Carefree Dignity

About Erik Pema Kunsang

Erik Pema Kunsang, also known as Erik Hein Schmidt, is one of the world’s best known and most accomplished translators of Buddhist literature from Tibet. Traveling to Nepal from his native Denmark at twenty years old, he has studied with or translated for more than sixty Tibetan masters. He is the compiler of a voluminous 3,000-page Tibetan dictionary for spiritual terms (The Rangjung Yeshe Tibetan-English Dictionary of Buddhist Culture), used by other Tibetan translators as an authoritative reference. He was the main interpreter of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche for seventeen years, living in Tulku Urgyen's monasteries and translated forty-six books of scripture and sacred writings. His books include: As It Is, Mirror of Mindfulness, Blazing Splendor, Wellsprings of the Great Perfection and Juniper Ridge. Other projects include translating over fifty volumes of Tibetan texts and teachings, and creating the Dharma Dictionary, an electronic dictionary of Tibetan and English terms. He currently lives and teaches at Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, a Buddhist retreat center in Denmark. Together with Marcia Binder Schmidt, he founded Rangjung Yeshe Publications, an independent publisher of Vajrayana Buddhist texts in English.