John Whitney Pettit

John holds advanced degrees in Religion and Buddhist Studies from Harvard, and a PhD from Columbia University. He spent many years researching the writings of Mipham Rinpoche and eventually published his dissertation as Mipham’s Beacon of Certainty (Wisdom, 1999). Since 2005, he has translated Tibetan commentaries and carried out extensive research on the topic of buddhanature (bde gshegs snying po), which is the subject of a forthcoming volume to be published by the Institute of Tibetan Classics. In addition to translating many unpublished liturgies and commentaries related to practice, he has logged countless hours browsing prophetic manuals in the treasure (gter ma) literature, and browsed avidly the fine print of various sādhanas, rituals, and mchan ’grel commentaries amongst the collected works (gsungs ’bum) of Tibetan authors. 

Among his favorite leisure activities are making smoke offerings in the mountains, collecting rocks, splitting firewood, observing weather phenomena, crow augury, and the night sky, and scouting Catskill lithic constructions, fault lines, grottos, and archeological sites.