Dr. Alexander Gardner

Alex has a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Michigan. His thesis topic was the gazetteer known as Twenty-Five Great Sites of Kham, a network of sacred spaces centered on Derge and developed by Chokgyur Lingpa, Jamgon Kongtrul, and Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. During his research he lived in Derge and at Dzongsar Monastery, and visited many of the sites in the gazetteer, places that Khyentse Wangpo and the others practiced and revealed treasures. In 2006, during a year-long postdoctoral position at TBRC, Alex created the outline of the 1977–1980 Gangtok edition of Khyentse Wangpo’s Collected Works. Based partly on his dissertation work, in 2019 he published The Life of Jamgon Kongtrul the Great (Snow Lion). Alex has edited books and web publications on a range of Tibetan Buddhist topics, most recently for Wisdom Publications. 

Alex lives in rural New York State near the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware River with his family, sheep, and chickens.