In Rememberance of Jeffrey Hopkins

A SPECIAL WISDOM DHARMA CHATS EPISODE
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JEFFREY HOPKINS

HOSTED BY DANIEL AITKEN
ON SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 2025 at 7:00 PM EDT

PURCHASE AN IN-STUDIO TICKET     |     RESERVE AN ONLINE SEAT

You’re invited to join us for a very special episode of Wisdom Dharma Chats live in New York City as we commemorate the life and legacy of renowned scholar Jeffrey Hopkins. As we celebrate the release of the new edition of his landmark work, Meditation on Emptiness, we also honor his life as we approach the first anniversary of his passing on July 1.

This unique event will be hosted by Wisdom’s Daniel Aitken and emceed by Donald Lopez. Together with distinguished guests, we’ll reflect on the depth of his contributions—from his pioneering translations and scholarship to the warmth, humor, and wisdom he so generously shared with all who knew him.

Event Format

Unlike our typical Wisdom Dharma Chats, this program will feature multiple guests and comments and conversations from individuals who shared a personal and intellectual connection with Jeffrey:

Opening Remarks from Donald Lopez

Interview with Natalie Griffin & Robert Thurman

Remarks from Thupten Jinpa

Interview with Elizabeth Napper & Guy Newland

Interview with Laura Cunningham

Interview and Closing Remarks from Donald Lopez and Daniel Aitken

With short breaks between sessions, each dialogue will explore unique perspectives on Jeffrey’s teachings, his legacy as a mentor and translator, and the groundbreaking nature of Meditation on Emptiness, a text that transformed the study of Madhyamaka in the English-speaking world.

We hope you’ll join us live as part of our in-studio audience or online over Zoom!

JOIN OUR LIVE IN-STUDIO AUDIENCE IN NEW YORK CITY

This is a ticket to be a live studio audience member during the filming of the Wisdom Dharma Chats episode in remembrance of Jeffrey Hopkins on Saturday, June 28, 2025, at 132 Perry St., New York, NY 10014. 

Tickets for the in-studio audience are available for $10.00, the proceeds of which help make Wisdom Dharma Chats possible. Doors will open at 6:20 PM and will close promptly at 6:55 PM; please do not be late. The Wisdom Dharma Chat will start at 7:00 PM and will last until approximately 8:45 PM, including two short intermissions.

Seats are limited, so please be sure to reserve a ticket for the in-studio audience if you plan on coming in person.

OR, REGISTER TO SAVE YOUR SEAT IN OUR ONLINE AUDIENCE AND WATCH OVER ZOOM

Jeffrey Hopkins

Jeffrey Hopkins was Professor Emeritus of Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of Virginia, where he taught Tibetan Studies and Tibetan language for more than thirty years. He received a BA magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1963, trained for five years at the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America (now the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center) in New Jersey, and received a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1973. From 1979 to 1989 he served as His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s chief interpreter into English on lecture tours in the U.S., Canada, Southeast Asia, Great Britain, and Switzerland. He published more than twenty-five books, including Meditation on Emptiness, a seminal work of English language scholarship on Tibetan Madhyamaka thought, as well as translations of works by Tsongkhapa, Dolpopa, and His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. At the University of Virginia he founded the program in Buddhist Studies and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. Jeffrey Hopkins passed away on July 1, 2024.

Donald Lopez

Natalie Griffin  |  Robert Thurman | Thupten Jinpa

Elizabeth Napper  |  Guy Newland  |  Laura Cunningham

Donald Lopez

Emcee

Donald Lopez is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He is the author of numerous monographs, translations, and edited volumes on South Asian Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, and the European encounter with Buddhism, including Wisdom Publication’s Buddhism and the Senses, Beautiful Adornment of Mount Meru, and Science and Philosophy in the Indian Buddhist Classics, Volume 3: Philosophical Schools. His most recent book is Buddhism: A Journey Through History from Yale University Press. In 2014 his Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (with Robert Buswell) was awarded the Dartmouth Medal of the American Library Association for best reference work of the year. In 2000 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Natalie Maxwell Hauptman Griffin

Guest

Natalie began her lifelong connection to Buddhism in 1965 when she had the great fortune to meet Geshe Ngawang Wangyal, the founder of the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America (the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center, TBLC). There she had her first encounter with two young, future scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, Jeffrey Hopkins and Robert Thurman, who were intensively studying and practicing under Geshe-la’s tutelage. During this time she began briefly to study Tibetan before going on to earn her PhD in 1975 in Buddhist Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. It was during her studies that she worked with Jeffrey on the translations of Tibetan texts on great compassion for her dissertation. She went on to teach Asian religions for over 30 years and has been a translator in the Tibetan Classics Translators Guild NY since 1986. She is currently enjoying reading, slowly, the outstanding new revised edition of Meditation on Emptiness.

