This is the third in a series of In-Person Workshops hosted by the Khyentse Foundation Buddhist Studies Lecture Series at Northwestern (KFBSLS). This Workshop draws together the international cohort of Khyentse Foundation-funded doctoral students together with the Buddhist studies doctoral students at Northwestern for an in-person weekend at Northwestern's main campus in Evanston, Illinois. Over the course of two days, each KFBSLS participant receives a one-hour slot to present their work and then engage in a roundtable discussion with the rest of our KFBSLS community, alongside our honored keynote speaker Anne Klein.
Anne Carolyn Klein is Professor and former Chair of the Religion Department at Rice University where she developed a graduate contemplative studies concentration, a lama in the Nyingma tradition, and co-founding teacher of Dawn Mountain, a center for Tibetan Buddhism in Houston.
Her work has focused on Tibetan texts and traditional learned oral commentary on them in three of Tibet’s great traditions. Knowledge and Liberation on Buddhist distinctions between conceptual and direct knowing, Path to the Middle: The Spoken Scholarship of Kensur Yeshe Tupden, on Tsongkhapa’s Madhyamaka. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen puts Buddhist and Feminist perspectives in conversation. Her Dzogchen studies include, with Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, Unbounded Wholeness: Dzogchen, Bon, and the Logic of the Nonconceptual; also, her translation of Khetusn Sangpo Rinpoche’s Strand of Jewels and Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse, with a chantable English translation of Jigme Lingpa’s Ngondro. Her most recent book is Being Human and a Buddha Too: Longchenpa’s Sevenfold Mind Training. Forthcoming Fall, 2026 is her translation of Adzom Drurkpa’s Lamplight on Your Path, a commentary on Jigme Lingpa’s Ngondro.
A central theme throughout these writings is optimizing an embodied relationship between head and heart. Her current project centers on a contemporary Dzogchen Terton’s Dzogchen relationship with and revelations regarding Yeshe Tsogyal. Including his distillation of Jigme Lingpa’s Yumkha Dechen Gyalmo, Yeshe Tsogyal, the Great Bliss Queen. She teaches a retreat on this practice at Dawn Mountain May 11-17, 2026, www.dawnmountain.org.
Joshua Brallier
Email