The Jonangpa Blog

With her intuitive sense of the text, Vesna Wallace, one of the foremost Kālachakra scholars of our time, has eloquently deciphered and rendered the fourth chapter on the Sādhanā from the Kālachakra Tantra into the English language. Along with her previous publication of the second chapter on the Individual in this same series, this chapter on the Sādhanā or practice manual completes two of the Kālachakra Tantra’s five chapters in English. Both of these translations include the root tantra along with its explanatory commentary, the Vimalaprabhā or Stainless Light . [1]

While reading the recently published translation of the Kālachakra Sādhanā, I...

The following post is by Connor McCarty, an honors student at the University of Alabama and contributor to Jonang Foundation. [1]

Working in collaboration with the University of Alabama, we at Jonang Foundation have developed an interactive satellite map of Jonang sites across Tibet. Providing precise geographic locations of key Jonang sites, this map allows users to navigate both historical and active Jonang monasteries, stupas, nunneries, meditation caves, and other relevant landmark sites like never before.

Viewers can now traverse the Tibetan plateau and see the migration and spatial presence of the Jonangpa with an unprecedented degree of accuracy. Each site is marked at its exact co-ordinal location, providing an invaluable resource to researchers and interested members of the community alike.

E. Gene Smith, the eminent Tibetologists, founder of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC), and a guiding member of the Executive Board of Jonang Foundation passed away on the afternoon of Thursday December 16, 2010. The following are brief personal reflections: [1]

A week ago Friday at dawn, after mourning all night, I rolled my legs over the bedside and gazed out the window into the gray-glow skyscape of New York City. “I live in a world without Gene Smith” was my only thought. It’s a qualitatively different world.

Gene was a grandfather of Tibetan studies in the United States. Many of us would not be doing what we do if it were not for Gene. I certainly would not. From his introductory essays, to the Library of Congress PL480 project that brought us the books we grew up on, to his personal insights, Gene guided generations of Tibetologists.

The Buddha from Dolpo: A Study of the Life and Thought of the Tibetan Master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen by Cyrus Stearns is now in a revised and expanded edition.

"The Buddha from Dölpo is the most significant contribution to the study of the life and revelations of one of the most enigmatic personalities in Tibetan intellectual history, the Jonang master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen (1292–1361). Narrating Dolpopa's life story and evolution of thought, Cyrus Stearns lucidly describes how this foremost exponent of shentong philosophical thinking and Kalachakra tantric practice served as the catalyst figure for the Jonang Buddhist tradition during its formative period in fourteenth-century Tibet.