I was requested by Derek Kolleeny, a senior Tibetan Buddhism teacher, to share my life story with present and future students of Buddhism, so that they might know what the early Western translators and teachers of Buddhism, such as myself, went through in our education and training and then in our efforts to benefit the Dharma and make the teachings available to others. The hardships we faced were trivial in comparison to those faced by the great translators of the past who made Buddha’s teachings available throughout Asia. We did not need to walk across the deserts of Central Asia or across the Himalayas, but we endured other challenges.
One of the reasons I agreed to his request was because I felt it is important for others to understand that whatever resources we have available now for studying Buddhism have not arisen all of a sudden out of nothing. They have arisen dependently on ever-changing causes and conditions. Despite Dharma material appearing instantly on our digital devices, giving the deceptive appearance that it is self-establishing, a great deal of hard work by my generation and generations before us went into its creation. To build on this work will likewise require hard work in the future, though it will take a different form.
Although there are several articles outlining different phases of my life available on https://studybuddhism.com/en/dr-alexander-berzin, what follows focuses on my childhood, education and training and how they have enabled my Dharma activities up to now, March 2025. Several other people have also repeatedly requested me to write an autobiography. To fulfill both purposes and avoid the following from being just a dry list of what I studied and did, I shall fill in details describing some of the close relationships I’ve had and persons I’ve met, as well as stories about some of the events I witnessed and places I visited. I’ll also outline what I feel I have learned from each.
In sharing my professional, spiritual and personal journey and the various challenges I’ve had to face, I shall try to present a fuller, more integrated picture of myself than perhaps what Kolleeny has requested – a picture more in line with what my teacher, the Second Serkong Rinpoche has explained. In a chat about the student-teacher relationship that we recently video-recorded, he explained that the first step in relating to a spiritual teacher is to see the person as a human being who has the same types of needs and qualities as all others have. No matter who they are, spiritual teachers get tired and need rest, they have things that they like to do to relax, they have friendships and so on. I think we can expand that to be the first step needed in a relationship with anyone.
I would add that, if you have studied the voidness (emptiness) of persons, the second step is to apply it to them as a person. A person does not truly exist as some concrete entity identified with just one aspect or event in their life, nor is a person truly different in each of life’s phases. Likewise, a life does not exist somewhere in karmic potentials, preordained when we are born and just waiting to play out, dependent on circumstances. Nor do the events in a lifetime exist, having arisen without effort from our side but seemingly just from what others do and have done. A life does not exist as some concrete unit to which we can ascribe attributes such as “lucky,” “unbelievable” or even “meaningful.” Nor does it exist as concrete disjunctive phases or episodes that we can say were “difficult” or “magical.”
Instead, a life dependently arises, moment to moment, episode to episode, from causes and circumstances, both external and internal, with none of them, either individually or collectively, being self-established. None of them independently exist and independently act or take place. Because of that, a life dependently arises in a second sense. A worthwhile life of a person can only arise and be established as a “person’s worthwhile life” dependently on the words and concepts conventionally labeled as “person,” “worthwhile” and “life.” Nothing more, nothing less.