The Way of the White Clouds
Mill Valley, California · 1966
A
Anagarika Govinda
Anagarika Govinda
1898 CE–1985 CE · Modern · Waldheim, Saxony
May 17, 1898 – January 14, 1985
Anagarika Govinda (born Ernst Lothar Hoffmann, 1898–1985) was a German-born interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism for Western readers. After first studying Theravāda in Sri Lanka, he moved to India, was initiated into the Tibetan Kagyü tradition, and in 1933 founded the Western Buddhist order Arya Maitreya Mandala. He is best known for influential books such as Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism and the travel memoir The Way of the White Clouds. He spent his last years in California and died in 1985. He is presented here as a Western expositor and order-founder; some of his presentations of Tibetan tradition reflect his own synthesis.
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Stop 1 of 2Born
Waldheim, Saxony
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: born Ernst Lothar Hoffmann in 1898; an early interest in Buddhism led him to Sri Lanka, where he studied with Nyanatiloka as a celibate layman.
About Waldheim, Saxony
Waldheim, in Saxony, Germany, was the birthplace, in 1898, of Ernst Lothar Hoffmann, who as Lama Anagarika Govinda became a German-born interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism and founder of the Ārya Maitreya Maṇḍala order.
In the same place & time
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Sages whose lives overlapped with Anagarika Govinda’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
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Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Anagarika Govinda’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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Works(2)
Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism
Mill Valley, California · 1959