Integrating the Academic with the Creative

I am currently a Lecturer at Stanford University. I received my PhD from Stanford University (2024) specializing in Buddhist tantra, specifically the tradition known as Great Perfection, or Dzogchen ༼རྫོགས་ཆེན་༽. My dissertation is titled: “Heart Essence ༼སྙིང་ཐིག་༽ Literature Through Time: A Close Study of the Secret Tantra of the Sun: Blazing Luminous Matrix of Samantabhadrī ༼ཀློང་གསལ་འབར་མ་ཉི་མའི་གསང་རྒྱུད་༽”. My dissertation explores the relationship between Buddhist literature and time, specifically, how form and content interplay to cultivate more expansive and compassionate temporal relationalities.

I am committed to making the study of Buddhism and other domains of knowledge more accessible to a wider audience by engaging in technology and the arts. As a part of my dissertation, I created an intertextual heatmap to trace the citational history of the Tantra of the Sun throughout an important Treasure cycle called the Heart Essence of the Dakinis. I also created a virtual reality (VR) experience to present the three lineage transmissions of Great Perfection history. Thank you to Simon Wiles and Aftab Hafeez for your help with the heatmap. Thank you to Aftab Hafeez for prototyping the VR experience. Please view the video below for a brief demo of the VR experience.

DISSERTATION ABSTRACT: My dissertation seeks to understand what modes of Buddhist temporality are available for us to consider the question of how to liberate from repeated cycles of suffering, or samsara. Using a previously unstudied Heart Essence (Tibetan: snying thig) scripture called the Tantra of the Sun, that features a feminine Buddha speaking to a feminine audience of non-human dakinis, I argue that this Tantra performs multiple temporalities on its readers, inviting us to experience the pivotal moment of straying from primordial gnosis into samsara existence as an expansive creative act in which infinite possibilities for liberation co-emerge within every moment. The Tantra of the Sun’s impact on the contemplative traditions associated with the Great Perfection (Tibetan: rdzogs chen) lineage of Tibetan Buddhism has been monumental, and yet no one has ever translated it or traced its textual history. My dissertation not only provides the first ever full-length translation and study of this important text, but it also examines the proliferation of the feminine that characterizes the language of Tantra of the Sun and is further mirrored in the female figures associated with its revelatory history. By doing so, I will show how Buddhist identities were fluidly reconfigured by rewriting the past, in this case, Tibet’s Imperial Age, in order to expand the repertoire of what constituted authoritative scripture in the present. My complete dissertation may be downloaded as a PDF, or from the Stanford Libraries here.

Language Skills

English: mother tongue

Mandarin Chinese: fluent

French: advanced

Classical Tibetan & Classical Chinese: advanced

Modern Tibetan: good

Sanskrit: reading