~ kindly note that all monastic and lay members of our group offer their contribution for free, on a voluntary basis, except for research assistants who may receive occasional financial support from the donors of the Āgama Research Group ~

Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā was born in Italy in 1980 and went forth in Sri Lanka in 2012. She studied Indology, Indo-Iranian philology and Tibetology at the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’ and at the International Research Institute for Advanced Buddhology at Soka University in Tokyo and at the Institute for Research in Humanities at Kyoto University. She obtained her master’s degree in 2004 with a thesis containing an edition, translation and study of a bonpo gter ma and an investigation of the figure of his gter ston in the light of the emergence of the bonpo canon. Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā then received her doctorate in 2010 with a dissertation on the Khotanese ‘Book of Zambasta’ and the formative phases of Mahāyāna ideology in Khotan in the fifth and sixth centuries. Her main research interests are the early Buddhist discourses and Vinaya texts, and the development of the theories, practices and ideologies of Buddhist meditative traditions. She is currently working on an edition and integral translation of the Tibetan Abhidharmakośopāyikā-ṭīkā and doing a comparative study of its āgama quotations. Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā also serves as the series editor for all the Āgama Research Group publications and coordinates all translations into modern languages. In addition to her academic work, she has been practising meditation since 1996 and teaching it internationally since 2017.

List of publications: see here and on academia.edu
Schedule: see here

Bhikkhu Anālayo
Āgama Research Group co-founder

Bhikkhu Anālayo was born in Germany in 1962 and ordained in Sri Lanka in 1995. In the year 2000 he completed a PhD thesis on the Satipaṭṭhāna-sutta at the University of Peradeniya (published by Windhorse in the UK). In the year 2007 he completed a Habilitation research at the University of Marburg, in which he compared the Majjhima-nikāya discourses with their Chinese, Sanskrit, and Tibetan counterparts. He is a founding member of the Āgama Research Group and has retired from being a professor of the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg. At present he is a resident scholar and core faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and a member of the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies at the University of Hamburg. Besides his academic activities, he regularly teaches meditation.

Schedule: see here
List of publications: see here and on academia.edu
Media: see here
Meditation instructions: see here

Marcus Bingenheimer
Āgama Research Group fellow

Marcus was born in Germany in 1971. He obtained an MA (Sinology) and Dr.phil (History of Religions) from Würzburg University and an MA (Communication Studies) from Nagoya University. He currently works as Associate Professor in the Department of Religion at Temple University, Philadelphia. From 2005 to 2011 he taught Buddhism and Digital Humanities at the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies and Dharma Drum Buddhist College, where he also supervised various projects concerning the digitization of Buddhist culture and was responsible for the Chinese Localization of TEI. His main research interests are the history of Buddhism in East Asia and early Buddhist sūtra literature. Besides that, Marcus is interested in the Digital Humanities and how to do research in the age of digital information. From 2005-2008 Marcus was  the project director of a comparative edition and partial translation of the ‘second’ Saṃyukta-āgama (別譯雜阿含經, T 100). With the Āgama research group he is now working on an integral English translation of this āgama collection.

List of publications: see here

Jen-jou (aka Joey) Hung 洪振洲
DILA Library & Information Center director

Jen-jou (aka Joey) Hung was born in Taiwan in 1976. He is a Professor of Buddhist Informatics in the Department of Buddhist Studies and Director of the Library and Information Center of the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts. He received his PhD in 2006 from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. He is currently engaged in a variety of digital archives projects at Dharma Drum Buddhist College. His research interests include authorship and translatorship attribution of ancient Buddhist literature, the construction of digital archives, and digital text processing.

List of publications: see here

Bhikṣu Huimin 釋惠敏
DILA president

Bhikṣu Huimin was born in Taiwan in 1954 and ordained in 1979. He completed a PhD thesis on the meditation objects (ālaṃbana) of the Śrāvakabhūmi at the University of Tokyo in 1992. Since 1998 he has been the abbot of Seeland Monastery and the Chair of the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA). Presently he is a professor at the Taipei National University of the Arts and the president of the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts.

