Question and Answer Session with Dr. Alex Berzin, Sunday, March 13, 1:00-3:00 PM

Question and Answer Session with Dr. Alex Berzin
Sunday, March 13, 1:00-3:00 PM

Through the kind efforts of one of our Board members, Dr. Alex Berzin has agreed to hold a Q&A session via webcast from Germany for our Kurukulla Center community. This is a very rare opportunity to ask questions from one of the foremost scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, and we are deeply honored to have this opportunity, a very special gift of Dharma from Dr. Berzin and our Board member!

In preparation for this session we would like to ask our community to please submit via e-mail the questions that you would like to ask Dr. Berzin via e-mail. This way he can prepare for some of your questions beforehand. Of course, you will also be able to ask questions during the session.

About Dr. Alexander Berzin:

Dr. Alexander Berzin (born 1944) grew up in New Jersey, USA. He began his study of Buddhism in 1962 at Rutgers and then Princeton Universities, and received his PhD in 1972 from Harvard University jointly between the Departments of Sanskrit and Indian Studies and Far Eastern Languages (Chinese). Inspired by the process through which Buddhism was transmitted from one Asian civilization to another and how it was translated and adopted, his focus has been, ever since, on bridging traditional Buddhist and modern Western cultures.

Dr. Berzin was resident in India for 29 years, first as a Fulbright Scholar and then with the Translation Bureau, which he helped to found, at the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives in Dharamsala. While in India, he furthered his studies with masters from all four Tibetan Buddhist traditions; however, his main teachers have been His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, and Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey. Practicing under their supervision, he completed the major meditation retreats of the Gelug tradition.

Since 1980, Dr. Berzin has traveled the world, lecturing on Buddhism in universities and Buddhist centers in over 70 countries. He was one of the first to teach Buddhism in most of the communist world, throughout Latin America and large parts of Africa. Throughout his travels, he has consistently tried to demystify Buddhism and show the practical application of its teachings in daily life.

A prolific author and translator, Dr. Berzin has published 17 books, including Relating to a Spiritual Teacher, Taking the Kalachakra Initiation, Developing Balanced Sensitivity, and with H.H. the Dalai Lama, The Gelug-Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra.

In 1998, Dr. Berzin moved back to the West to have conditions more conducive for writing. Traveling occasionally, he teaches at several Dharma centers, but devotes most of his time to preparing his unpublished materials for the Berzin Archives website, with the encouragement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He currently lives in Berlin, Germany.