Work
From 1969 to 1998, he resided primarily in Dharamsala, India, initially as a Fulbright scholar, studying and practicing with masters from all four Tibetan Buddhist traditions.
His main teacher was Tsenzhab Serkong Rinpoche, the late Master Debate Partner and Assistant Tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Berzin served as his interpreter and secretary for nine years, accompanying him on several world tours. He has also served as occasional Dharma interpreter for His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
A founding member of the Translation Bureau of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Berzin has developed a new terminology for translating, into English, Tibetan technical terms that have often been misunderstood. Working with translators in many other languages, he has helped them to revise and develop their terminology according to the same principles.
Since 1983, Berzin has been traveling around the world, teaching various aspects of Buddhist practice and philosophy, as well as Tibetan-Mongolian history and astro-medical theory, at Dharma centers and universities in more than seventy countries. His travels focus primarily on the former and present communist world, Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East. In addition to his numerous published writings and translations, many of his lectures have been published in the languages of these areas.
Berzin has served as unofficial liaison for several international projects of Tibetan-Mongolian culture, such as a Tibetan medical aid program for Chernobyl victims with the Russian Ministry of Health and a project in Mongolia for the Gere Foundation to produce books on Buddhism in the colloquial language to help revive the traditional culture. He has also been instrumental in establishing and furthering a Buddhist-Islamic dialogue.
He currently lives in Berlin, Germany.
In 1998, 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 Traveling occasionally, he teaches at several Dharma centers, but devotes most of his time to preparing his unpublished materials for the Berzin Archives website. The website contains Buddhist material otherwise unavailable in Western languages. Inspired by the open-source movement and the information revolution, his writings are available free of charge. It is also possible to listen to recorded weekly teachings in the form of podcasts. Berzin's explanations of Buddhist teaching are notable for their use of distinctive translations of many Buddhist terms; such as the use of "safe direction" for the more common term "refuge" and "forceful" instead of "wrathful". Berzin believes that much of the misunderstanding concerning Buddhism in the West comes from incorrect and misleading translations of Buddhist terminology.
Read more about this topic: Alexander Berzin (scholar)
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“But this rough magic
I here abjure, and when I have required
Some heavenly music—which even now I do—
To work mine end upon their senses that
This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations to the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the accident of his having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)