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John Makransky

Boston College, Buddhist Studies and Theology, Emeritus

Rangjung Yeshe Institute, Buddhist Studies, Faculty Member

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John Makransky, PhD, is Associate Professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology (retired) at Boston College, Senior Academic Advisor for Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Centre of Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal, Contemplative Fellow of Mind & Life Institute, former president of the Society of Buddhist-Christian studies, and developer of the Sustainable Compassion Training model. John's academic writings focus on connections between devotion, compassion, and wisdom in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting Buddhist practices to meet contemporary minds, and on theoretical issues in interfaith learning. In 2000, John was ordained as a Lama in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism--a teacher of innate love and wisdom practices.
John developed the Sustainable Compassion Training model (SCT) to help modern Buddhists, those in other spiritual traditions, and people in caring roles and professions generate a more sustaining, unconditional, and expansive power of care and compassion that can avoid mental depletion and compassion fatigue.

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Papers by John Makransky

Positive and Problematic Aspects of Modernistic Engaged Buddhism, JBE

Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2025

This article briefly reviews the history of Buddhist adap-tation to cultures, focusing on two key... more This article briefly reviews the history of Buddhist adap-tation to cultures, focusing on two key goals that Bud-dhist traditions have maintained over that history: the primary goal of supramundane nirvāṇa and enlighten-ment and the secondary goal of applying Buddhist pow-ers of knowledge and practice to meet mundane needs of people and societies. It discusses two kinds of constructive reflection Buddhists have employed in support of those two goals in pre-modern and modern times. In light of that history, it then offers its own critical-constructive reflections, first on positive contributions of modernistic engaged Buddhism, then on a problematic tendency in it to succumb to modern assumptions in ways that reduce its ability to offer im-portant alternatives to them (assumptions about ultimate human values and primary causes and kinds of suffering). Regarding that problematic tendency, it notes that the priority of the primary and secondary Buddhist goals have become unconsciously reversed in some quarters of modern engaged Buddhism, how this reversal rests on modern assumptions that contradict core Buddhist teachings, behavioral signs of this reversal, and deleterious effects that follow from it.

Positive and Problematic Aspects of Modernistic Engaged Buddhism in Light of the History of Buddhist Adaptation to Cultures

Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 2025

This article briefly reviews the history of Buddhist adaptation to cultures, focusing on two key ... more This article briefly reviews the history of Buddhist adaptation to cultures, focusing on two key goals that Buddhist traditions have maintained over that history: the primary goal of supramundane nirvāṇa and enlightenment and the secondary goal of applying Buddhist powers of knowledge and practice to meet mundane needs of people and societies. It discusses two kinds of constructive reflection Buddhists have employed in support of those two goals in pre-modern and modern times. In light of that history, it then offers its own critical-constructive reflections, first on positive contributions of modernistic engaged Buddhism, then on a problematic tendency in it to succumb to modern assumptions in ways that reduce its ability to offer important alternatives to them (assumptions about ultimate values and primary causes and kinds of suffering). Regarding that problematic tendency, it notes that the priority of the primary and secondary Buddhist goals have become unconsciously reversed in some quarters of modern engaged Buddhism, how this reversal rests on modern assumptions that contradict core Buddhist teachings, behavioral signs of this reversal, and deleterious effects that follow from it.

Sustainable Compassion Training: Integrating Meditation Theory With Psychological Science

Frontiers in Psychology 11:2249, 2020

Meditation programs continue to proliferate in the modern world, with increasing participation fr... more Meditation programs continue to proliferate in the modern world, with increasing participation from scientists and many others who seek to improve physical, mental, relational, and social flourishing. In developing such programs, the meditation practices have been adapted to meet the needs of modern cultures. However, through that adaptation, important contextual factors of traditional contemplative cultures are often dropped or forgotten. This article presents a system of compassion and mindfulness training, Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT), which is designed to help people cultivate increasingly unconditional, inclusive, and sustainable care for self and others. SCT aims to recover important contextual factors of meditation that flexibly meet the diverse needs of modern secular and religious participants. SCT draws on Tibetan Buddhism in dialogue with caregivers, other contemplative traditions and relevant scientific theories to inform meditative transformation for secular contexts. We provide an overview of SCT meditations that includes both contemplative and scientific theories that draw out important features of them. Each meditation includes novel hypotheses that are generated from this dialogical process. We also provide links to audio-guided meditations.

