Elon Goldstein

Lecturer on Tibetan Buddhist Studies

Education

BA, Harvard University
MA in Education, Claremont Graduate University
MTS, Harvard Divinity School
PhD, Harvard University

Profile

Elon Goldstein has taught wide-ranging courses on Buddhism at Harvard Divinity School since 2017 while serving as Lecturer on Tibetan Buddhist Studies. His HDS courses include Buddhist Meditation in Theory and Practice; Buddhist Lives; Mahayana Buddhism; Mahayana Buddhist Scriptures; Tibetan Religions; and Buddhism: An Advanced Introduction. He has also taught courses at HDS on the intersections among traditional Buddhist theories of spiritual paths, contemporary psychotherapeutic approaches, and current psycho-social models for higher human development. Before coming to HDS, he was Assistant Professor of Buddhism, Asian Religions, and Psychology and Religion at the main campus of the University of South Carolina, Columbia from 2014 to 2017.

Goldstein maintains broad interests in how various forms of Buddhism continue to adapt themselves in present-day circumstances. As a historian of South Asian Buddhism, he focuses especially on Mahayana and tantric texts, doctrine, and practice. In particular, he studies Mahayana and tantric meditation theories and methods articulated in Sanskrit together with their further developments in Tibet, especially in the Tibetan Nyingma tradition. As part of his other main area of research, drawing on his training in South Asian religions and culture, he has written on landmark developments in Sanskrit Buddhist high literature (kavya). He explores the relevance of those Sanskrit literary developments for longstanding South Asian debates on ethics, aesthetics, and religious transformation as well as their relevance for us today.

A former public school teacher with a degree in education, Goldstein assists the Sarnath International Nyingma Institute with educational projects for a large consortium of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries located in India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Tibetan areas of China. He has lived, studied, and practiced with Buddhist teachers and communities from Thai, Korean, Japanese, and most of all from Tibetan Buddhist traditions. Outside of academia, he teaches online at Dharma College on the transformative power of meditative inquiry and on newly envisioning Buddhist teachings for present day life in America.