E. Gene Smith (1936 – 2010)
by Danny Fisher
E. Gene Smith. Photo by David Kittelstrom.
Very sad news from Matthew T. Kapstein via H-Buddhism (The Buddhist Scholars’ Information Network): Tibetologist E. Gene Smith has died. Our bud and Shambhala Sun Space editor Rod Meade Sperry offers a pithy eulogy at MahaSangha News:
E. Gene Smith, who through his life and work — and particularly his creation of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC) — strove to make the literature of the Tibetan people available to all, has died.
After a thirty-year overseas career in the Library of Congress, Smith became Executive Director of the TBRC, which quickly became the world’s most comprehensive collection of Tibetan literature. (Smith and the TBRC were profiled in the second [Winter 2002] issue of Buddhadharma; click here to read this profile.) He also served as an acquisitions editor and adviser to Boston-based Wisdom Publications.
The TBRC Blog offers a post about Smith and his death here. In addition, there are remembrances at Go Beyond Words: Wisdom Publications’ Buddhist Blog, the Tricycle – Awake in the World blog, mikeldunham, and Tibeto-logic. Take a look.
Not long ago, I blogged about a new documentary about Smith and the TBRC, Digital Dharma. You can watch the trailer, which really puts the importance of Smith and his work into sharp relief, below…
[...] few days ago, I blogged about the death of Tibetologist E. Gene Smith, creator of the the Tibetan Buddhist Resource [...]
[...] posted this week, here and here, about the death of Gene Smith and the various tributes to him and his work. More [...]
[...] Karmapa, which I reviewed recently for The Journal of Religion and Film, remembers the late E. Gene Smith with an extended clip from Recalling a Buddha and an old video interview with him about the [...]
I meet to him 2007 in Mongolia. He very nice know Mongoilian buddhism. I wondering. Many time help me. Each other changing sutra.
Ven. Gene lets meet in Shambala. Mongolian tibetlog G.Nyamochir