Wisdom Dharma Chat | In Remembrance of Jeffrey Hopkins
June 28, 2025
In this episode of Wisdom Dharma Chats, host Daniel Aitken is joined by multiple guests to celebrate, commemorate, and honor Jeffrey Hopkins. Together, they reflect on his academic journey and significant contributions to Buddhist studies. Attendees share personal stories and express gratitude for his influential book, Meditation on Emptiness, and his systematic approach to Tibetan studies. The program features musical performances and discussions on various aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, highlighting Jeffrey’s enduring impact on students, scholars, and the broader community.
Show Links:
Learn more about Meditation on Emptiness here.
Learn more about Mission to Tibet here.
Meet Our Guest
Donald Lopez
Natalie Griffin | Elizabeth Napper | Guy Newland
Thupten Jinpa | Laura Cunningham | Marcus Perman
Robert Thurman
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.
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.
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.
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.
Marcus Perman
Guest
Marcus Perman is the Executive Director of Tsadra Foundation, where he has worked for 16 years. He graduated from St. Lawrence University with honors in Psychology and Philosophy and graduated from Naropa University with an MA in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism focused on Tibetan and Sanskrit languages. From 2007-2008 Marcus studied at Tibet University in Lhasa, Tibet and Rumtek, Sikkim, India. His early interests lay primarily in philosophical interpretations of Tibetan Buddhism, but his current work focuses on online educational resources and digital resources for translators and scholars. With Tsadra Foundation, Marcus developed the Translation & Transmission Conference series and the Lotsawa Workshops and regularly hosts online events and other workshops. Other interests include comparative philosophy, writing, Vladimir Nabokov, and rock climbing.
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.
