Paul Donnelly
In 1989, Paul Donnelly entered the PhD program in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He earned his doctorate in 1997 and is now an associate professor and director of the Religious Studies program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff.
Books, Courses & Podcasts
Like a Waking Dream
Among the generation of elder Tibetan lamas who brought Tibetan Buddhism west in the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps none has had a greater impact on the academic study of Buddhism than Geshé Lhundub Sopa. He has striven to preserve Tibetan religious culture through tireless work as a professor and religious figure, establishing a functioning Buddhist monastery in the West, organizing the Dalai Lama’s visits to the U.S., and offering countless teachings across the country. But prior to his thirty-year career in the first ever academic Buddhist studies program in the United States—a position in which he oversaw the training of many among the seminal generation of American Buddhist studies scholars—Geshé Sopa was the son of peasant farmers, a novice monk in a rural monastery, a virtuoso scholar-monk at one of the prestigious central monasteries in Lhasa, and a survivor of the Tibetan uprising and perilous flight into exile in 1959.
In Like a Waking Dream, Geshé Sopa frankly and observantly reflects on how his life in Tibet—a monastic life of yogic simplicity—shaped and prepared him for the unexpected. His is a tale of an exemplary life dedicated to learning, spiritual cultivation, and the service of others from one of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism.