Jeff Watt | |
---|---|
Born | March 23, 1957 |
Known for | curator |
Jeff Watt (born March 23, 1957) is a scholar and curator of Himalayan and Tibetan Art [1] [2] and well known translator of Tibetan texts. [3]
Since 1998 he has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Himalayan Art Resources (HAR) website, a comprehensive on-line resource for Himalayan art and iconography that features thousands of artworks from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia with a catalog of about 60,000 images written by Watt. [4] From October 1999 until October 2007 Watt was also the founding Curator and leading scholar at the Rubin Museum of Art (RMA) in New York City which houses one of the largest collections of Himalayan and Tibetan art in North America. [5]
Watt began studying Tibetan Buddhism in Seattle, Washington with Dezhung Rinpoche as a teenager and dropped out of school to take monk's vows at the age of seventeen in 1974. He gave back his vows in 1985 but continued his studies and also undertook traditional retreats. [6]
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(help)Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Zangnan, as well as in Nepal. Smaller groups of practitioners can be found in Central Asia, some regions of China such as Northeast China, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and some regions of Russia, such as Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia.
Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche and the Lotus Born from Oḍḍiyāna, was a semi-legendary tantric Buddhist Vajra master from India who fully revealed the Vajrayana in Tibet, circa 8th – 9th centuries. He is considered an emanation or Nirmāṇakāya of Shakyamuni Buddha as foretold by the Buddha himself. According to early Tibetan sources including the Testament of Ba, he came to Tibet in the 8th century and designed Samye Monastery, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet during the reign of King Trisong Detsen. He, the king, and Khenpo Shantarakshita are also responsible for creating the Tibetan Canon through translating all of the Buddha's teachings and their commentaries into the Tibetan language.
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Glenn H. Mullin is a Tibetologist, Buddhist writer, translator of classical Tibetan literature and teacher of Tantric Buddhist meditation.
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Lamdré is a meditative system in Tibetan Buddhism rooted in the view that the result of its practice is contained within the path. The name "lamdré" means the “path" with its fruit Wylie: ‘bras). In Tibet, the lamdré teachings are considered the summum bonum of the Sakya school.
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In Tibetan Buddhism, Vajravārāhī is considered a female buddha and "the root of all emanations of dakinis". As such, Vajravarahi manifests in the colors of white, yellow, red, green, blue, and black. She is a popular deity in Tibetan Buddhism and in the Nyingma school she is the consort of Hayagriva, the wrathful form of Avalokiteshvara. She is also associated with the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra, where she is paired in yab-yum with the Heruka Cakrasaṃvara.
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