SHANTIDEVA (8th c.) was a scholar from the monastic university Nalanda, one of the most celebrated centers of learning in ancient India. He is renowned as the author of Entering the Way of the Bodhisattva, which legend says is a teaching that he delivered as he rose into the sky and vanished.

KHENPO DAVID KARMA CHOEPHEL is Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche's main English-language translator as well as the translator of many books on Tibetan Buddhism. He studied Buddhist philosophy at the Vajra Vidya Institute in Namo Buddha, Nepal, and Sarnath, India, and earned the title of Khenpo, essentially a PhD in the Tibetan system.