It is with great sadness that we share news of the passing on February 5 of one of the great translators of Tibetan Buddhism, Gyurme Dorje. He was a beloved friend to Wisdom and a lodestar to so many of us as practitioners and aspiring translators.
Gyurme Dorje profoundly shaped the field of Tibetan translation and the West’s understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, especially of the Nyingma tradition. His landmark translation of Dudjom Rinpoche’s Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism: Its Fundamentals and History, on which he worked in collaboration with Matthew Kapstein, has been a luminous beacon of inspiration since its publication nearly thirty years ago, and it raised the bar for the presentation of Tibetan scholarship in English. At a time when few resources detailing the history and doctrines of the major Tibetan traditions were available in the West, his work indelibly shaped the understanding of Tibetan Buddhism among English speakers and contributed to opening its riches to practitioner and scholar alike.
A consummate scholar himself, Gyurme Dorje held a PhD in Tibetan Literature from London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and an MA in Sanskrit and Oriental Studies from the University of Edinburgh. From 1991 to 1996 he returned to SOAS under a research fellowship to work on the Encyclopaedic Tibetan-English Dictionary, a work that was completed but of which, unfortunately, only one of three volumes has appeared. His translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead is the most complete and authoritative in the English language, and, in addition to many other projects, he had been a Tsadra Foundation grantee since 2007, contributing to their ground-breaking Complete Nyingma Tradition from Sutra to Tantra and Treasury of Precious Instructions series.
We offer our sincere condolences to his family, and indeed to all who knew him and counted him as a friend and colleague. May his legacy continue and his prayers be realized.