Robert Thurman

Guest

A celebrated scholar, author, and advocate for Tibetan Buddhism, Robert (Bob) Thurman, was also the first Westerner to be ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time in 1997 and honored with India’s Padma Shri Award in 2020, Thurman has spent his life making the Buddha’s teachings accessible to Western audiences. A former professor at Columbia University and founder of Tibet House US, his work bridges academia, activism, and spiritual exploration.

Inspired by the Dalai Lama and his own transformative spiritual journey, Bob brings a dynamic voice to the Dharma, offering an expanded vision of life rooted in Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. Whether through teaching, writing, or public speaking, he guides others toward clarity, compassion, and a hopeful path forward grounded in peace and awareness.

Thupten Jinpa

Guest

Thupten Jinpa Langri was educated in the classical Tibetan monastic academia and received the highest academic degree of Geshe Lharam (equivalent to a doctorate in divinity). Jinpa also holds a BA in philosophy and a PhD in religious studies, both from the University of Cambridge, England. Since 1985, he has been the principal translator to the Dalai Lama, accompanying him to the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has translated and edited many books by the Dalai Lama, including The World of Tibetan Buddhism, Essence of the Heart Sutra, and the New York Times bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium.
Jinpa has published scholarly articles on various aspects of Tibetan culture, Buddhism, and philosophy, and books such as Songs of Spiritual Experience: Tibetan Poems of Awakening and Insight (co-authored) and Self, Reality and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy. He serves on the advisory board of numerous educational and cultural organizations in North America, Europe, and India. He is currently the president and editor-in-chief of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to translating key Tibetan classics into contemporary languages. And he also currently chairs the Mind and Life Institute and the Compassion Institute.

Elizabeth Napper

Guest

Elizabeth Napper is co-founder of the Tibetan Nuns Project, where she served as co-director for twenty-five years, working to develop opportunities within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for nuns to receive access to the full education of their various traditions. The first group of twenty nuns to complete the studies and take the required tests for the Geshe degree received that degree in December 2016.

Napper received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin in Indian Studies and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Tibetan Buddhist Studies from the University of Virginia, where she also taught for two years as a lecturer. She taught at Stanford University and at the University of Hawaii.

Her published works include Dependent-Arising and Emptiness and Mind in Tibetan Buddhism. She was co-editor of Kindness, Clarity, and Insight by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and co-author of Fluent Tibetan: A Proficiency Oriented Learning System, Novice and Intermediate Levels (4 volumes). In 2003 she was a recipient of the “Unsung Heroes of Compassion” award given by Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.

Guy Newland

Guest

Guy Newland is Professor of Religion and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Central Michigan University, where he has taught since 1988. He has authored, edited, and translated several books on Tibetan Buddhism, including the three-volume translation of The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment and Introduction to Emptiness. Since the loss of his wife Valerie Stephens in 2013, he has expanded his teachings, given to universities and Dharma centers, which include topics on death, dying, and grief.  He lives in Mount Pleasant, MI.

Laura Cunningham

Guest

Laura Cunningham is the editorial and production manager at Wisdom Publications. She’s been editing for Wisdom since 2007 and in that time has edited works from all schools of Buddhist thought and from all genres, from poetry to memoir to scholarship. An author once said that she “has the uncanny ability to edit a phrase so that it conveys the meaning I intended better than I was able to.” She’s held her current position since 2019 and has enjoyed mentoring a new generation of Dharma editors.

Daniel Aitken

Daniel is the CEO and Publisher of Wisdom Publications, as well as the host of the popular Wisdom Podcast and Wisdom Dharma Chats. In addition to publishing some of the most important books and online courses on Buddhism, he has interviewed over 200 Buddhist masters from a variety of Buddhist traditions. Daniel has a PhD in Buddhist Philosophy. His lifelong interest in Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibetan language, and its literature has taken him across Australia, America, India, Nepal, and Tibet to pursue a deeper understanding of Buddhist theory and practice with some of the greatest masters from the living tradition.