Peter N. Gregory, Scholar of Medieval Chinese Buddhism, Has Died

Peter N. Gregory (1945–2025), the Jill Ker Conway Professor Emeritus of Religion and East Asian Studies at Smith College and an eminent scholar of medieval Chinese Buddhism, passed away suddenly the evening of March 19 while reading in bed. 

A specialist on Chinese Buddhism in the Tang and Song periods, Peter was renowned for his groundbreaking work on the Chan and Huayan figure Guifeng Zongmi (780–841, also spelled Tsung-mi), which led to two books, Tsung-mi and the Sinification of Buddhism (1991) and Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: An Annotated Translation of Tsung-mi’s Yüan jen lun with a Modern Commentary (1995). Zongmi was his lifelong obsession. At the time of his death, Peter was working on a multivolume, copiously annotated translation of Zongmi’s magnum opus, the Chan Preface, with an extensive scholarly commentary. Peter shared with me over the years the drafts of his translation, and I can say, without hyperbole, that it was the finest translation ever done of a Chinese Buddhist text. Peter’s colleagues and friends are determined to see that at least some portions of this project will find their way into print.  

Peter may be best known for his longtime service as executive director and president of the Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism, from 1984 until retiring from Smith College in 2014. The Kuroda Institute established two important book series, both copublished by the University of Hawaii Press: Studies in East Asian Buddhism and Classics in East Asian Buddhism. Peter built these series from scratch until they became two of the preeminent series in Buddhist Studies. Peter did not have his own graduate students at Smith but generously gave his time and shared his scholarly expertise in helping young scholars transform their unwieldy dissertations into masterful, and often prize-winning, first books. He was a consummate mentor to junior faculty in the field, guiding them with his typical competence and empathy. 

In addition to the volumes he wrote himself, Peter was a commanding editor of multiauthor volumes that derived from conferences he sponsored through the Kuroda Institute, including Sudden and Gradual Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought (1987) and Buddhism in the Sung (2002, with Daniel A. Getz, Jr.). These were no mere collection of papers. As volume editor, Peter demanded extensive rewrites of all the conference papers, so that contributors’ chapters were not simply standalone studies but also directly engaged in issues raised in each other’s chapters. Peter also wrote a comprehensive introduction to each volume, framing each chapter within a larger set of issues the volume addresses. These volumes demonstrated how the best-edited volumes could be far more than the sum of their parts and served as a model for other multiauthor volumes published through the Kuroda Institute’s Studies in East Asian Buddhism series. 

Peter’s scholarly interests in Buddhism developed partly due to his longtime practice of Zen with Maezumi Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. This engagement with American forms of the religion led to an increasing focus in his research and teaching on Buddhism in America, which culminated in the documentary film The Gate of Sweet Nectar: Feeding Hungry Spirits in an American Zen Community (2004) and the coedited volume Women Practicing Buddhism: American Experiences (2007). Peter’s interest in matters of the mind started as an undergraduate at Princeton in the 1960s, when he worked at the New Jersey Neuro-Psychiatric Institute on a series of experiments on the hypnotic alteration of perception. Peter was the hypnotist, and his subject was Harold (Hal) Roth, now professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Studies and director of the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University. 

Peter is survived by his beloved wife, Marguerite (Margi), his two daughters and their spouses, Jyana and Earl Browne and Tara and Steph Gregory, and his granddaughter, Sophie. 

Ven. Egyoku Roshi of the Zen Center of Los Angeles will preside over a Buddhist service for Peter to be held May 10 in Starksboro, Vermont.