Donald S. Lopez Jr.

• 1. Introduction

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  Donald S. Lopez Jr. is an American scholar of Buddhism, born in 1952, who now holds the title of Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan. Tucked among his many books sits an unlikely title: "Buddha Takes the Mound: Enlightenment in 9 Innings," published by St. Martin's Essentials on the 5th of May 2020, a book that borrows the language of baseball to talk about enlightenment. That same list of books stretches from a 1987 study of a technical school of Buddhist logic to a 2025 biography of the Buddha himself. How does one scholar move between Tibetan philosophy, a childhood shaped by his father's Air Force career, and a baseball metaphor for awakening? And what does a career built on translating, editing, and lecturing about Buddhism across four decades actually look like from the inside?

• 2. Family And Formation

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  Lopez was born in Washington, D.C. His father, Donald Lopez, flew as a pilot for the U.S. Air Force and later worked as an official of the Smithsonian Institution. At the University of Virginia, Lopez earned a B.A. with honors in Religious Studies in 1974, then an M.A. in Buddhist Studies in 1977, then a doctorate in Buddhist Studies in 1982. That training left him fluent in both classical and colloquial Tibetan, a skill that underpins his specialty in late Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. He married Tomoko Masuzawa, herself a prominent scholar of Religious Studies. Lopez also holds a fellowship in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That command of Tibetan and Buddhist history would later carry him from the classroom onto lecture podiums at Yale and Harvard.

• 3. Public Lectures

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  In 2008, Lopez delivered four talks titled "The Scientific Buddha: Past, Present, Future" as part of the Dwight H. Terry Lectureship at Yale University. Four years later, in 2012, he gave the Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures at Harvard under the title "The White Lama Ippolito." Outside the lecture circuit, Lopez is a long-term associate of Dale Martin, a Yale professor of New Testament studies. That cross-tradition friendship, a Buddhist studies scholar paired with a scholar of Christian scripture, echoes through a bookshelf of his own that begins in 1987 with a study of Buddhist logic.

• 4. Authored Books

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  "A Study of Svatantrika" opened Lopez's list of authored books, published by Snow Lion Press, an imprint of Shambhala Publications, in 1987. Nearly a decade later, in 1996, Princeton University Press published "Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra," which Munshiram Manoharlal reprinted in 1998. In 2001, Penguin UK released his book as "Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide," while Harper: San Francisco published the U.S. edition under the title "The Story of Buddhism." That book traveled widely in translation: an Italian edition titled "Che cos'è il Buddhismo" appeared from Rome's Ubaldini Editore in 2002, another Italian edition titled "Prigionieri di Shangri-La" came from the same publisher in 1999, a Czech edition followed in 2003, a Spanish edition in 2009, and a French translation titled "Fascination tibétaine" appeared in Paris in 2003. Lopez returned repeatedly to one figure, the Tibetan monk Gendun Chopel, first in "The Madman's Middle Way: Reflections on Reality of the Tibetan Monk Gendun Chopel" from the University of Chicago Press in 2005, then in "Gendun Chopel: Tibet's Modern Visionary" from Serindia Publications in 2013. That same year, W. W. Norton published "In Search of the Christian Buddha: How an Asian Sage Became a Medieval Saint," co-written with Peggy McCracken, on the 7th of April 2014, following "From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha" from the University of Chicago Press on the 11th of April 2013. His most recent authored books are "Hyecho's Journey: The World of Buddhism" from the University of Chicago Press in 2017, "Buddhism: A Journey Through History" from Yale University Press on the 7th of January 2025, and "The Buddha: Biography of a Myth," also Yale University Press, on the 2nd of September 2025. Alongside that authored shelf sits a second body of work: decades spent assembling other scholars' writing into shared reference volumes.

• 5. Editorial Career

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  Lopez co-authored and co-edited "The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism" with Robert E. Buswell Jr., published by Princeton University Press in 2013, a volume that went on to win awards. He also edited a run of regional survey volumes for Princeton University Press: "Religions of India in Practice" in 1995, "Buddhism in Practice" the same year with an abridged edition following in 2007, "Religions of China in Practice" in 1996, "Religions of Tibet in Practice" in 1997, and "Religions of Asia in Practice" in 2002. He edited "Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism Under Colonialism" for the University of Chicago Press in 1995, and "Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism" for the same press in 2005. Beacon Press published his edited volume "A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West" in 2002, and the University of Chicago Press published "Strange Tales of an Oriental Idol: An Anthology of Early European Portrayals of the Buddha" in 2016. That editorial career began in 1992, with "Buddhist Hermeneutics" from the University of Hawai'i Press, the earliest volume on the list he edited.