Meditation on Emptiness

“Jeffrey Hopkins’s Meditation on Emptiness was an unprecedented achievement when it appeared fifty years ago. It set a compelling benchmark for meticulous, Tibetan-sourced scholarship, and remains an unparalleled compendium of key reflections on emptiness. Hopkins brings readers into direct contact with core Indian texts and, most especially, with the vaunted Geluk discourse that developed from them. What we find here are the guidelines of a living tradition that nourishes both philosophical and spiritual endeavoring.”–Anne Carolyn Klein, Rice University and Dawn Mountain, author of Knowledge and Liberation and Being Human and a Buddha Too“Since Meditation on Emptiness was first published in 1983 it has become one of the great classics of the academic study of Buddhism, initiating an extensive literature on Tibetan Madhyamaka in North America. A work of incredible breadth and depth, few subsequent works on the subject can be said to equal it in scope. This second revised edition, with a new introduction by Professor Don Lopez, makes Jeffrey Hopkins’s work even more accessible. Forty years after its first edition, Meditation on Emptiness remains an invaluable source both for the specialist and the novice.” –José Ignacio Cabezon, Dalai Lama Professor Emeritus, University of California Santa Barbara

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 fifty 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 programs in Buddhist Studies and Tibetan Studies and served as Director of the Center for South Asian Studies for twelve years. Jeffrey passed away on July 3, 2024.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and a beacon of inspiration for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. He has persistently reached out across religious and political lines and has engaged in dialogue with scientists in his mission to advance peace and understanding in the world. In doing so, he embodies his motto: “My religion is kindness.”

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. 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 and translator of numerous books, including Beautiful Adornment of Mount Meru, Opening the Eye of New Awareness, and In the Forest of Faded Wisdom: 104 Poems by Gendun Chopel.