Synergies of devotion, compassion and wisdom in Śāntideva, BCSJ

Buddhist Christian Studies Journal, 2021

This essay will focus on three kinds of practice that help structure Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra... more This essay will focus on three kinds of practice that help structure Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCA): (1) practices of faith and devotion, (2) practices for cultivating compassion and (3) practices for cultivating the non-dual wisdom of emptiness. We will explore how these three types of practice, as explained in the BCA text, function synergistically to inform and empower each other on the path of a bodhisattva. I will draw on selected verses of the BCA to illustrate this point, and then relate it to recent writings on Śāntideva by Christian theologians Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Mark Heim

Mahayana Buddhist Ritual and Ethical Activity in the World

Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2000

Contemporary Buddhist ethics tend to de-emphasize the ritualistic and devotional aspects of Bud... more Contemporary Buddhist ethics tend to de-emphasize the ritualistic and
devotional aspects of Buddhism to newly emphasize material resources and
strategies for social transformation which can be related to higher Buddhist
philosophy. While this is important, there is a danger that contemporary
Buddhists, by reinterpreting practice as social service too exclusively in modern,
material terms, may dilute rather than reinforce the ontological and
epistemological intuitions of Buddhism, losing touch with time-tested means for
persons to actually learn to embody an ultimate source of ethical response that
transcends ontological assumptions of modern, secular thought. By experiencing
social service as a natural extension of ritual activity, each element of such service
symbolically expresses an ultimate source of ethical response within a path of
ultimate transformation, reinforcing rather than diluting the deepest intuitions of
Buddhism even as Buddhist practice takes new social-ethical expression in our
world.

Contrasting Tsongkhapa and Longchenpa: Buddhist diversity as a resource for comparative theology

What often renders interreligious dialogue unproductive is the tendency for dialogue partners to ... more What often renders interreligious dialogue unproductive is the tendency for dialogue partners to essentialize their traditions, as if each were a uniform entity, e.g. "Buddhism says this; Christianity says that." Dr. Perry Schmidt-Leukel argues that when we investigate the diversity of views in each religion on fundamental theological subjects, we find differences within each religion comparable to the kinds of differences we find between different religions. Schmidt-Leukel's fractal theory of religions thus de-emphasizes uniformity by highlighting the tremendous internal diversity found in each religion. 1 This means when we notice areas of doctrinal tension in one religion that generate competing intra-religious views of fundamental theological subjects, we may be discovering a resource to inform analogous doctrinal tensions equally fundamental in other religions. Buddhist thinkers have diverse, competing understandings of their doctrines, which can be seen to correspond to analogous doctrinal tensions in other religions. In this essay, I will discuss contrasting ways of relating human beings to ultimate reality in several areas of Buddhist reflection, focusing on Tibetan Buddhism as example. I will focus on two major figures of fourteenth to fifteenth century Tibet, Tsongkhapa (1357-1419) and Longchen Rabjampa (1308-1364) who share basic doctrinal themes of Buddhism, yet differ considerably in their understanding of those themes. Their views represent poles of tension in Buddhism that frame a spectrum of possible positions on each theological subject. I will summarize the differing positions of these two scholars on the following Buddhist subjects: How ultimate reality (nirvāṇa) is related to the world (saṃsāra), how ultimate reality is related to persons (theological anthropology), how a Buddhist practitioner accesses ultimate reality to progress on the path of enlightenment (soteriology), and how he or she develops enlightened forms of awareness (gnoseology).

