Geshe Thupten Jinpa, the principle English language interpreter and translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, lectured at Emory University in March. Geshe Jinpa’s lecture was part of the annual Tibet Week, held annually at Emory. Sponsored by The Halle Institute for Global Learning, Geshe Jinpa delivered a lecture titled “His Holiness the Dalai Lama's View on Compassion as a Foundation for Secular Ethics." Over 150 people attended the luncheon and lecture, supported by the Drepung Loseling Institute.

Geshe Jinpa has served as the principal English language interpreter for the Dalai Lama since 1985, accompanying him on trips to the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has translated and edited many books by the Dalai Lama, including the recent New York Times bestsellers Ethics for the New Millennium, Transforming the Mind, The Essence of the Heart Sutra, and The Universe in a Single Atom: Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

During his lecture, Jinpa focused on the Dalai Lama’s views on secularism and the role of compassion in our current society before taking multiple questions from the audience. He emphasized that religions may be based on compassion, but that one does not have to be religious to practice compassion.

“The Dalai Lama is one of the most well known religious figure of our contemporary age, he is certainly the most prominent leader of the Buddhist faith, but to hear him speaking about secular ethics, it is a kind of irony or paradox. He is kind of a lone voice [of religious figures] arguing for the possibility for a robust system of secular ethics separate from religion.”

Geshe Jinpa also emphasized distinction in types of compassion of which the Dalai Lama speaks, including the one he argued is the most important: compassion for one’s self.

"His Holiness argues that true compassion must start from one’s self, an individual who is incapable of caring for his or her own welfare will be unable to connect with others because you don’t have the basis. … Without being able to feel your own pain, and empathize with it, you don’t have the basis to reach out and feel others in pain. This the kind of compassion that His Holiness talks about that must be at the heart of secular ethics."

In response to a question from a fellow translator in the audience, he spoke briefly about the art of translation and the challenges of translating speech for someone like the Dalai Lama.

“When I am translating for His Holiness, I should not say, ‘His Holiness is telling you this.’ I shouldn’t say ‘he is telling you a story about when he was three years old in Taktser,’ I should say ‘when I was 3 years old in Taktser’ even though, of course, I wasn’t there . . . as a young monk, this was nearly impossible for me to say.”

He continued on to say it was key for the translator to make themselves invisible, so that the person asking His Holiness questions feels that he or she is speaking directly to the Dalai Lama.

Jinpa was educated in the classical Tibetan monastic academia and received the highest academic degree of Geshe Lharam (equivalent to a doctorate in divinity). Jinpa also holds a bachelor’s in philosophy and a PhD in religious studies, both from the University of Cambridge where he also worked as a research fellow.

Geshe Jinpa’s talk highlights the close connection that Emory University has with the Dalai Lama, including an upcoming visit to Emory University next fall and the appointment of the Dalai Lama as a Presidential Distinguished Professor. “It seems that Emory is a very exciting place, where so many things are happening,” joked Geshe Jinpa. “I wish actually that I was a part of the faculty here, rather then being stuck up in cold Montreal.”

In addition to his duties as translator for His Holiness, Jinpa is currently the president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to editing and translating key classical Tibetan texts into contemporary languages, and the editor-in-chief for the Institute's Library of Tibetan Classics. Jinpa also teaches as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal.