John Campbell has been practicing yoga and meditation for thirty years, teaching both worldwide for much of that time. A scholar of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, he holds a PhD in Religion from Columbia University. He is a Fulbright Fellow and has taught at Columbia University and the University of Virginia, where he co-founded the Contemplative Sciences Center (https://csc.virginia.edu/) for research and teaching centered on contemplative methods and traditions. From 2018—2021 he was Director of South Asian Collections for the Asian Legacy Library (https://asianlegacylibrary.org/) which preserves of rare and endangered text collections in Nepal, India, and Mongolia. He is currently working on a multi-volume translation from Sanskrit and Tibetan of commentaries on the Guhyasamaja Tantra, a Buddhist scripture. The first volume of that project was published in 2020 as The Esoteric Community Tantra by Vajradhara with the Illuminating Lamp by Chandrakirti. A native New Yorker, he lives with his wife, three children, and various cats and dogs in Newburgh, New York.

Robert Thurman is the President and Founder of Tibet House US. Known in the academic circles as Professor Robert A.F. Thurman, he is a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings and the first Westerner Tibetan Buddhist monk ordained by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. A charismatic speaker and author of many books on Tibet, Buddhism, art, politics and culture, Bob was named by The New York Times the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism, and was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 2020, for his help in recovering India’s ancient Buddhist heritage. Time Magazine chose him as one of the 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, from Asia to America.”