List of publications: on academia.edu

Bhikṣuṇī Deyuan 釋德圓
senior research assistant

Bhikṣuṇī Deyuan was born in Taiwan in 1976 and received monastic ordination in 1998. She graduated from Dharma Drum Buddhist College in 2012, specialising in Tibetan language and Buddhist Informatics. Deyuan also studied statistics and worked as a research assistant for a project of stylistics analysis of the early Chinese Buddhist translations, focusing on translatorship attribution of āgama texts. At present, she is collaborating on a project of Āgama curriculum and textbook design for monastic education in Taiwan and is engaged full time in the TEI markup towards a digital edition of Śamathadeva’s Abhidharmakośopāyikā-ṭīkā together with Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā since 2011.

Wan-chen Wu 吳宛真
admin & senior research assistant

Wan-Chen was born in Taiwan in 1980. She graduated from the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts in 2017, specialising in Tibetan, with a thesis offering an annotated Chinese translation and study of the ninth chapter of the Tibetan Abhidharmakośabhāṣya. Wan-chen is collaborating with Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā and Bhikṣuṇī Deyuan on the collation project of the Tibetan Abhidharmakośopāyikā-ṭīkā. She appreciates that she can continue to study the languages of the Buddhist traditions and Buddhist texts after graduating. Wan-Chen hopes that one day she could become a well-trained full-time translator – for the benefit of herself and that of others.

Liyi Yang 楊琍愉
online retreat assistant

Liyi was born in Malaysia in 1983. She obtained a B. Sc. (Life Science) from the National University of Singapore and an M. A. (Religious Studies) from the Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts (DILA). For her master’s thesis, she focused on the literary features of the Vedanā-saṃyukta of the Saṃyukta-āgama (Taishō 99), producing a comparative study in light of the parallel versions and an annotated English translation. Liyi previously worked as a research assistant in a Singapore General Hospital/Duke NUS lab studying chronic myeloid leukaemia drug resistance, then as a cultural secretary in a cancer society in Taiwan. She is now on team with the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Texts Association (CBETA) and assists the Āgama Research Group’s online retreats held in Chinese.

Ray Chou 周邦信
senior digital projects developer

Ray Chou was born in Taiwan in 1966. He graduated in 1986 from the National Taipei Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering. He came to the Dharma in 1990, when he started to study meditation under Master Sheng-yen. From 1998 to 2007, he worked for the Buddhist Studies Information Network Center (BSIN) at the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies on the CBETA Taishō Tripiṭaka digitization project. Currently at the Digital Archives Section, Library and Information Center,  Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts, he is one of the key programmers and developers in the Buddhist Informatics department.

Hsiulan Chen 陳秀蘭
bursary

Hsiulan was born in Taiwan in 1958. She was a student of Master Sheng Yen at the Institute of Buddhist Study, China Academy from 1982 to 1985. Hsiulan was then invited by the Miami Buddhist Association to offer her assistance in Florida from 1989–1993, where she also had the opportunity to further her studies at Florida International University, majoring in Adult Education and Human Resources Development. After graduation, Hsiulan was asked by Master Sheng Yen to return to the Chung-Hwa Institute of Buddhist Studies (CHIBS), where she worked as the secretary since 1994. From 2010 Hsiulan has been the head of the public relations department at the same institute. In addition to her other duties at Dharma Drum Mountain, she has also been supporting the ĀRG with funds management since 2017.

David Chiou 邱大剛
Chinese publications and events coordinator

David Chiou was born in Taiwan in 1976. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University and holds a Master’s Degree from the Media Lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, David’s research led to his founding of Groundhog Technologies, of which he is the CEO. David is an early volunteer of CBETA (Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association) and other Buddhist online resources in Taiwan, the chief editor of the book series “Savoring the Saṃyukta-āgama” (好讀雜阿含經, Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation, 2015–). He helps out as the coordinator of the Chinese editions of Bhikkhu Anālayo’s practice books as well as the coordinator of online events of the Āgama Research Group held in Chinese. David started attending silent retreats in 1994.