Compassion and skillful means: cultural adaptation, psychological science, and creative responsiveness

Mindfulness, 2022

In this article, we address two distinct, but interrelated aspects of “skillful means” that can i... more In this article, we address two distinct, but interrelated aspects of “skillful means” that can inform compassion training: 1) the historical precedent and need for adapting meditation practices to meet new cultural contexts, and 2) the need to express compassion flexibly in ways that creatively meet the specific contexts and needs of particular persons and situations. We first discuss ways that the doctrine of skillful means was employed by Buddhists to rationalize the repeated adaptation of Buddhist teachings to meet the culturally situated mentalities and needs of diverse Asian peoples. Then, in continuity with that history of Buddhist adaptation, we explore how theories from modern psychological science, such as attachment theory, can be newly drawn upon to support adaptation of Buddhist compassion training for application in modern cultures. Finally, we draw on theories from cognitive science, namely situated conceptualization, that provide a tractable framework for understanding skillful compassion as embodied emptiness—involving the relaxation of pattern completion mechanisms, which helps open up greater discernment and presence to others, so that care and compassion can be more unrestricted, creative, and directly responsive to the person and situation at hand.

Integrating Aspects of Buddhist and Christian Liberation Epistemology to Empower Compassionate Social Action

BRILL eBooks, Jul 28, 2022

Buddhism has traditionally focused on psychological causes of suffering in individuals: deluded p... more Buddhism has traditionally focused on psychological causes of suffering in individuals: deluded perception, greed, and ill will. Buddhist compassionate action seeks to free people from those mental causes of suffering, through contemplative, analytical, ritual and ethical practices that eliminate those causes. Christian liberation theology focuses on oppressive social systems as main cause of suffering, and on socio-historical analysis and communal activism to empower people to liberate themselves from those systems. This chapter argues that Buddhist and Christian liberation epistemologies each have blind spots that can be revealed and corrected through dialogue with each other, resulting in several kinds of comparative theological learning. The conclusion is that neither classical Buddhist epistemology nor Christian liberation epistemology alone are enough to inform social action. Each must inform the other to effectively empower individual and social liberation from human causes of suffering.

Historical Consciousness as Offering to the Trans-historical Buddha

Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars, Dec 16, 2000

A Buddhist Critique of, and Learning from, Christian Liberation Theology

Theological Studies, 2014

This article is an exercise in comparative theology from a Buddhist perspective. Christian libera... more This article is an exercise in comparative theology from a Buddhist perspective. Christian liberation theology and engaged Buddhism both seek to empower people by liberating them from causes of suffering that prevent them from realizing their deeper identity and fuller potential. Christian and Buddhist liberation theologies differ in what they identify as the main conditions of suffering, as well as in the epistemologies they use to disclose those suffering conditions and to address them. Through their differences, the author argues, each tradition points out an epistemological weakness in the other that would otherwise have remained unnoticed and, by exposing it, helps correct it.

Thoughts on Why, How, and What Buddhists Can Learn from Christian Theologians

Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2011

This essay attempts to establish foundations for doing comparative theology, deep learning across... more This essay attempts to establish foundations for doing comparative theology, deep learning across religious boundaries, from a Buddhist perspective (from the author's location in Tibetan Buddhism). The essay argues for the necessity of developing a Buddhist theology of religions, a way of understanding the possibility of liberating truth in other religions, that is consistent with Buddhist principles and would appropriately motivate and guide a Buddhist approach to comparative theology. It develops such a theology of religions, a Buddhist form of open inclusivism, by drawing on relevant principles from Buddhist texts together with recent academic scholarship in theologies of religions. With that basis, the essay gives examples of five areas of comparative theological learning for Buddhists from Christianity, focusing on the following themes: atonement theory, faith in God, the two great commandments, ecclesiology, and justice. It concludes with the author’s reflections on how this process of inter-religious learning further informs his Buddhist approach to theology of religions. .

