech edition, 2003; Spanish edition, 2009.
  • Italian translation, Che cos'è il Buddhismo, Rome, Ubaldini Editore, 2002.
• • Italian translation, Prigionieri di Shangri-La, Rome, Ubaldini Editore, 1999.
  • French translation, Fascination tibétaine : du bouddhisme, de l'Occident et de quelques mythes, Paris, Éditions Autrement, 2003.
• Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra, Princeton University Press, 1996; reprint edition, Munshiram Manoharlal, 1998.
• A Study of Svatantrika, Snow Lion Press, 1987.
• The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University Press, 2013. (Co-authored with Robert E. Buswell).

Editor

• Robert E. Buswell Jr. & Donald S. Lopez Jr. eds. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 9780691157863.
• ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. Buddhism in Practice, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-8121508322. Abridged edition, 2007, ISBN 978-0691129686.

See also

• Buddhism and science
• Shangri-la

External links

External video
The Scientific Buddha: Past, Present, Future - "A Purified Religion", Yale University, October 1, 2008

The Unfortunate Idol Fo: The Story of a Forgotten Buddha, Fairbank Center, Harvard University, April 17, 2012

• "The Life, Death and Rebirth of The Tibetan Book of the Dead", Donald S. Lopez Jr., Berfrois, 13 April 2011
• "The Scientific Buddha", Donald S. Lopez Jr., 08 May 2016