Dylan Esler

Biography

Dylan Esler is a scholar and translator of Tibetan Buddhist texts. He holds a PhD from the University of Louvain and an MA in Buddhist Studies from SOAS, University of London. He works for 84000, an organization devoted to the translation into English of the Tibetan Buddhist canon. Previously, he was a researcher at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES) of the Ruhr-University Bochum, where he worked on two projects, devoted to Nyingma tantric scriptural production and the early Dzogchen tradition, respectively. He is affiliated with the Oriental Institute of Louvain (CIOL), where he has twice held the Satsuma Chair, and has also taught at the Inalco in Paris. Dr Esler’s research interest focuses on early Nyingma expositions of Dzogchen and Tantra. His publications include an annotated translation of Nubchen Sangye Yeshe’s Lamp for the Eye of Contemplation, a seminal 10th-century treatise on Buddhist meditation (Oxford University Press, 2022), as well as a study of Nubchen’s Dzogchen commentaries, entitled Effortless Spontaneity (Brill, 2023).