Buddhist Analogues of Sin and Grace

Studies in Interreligious Dialogue, 2005

for so profoundly fulfilling their roles as dialogue partners within that symposium. 5 JOHN MAKRA... more for so profoundly fulfilling their roles as dialogue partners within that symposium. 5 JOHN MAKRANSKY BUDDHIST ANALOGUES OF SIN AND GRACE A Dialogue with Augustine 1 Although I am a Buddhist scholar who has practiced and studied in Tibetan Buddhist traditions for the past two and a half decades, I find many elements of Augustine's Christian reflections profound and inspiring. In this essay I will try to explain why that is so, even while pointing to fundamental differences. I will draw upon Buddhist teachings to engage in dialogue with Augustine around three basic issues. In Christian terms, these are: the fallen condition of humans (human bondage to sin, vice), the necessity of a transcendent power to be liberated from that bondage (God's grace), the human capacity to recognize and to respond to that transcendent power. Why should we engage in such an exercise of comparative theology? By bringing Augustine into dialogue with Buddhism, each dialogue partner poses new questions for the other, focusing our attention on aspects of each that would otherwise not be highlighted. Also, by drawing upon Buddhist perspectives so distant from Augustine in religious culture, history and worldview, it becomes easy to recognize the universality of some of the key issues Augustine engaged and how profound the solutions he developed within his own evolving tradition are. Anthropology: The Human State of Bondage Necessitating Grace According to Augustine, with the fall of Adam and Eve humans lost the ability to choose the good consistently and effectively. They did not lose their ability to choose between this or that thing or to will many kinds of evil, but they lost what Augustine called the "liberty" of their pre-fallen condition, their God-given ability to see the good clearly, to love it, and thereby to choose and do it consistently (

Buddhahood embodied: sources of controversy in India and Tibet

... Sarnath, for his help as my advisor at that time; Ram Sankar Tripathi (of Varanasi Sanskrit U... more

Buddha and Christ as mediators of the transcendent: a Buddhist perspective

Christianity, 2013

Can the Buddha and the Christ both be viewed as mediations of transcendent reality from a Buddhis... more Can the Buddha and the Christ both be viewed as mediations of transcendent reality from a Buddhist perspective? And if so, how? These are the questions I have been asked to address. My response should be contextualized. I am a scholar trained in Buddhist Studies by the Western academy and a Buddhist trained in Tibetan traditions that are Mahayana and Tantric. Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes the ultimate undividedness of samsara (conditioned life) and nirvana (the unconditioned dimension of freedom). Tantric Buddhism enacts that basic view in vivid forms of ritual and meditation. I first met and fell in love with Buddhism during my studies in college. After serving in the U.S. Peace Corps in Asia I traveled to Nepal and India in 1978 to meet, study and practice with Tibetan Lamas. I have continued my study and practice of Tibetan (Mahayana, Tantric) Buddhism under the guidance of those and other Lamas ever since, a program which has included daily practice of Buddhist meditation and ritual for the past twenty-six years.

Compassion practices

Healthcare providers seek to access a power of sustainable, inclusive, and unconditional care and... more Healthcare providers seek to access a power of sustainable, inclusive, and unconditional care and compassion for self and others beyond empathic distress, secondary trauma, and burnout. To support that goal, in this chapter, we present three compassion meditations that serve two purposes: 1) to empower the ability to be with your own difficult emotions and feelings in a healing way, and 2) to extend empathy and compassion to others with increasing sustainability and inclusivity. Providers can practice these meditations themselves and carry forward that practice into clinical work, both in their embodied presence to their patients and, if appropriate and beneficial, by explicitly sharing these practices with interested patients.

Synergies of Devotion, Compassion, and Wisdom in Śāntideva for Buddhists and Christians

Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2021

This essay will focus on three kinds of practice that help structure Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra... more This essay will focus on three kinds of practice that help structure Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra (BCA): (1) practices of faith and devotion, (2) practices for cultivating compassion and (3) practices for cultivating the non-dual wisdom of emptiness. We will explore how these three types of practice, as explained in the BCA text, function synergistically to inform and empower each other on the path of a bodhisattva. I will draw on selected verses of the BCA to illustrate this point, and then relate it to recent writings on Śāntideva by Christian theologians Perry Schmidt-Leukel and Mark Heim

How Buddhist and Christian liberation theologies can Inform and correct each other

