Famous Buddhists

A deck by Elif Mancini · 49 cards

Renowned Buddhists across history — from the Buddha and his disciples to modern teachers.

Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

Thubten Zopa Rinpoche was a Tibetan Buddhist lama in the Gelug school. He is known for founding the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.

Robert Thurman

Robert Alexander Farrar Thurman was an American Buddhist author and academic who wrote, edited and translated books about Tibetan Buddhism. He held the first endowed chair in Buddhist Studies in the West at Columbia University.

Mahasi Sayadaw

Mahāsī Sayādaw U Sobhana was a Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and meditation master who had a significant impact on the teaching of Vipassana (insight) meditation in the West and throughout Asia.

Joseph Goldstein (writer)

Joseph Goldstein is one of the first American vipassana teachers, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg, and a contemporary author of numerous popular books on Buddhism.

Nagarjuna

Nāgārjuna was a philosopher and Mahāyāna Buddhist monk from South India, considered the founder of the Madhyamaka school.

14th Dalai Lama

The 14th Dalai Lama is the incumbent Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism.

Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practice in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts.

Bodhidharma

Bodhidharma was a semi-legendary Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th or 6th century CE. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China, and is regarded as its first Chinese patriarch.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Sogyal Rinpoche was a Tibetan Dzogchen lama, the founder and former spiritual director of Rigpa and the author of the best-selling book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Kūkai

Kūkai, posthumously called Kōbō Daishi, was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the esoteric Shingon school of Buddhism.

Padmasambhava

Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, was a semi-legendary tantric Buddhist Vajra master from medieval India, who according to hagiographical sources fully revealed the Vajrayana in Tibet, circa 8th – 9th centuries.

B. R. Ambedkar

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar was an Indian jurist, economist, and social reformer who chaired the committee that drafted the Constitution of India. He later renounced Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, inspiring the Dalit Buddhist movement.

13th Dalai Lama

The 13th Dalai Lama was the 13th Dalai Lama of Tibet, referred to as "the Great Thirteenth", responsible for redeclaring Tibet's national independence and for his national reform and modernization initiatives.

Tenzin Palmo

Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo is a bhikṣuṇī in the Drukpa Kagyu lineage of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, best known for spending twelve years living in a remote cave in the Himalayas, three of those years in strict meditation retreat.

Ānanda

Ānanda was the primary attendant of the Buddha and one of his ten principal disciples. Most of the texts of the early Buddhist Sutta-Piṭaka are attributed to his recollection of the Buddha's teachings during the First Buddhist Council.

Thích Nhất Hạnh

Thích Nhất Hạnh was a Vietnamese Thiền Buddhist monk, peace activist, prolific author, poet, and teacher, who founded the Plum Village Tradition. Known as the "father of mindfulness", Nhất Hạnh was a major influence on Western practices of Buddhism.

Nichiren

Nichiren was a Japanese Buddhist monk and philosopher of the Kamakura period. His teachings form the basis of Nichiren Buddhism, a unique branch of Japanese Mahayana Buddhism based on the Lotus Sutra.

Vasubandhu

Vasubandhu was an influential Indian Buddhist monk and scholar. After his conversion to Mahayana Buddhism, along with his half-brother Asanga, he was also one of the main founders of the Yogacara school.

Dōgen

Dōgen Zenji was a Japanese Zen Buddhist monk, writer, poet, philosopher, and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan.

Śāriputra

Śāriputra was one of the top disciples of the Buddha, considered the first of the Buddha's two chief male disciples, together with Maudgalyāyana.

Atiśa

Atiśa Dīpaṃkara Śrījñāna was a Buddhist religious teacher and leader from Bengal. He was a major figure in the spread of 11th-century Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism in Asia and is regarded as the founder of the Kadam school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Je Tsongkhapa

Tsongkhapa was an influential Tibetan Buddhist monk, philosopher, and tantric yogi, whose activities led to the formation of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Buddhaghosa

Buddhaghosa was a 5th-century Indian Theravādin Buddhist commentator, translator, and philosopher. He worked in the great monastery at Anurādhapura, Sri Lanka.

Mahākāśyapa

Mahākāśyapa was one of the principal disciples of Gautama Buddha, regarded in Buddhism as an enlightened disciple foremost in ascetic practice. He assumed leadership of the monastic community following the parinirvāṇa of the Buddha.