Buddhism has traditionally focused on epistemological and psychological causes of suffering in in... more Buddhism has traditionally focused on epistemological and psychological causes of suffering in individuals: deluded perception, greed, and ill will. Buddhist compassionate action seeks to free people from those inner causes of suffering, through contemplative, ritual and ethical practices. Christian liberation theology focuses on oppressive social systems as main causes of suffering, and on socio-historical analysis and social activism to empower people to liberate themselves from those systems. Effective epistemological analysis and contemplative practice (Buddhism’s focus) is necessary to address the first cause of suffering: deluded misperception and reaction, since social analysis alone does not remove the pervasive misperception that some persons matter more than others, an unconscious assumption that distorts everyone’s attempt to build better social systems. Contemplative practices that deconstruct that delusive tendency also empower greater discernment, compassion and creati...

Compassion in Buddhist psychology

This chapter examines compassion in three leading traditions of Buddhism. In early and Theravada ... more This chapter examines compassion in three leading traditions of Buddhism. In early and Theravada Buddhism, compassion is a power for deep mental purification, protection and healing that supports inner freedom. In Mahayana Buddhism, compassion becomes the primary means to empower and communicate a non-conceptual wisdom in which self and others are sensed as undivided. In Vajrayana Buddhism, unconditional compassion radiates forth all-inclusively as a spontaneous expression of the mind’s deepest unconditioned nature. Within this discussion, John will give examples of techniques from these traditions for cultivating compassion.

Compassion and skillful means: Cultural adaptation, psychological science, and creative responsiveness

In this article, we address two distinct, but interrelated aspects of “skillful means” that can i... more In this article, we address two distinct, but interrelated aspects of “skillful means” that can inform compassion training: 1) the historical precedent and need for adapting meditation practices to meet new cultural contexts, and 2) the need to express compassion flexibly in ways that creatively meet the specific contexts and needs of particular persons and situations. We first discuss ways that the doctrine of skillful means was employed by Buddhists to rationalize the repeated adaptation of Buddhist teachings to meet the culturally situated mentalities and needs of diverse Asian peoples. Then, in continuity with that history of Buddhist adaptation, we explore how theories from modern psychological science, such as attachment theory, can be newly drawn upon to support adaptation of Buddhist compassion training for application in modern cultures. Finally, we draw on theories from cognitive science, namely situated conceptualization, that provide a tractable framework for understandi...

Buddhist Perspectives on Truth in other Religions: Past and Present

Theological Studies, 2003

Recent Vatican documents affirm a unique salvific efficacy for the Catholic Church by establishin... more Recent Vatican documents affirm a unique salvific efficacy for the Catholic Church by establishing its representations of the Absolute as uniquely close to the Absolute. But what is the human problem necessitating salvation? Buddhist traditions have defined that problem as the human tendency to absolutize and cling to representations, in daily life and in religious reflection. The author traces the history of Buddhist perspectives on other religions in light of that central concern, concluding with a suggestion toward a Buddhist theology of religions that avoids relativism without privileging any particular representation of the Absolute.] S INCE THE TIME THAT Gautama the Buddha passed away (ca. fifth century B.C.E.), Buddhism has had no single institutional hierarchy with a leader at the top. 1 Most of the Buddha's teaching was situation-specific, unsystematized, open to further interpretation over time in contexts of evolving individual and communal practice. Adaptations of language, cultural expression and practice followed upon the recurrent influx of new cultures into the Buddhist fold, especially from the time of King Ashoka in the third century B.C.E. Thus, Buddhist traditions vary much across history and cultures. But JOHN MAKRANSKY received his Ph.D. in Buddhist studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is associate professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College. His areas of special competence include Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, doctrines of Buddhahood (complete enlightenment), meditation theories, and practices of Mahayana and Tantric Buddhism in India and Tibet. He has published Buddhahood Embodied: Sources of Controversy in India and Tibet (SUNY, 1997) and co-edited with Roger Jackson, Buddhist Theology: Critical Reflections by Contemporary Buddhist Scholars (Routledge-Curzon, 2000). He has two additional books in progress: Become What You Are: Tibetan Methods to Awaken to the Ground of Compassion and Buddhahood as Practice.