Huineng

Dajian Huineng, also commonly known as the Sixth Patriarch or Sixth Ancestor of Chan, is a semi-legendary but central figure in the early history of Chinese Chan Buddhism.

Thubten Yeshe

Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984) was a Tibetan lama who, while exiled in Nepal, co-founded Kopan Monastery (1969) and the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (1975).

Trinley Thaye Dorje

Trinley Thaye Dorje is a claimant to the title of 17th Karmapa.

Asanga

Asaṅga was one of the most important spiritual figures of Mahayana Buddhism and the founder of the Yogachara school.

Ajahn Chah

Ajahn Chah was a Thai Buddhist monk. He was an influential teacher of the Buddhadhamma and a founder of two major monasteries in the Thai Forest Tradition.

Xuanzang

Xuanzang was a 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator. He is known for the epoch-making contributions to Chinese Buddhism and the travelogue of his journey to the Indian subcontinent in 629–645.

Pema Chödrön

Pema Chödrön is an American-born Tibetan Buddhist. She is an ordained nun, former acharya of Shambhala Buddhism and disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

D. T. Suzuki

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki was a Japanese essayist, philosopher, religious scholar, and translator. He was an authority on Buddhism, especially Zen and Shin, and was instrumental in spreading interest in these to the West.

Saichō

Saichō was a Japanese Buddhist monk credited with founding the Japanese Tendai school of Buddhism. He was awarded the posthumous title of Dengyō Daishi.

Ogyen Trinley Dorje

Ogyen Trinley Dorje, also written as Urgyen Trinley Dorje, is a claimant to the title of 17th Karmapa.

Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikeda was a Japanese Buddhist leader, author, educator and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai.

Hōnen

Hōnen, also known as Genkū, was the founding figure of the Jōdo-shū, the first independent branch of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.

Shinran

Shinran was a key Japanese Buddhist figure of the Kamakura Period who is regarded as the founder of the Jōdo Shinshū school of Japanese Buddhism.

S. N. Goenka

Satya Narayana Goenka was an Indian teacher of vipassanā meditation who played an important role in establishing non-commercial Vipassana meditation centers globally.

Chögyam Trungpa

Chögyam Trungpa, formally named the 11th Zurmang Trungpa, Chokyi Gyatso, was a Tibetan Buddhist master and holder of both Kagyu and Nyingma lineages. He was a major figure in the dissemination of Buddhism in the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University.

Shunryū Suzuki

Shunryu Suzuki was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside Asia.

Milarepa

Jetsun Milarepa was a Tibetan siddha, generally considered one of Tibet's most famous yogis and spiritual poets, and a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī

Mahāprajāpatī Gautamī was the foster-mother, step-mother and maternal aunt of the Buddha. In Buddhist tradition, she was the first woman to seek ordination for women, and became the first bhikṣuṇī.

Hsuan Hua

Hsuan Hua was a Chinese monk of Chan Buddhism and a contributing figure in bringing Chinese Buddhism to the United States in the late 20th century.

Sheng-yen

Sheng Yen, born Zhang Baokang, was a Taiwanese Buddhist monk, religious scholar, and writer. He was one of the mainstream teachers of Chan Buddhism.

Jack Kornfield

Jack Kornfield is an American psychologist, writer, and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He co-founded the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

Ajahn Buddhadasa

Buddhadasa was a Thai Buddhist monk. Known as an innovative reinterpreter of Buddhist doctrine, he fostered a reformation in conventional religious perceptions in Thailand and abroad, and developed a form of Buddhist socialism he called "Dhammic socialism".

Tara Brach

Tara Brach is an American psychologist, author, and proponent of Buddhist meditation. She is a senior teacher and founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, D.C.

Ashoka

Ashoka, also known as Ashoka the Great, was Emperor of Magadha from c. 268 BCE until his death, and the third ruler from the Mauryan dynasty. A patron of Buddhism, he is credited with an important role in the spread of Buddhism across ancient Asia.

The Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in the eastern Indo-Gangetic Plains during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was born in Lumbini, in what is now Nepal, to royal parents of the Shakya clan, but renounced his home life to live as a wandering ascetic. After leading a life of mendicancy, asceticism, and meditation, he attained nirvana at Bodh Gaya in what is now Bihar, India. The Buddha then wandered through the lower Indo-Gangetic Plain, teaching and building a monastic order (sangha). Buddhist tradition holds he died in Kushinagar and reached parinirvana.