Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author, and photographer. Her 1975 debut album Horses made her an influential member of the New York City–based punk rock movement. Smith has fused rock and poetry in her work. In 1978, her most widely known song, "Because the Night," co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number five on the UK Singles Chart.

In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2010, Smith won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids, written to fulfill a promise she made to Robert Mapplethorpe, her longtime partner and friend. She is ranked 47th on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of all Time, published in 2010, and was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2011. (Full article...)

Mazie Keiko Hirono (/ˈmeɪzi hiˈroʊnoʊ/; Japanese name: 広野 慶子, Hirono Keiko; born November 3, 1947) is an American lawyer and politician serving since 2013 as the junior United States senator from Hawaii. A member of the Democratic Party, Hirono previously served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2007 to 2013. She has been the dean of Hawaii's congressional delegations since 2013, when Senator Daniel Akaka retired. Hirono also served as a member of the Hawaii House of Representatives from 1981 to 1994 and as Hawaii's tenth lieutenant governor from 1994 to 2002. She was the Democratic nominee for governor of Hawaii in 2002, but lost to Republican Linda Lingle.

Hirono is the first elected female senator from Hawaii, the first Asian-American woman elected to the Senate, the first U.S. senator born in Japan, and the nation's first Buddhist senator although she considers herself a non-practicing Buddhist. She is often cited with Hank Johnson as the first Buddhist to serve in the United States Congress. She is also the third woman to be elected to Congress from Hawaii (after Patsy Mink and Pat Saiki).

In 2012, Hirono was the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Akaka. Hirono won the election, defeating Lingle in a landslide, 63% to 37%. She was sworn in on January 3, 2013, by Vice President Joe Biden. Hirono was the only person of Asian ancestry serving in the U.S. Senate from 2013 until 2017, when senators Tammy Duckworth and Kamala Harris were sworn in, representing Illinois and California, respectively. Hirono is Hawaii's junior senator, and Brian Schatz is its senior senator. She was reelected to the Senate in 2018 and won a third term against Republican nominee Bob McDermott in 2024. (Full article...)

Dennis Waterman (May 18, 1948 – July 11, 2022) was an American professional poker player and writer. He had over 30 years of poker experience with reported career winnings of $1,194,115 as of 2012.

Waterman became a chess master by the age of 16. He also played backgammon competitively.

In 2007, Waterman appeared in the Fox Sports Net poker tournament Poker Dome Challenge. Waterman won his preliminary and semi-final matches, earning a seat at the $1 million final table. He lost in heads-up play when his all in call with 10-7 suited failed to improve against his opponent's pocket nines. (Full article...)

Adam Nathaniel Yauch (/jaʊk/ YOWK; August 5, 1964 – May 4, 2012), also known by the stage name MCA, was an American rapper, bassist, filmmaker, and a founding member of the hip hop group Beastie Boys. Besides his musical work, he also directed many of the band's music videos and did much of their promotional photography, often using the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér for such work.

Yauch founded Oscilloscope Laboratories, an independent film production and distribution company based in New York City. As a Buddhist, he was involved in the Tibetan independence movement and organized the Tibetan Freedom Concert. He died in 2012 from parotid cancer, after which Beastie Boys disbanded. (Full article...)

Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He is the son-in-law of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, through his marriage to Ivanka Trump and served as a senior advisor in his father-in-law's first administration from 2017 to 2021. He was also director of the Office of American Innovation.

For much of his career, Kushner worked as a real-estate investor in New York City, especially through the family business Kushner Companies. He took over the company after his father, Charles Kushner, was convicted for 18 criminal charges, including illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering in 2005, although Charles was pardoned by Trump in 2020. Jared met Ivanka Trump around 2005, and the couple married in 2009. He also became involved in the newspaper industry after purchasing The New York Observer in 2006. He was registered as a Democrat and donated to Democratic politicians for much of his life but registered as Independent in 2009 and eventually as Republican in 2018. He played a significant role in the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign, and was at one point seen as its de facto campaign manager. Around Trump's election, Kushner was frequently accused of conflicts of interest, profiting from policy proposals for which he personally advocated within the first Trump administration.

He became senior advisor to Trump in 2017, and held the position until Trump left office in 2021. His appointment was followed by concerns of nepotism. Here, he led the administration's effort to pass the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill signed into law in 2018. Kushner was the primary Trump administration participant for the Middle East Peace Process, authoring the Trump peace plan and facilitating the talks that led to the signing of the Abraham Accords and other normalization agreements between Israel and various Arab states in 2020. Kushner also played an influential role in the Trump administration's COVID-19 response, where he advised Trump that the media was exaggerating the threat of the disease. He was a leading broker in the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a private equity firm that derives most of its funds from the Saudi government's sovereign wealth fund. (Full article...)

Shaila Catherine is an American Buddhist meditation teacher and author in the Theravādin tradition, known for her expertise in insight meditation (vipassanā) and jhāna practices. She has authored three books on jhāna practice and has introduced many American practitioners to this concentration practice through her writings and focused retreats.

Catherine is the founder of Insight Meditation South Bay in Mountain View, California, and the primary teacher for Bodhi Courses, an online Buddhist classroom. She conducts retreats locally, nationally and internationally in mindfulness (satī), concentration (samādhi and jhāna), lovingkindness (mettā), and insight meditation (vipassanā). (Full article...)

Dennis Keith Rodman (born May 13, 1961) is an American former professional basketball player. Renowned for his defensive and rebounding abilities, his biography on the official NBA website states that he is "arguably the best rebounding forward in NBA history". Nicknamed "the Worm", he played for the Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers, and Dallas Mavericks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Rodman played at the small forward position in his early years before becoming a power forward.

He earned NBA All-Defensive First Team honors seven times and won the NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award twice. He also led the NBA in rebounds per game for a record seven consecutive years and won five NBA championships. On April 1, 2011, the Pistons retired Rodman's No. 10 jersey, and he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame later that year. In October 2021, Rodman was honored as one of the league's greatest players of all-time by being named to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.

Rodman experienced an unhappy childhood and was often described as shy and introverted in his early years. After attempting to take his own life in 1993, he reinvented himself as a "bad boy" and became notorious for numerous controversial antics. He repeatedly dyed his hair in artificial colors, had many piercings and tattoos, and regularly disrupted games by clashing with opposing players and officials. He famously wore a wedding dress to promote his 1996 autobiography Bad as I Wanna Be. Rodman also attracted international attention for his visits to North Korea and his subsequent befriending of the North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un in 2013. (Full article...)

Thupten Jinpa Langri (born 1958) is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar, former monk and an academic of religious studies and both Eastern and Western philosophy. He has been the principal English translator to the Dalai Lama since 1985. He has translated and edited more than ten books by the Dalai Lama including The World of Tibetan Buddhism (Wisdom Publications, 1993), A Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus (Wisdom Publications, 1996), and the New York Times bestseller Ethics for the New Millennium (Riverhead, 1999).

Thupten Jinpa Langri was born in Tibet in 1958. He received his early education and training as a monk at Zongkar Choede Monastery in Hunsur near Mysore, Karnataka, South India, and later joined the Shartse College of Ganden monastic university, in Mundgod, Karnataka, South India, where he received the Geshe Lharam degree. He taught Buddhist epistemology, metaphysics, Middle Way philosophy and Buddhist psychology at Ganden for five years. Jinpa also holds a B.A. Honors degree in Western Philosophy and a Ph.D. degree in Religious Studies, both from Cambridge University, UK.

From 1996 to 1999, he was the Margaret Smith Research Fellow in Eastern Religion at Girton College, Cambridge, and he has now established the Institute of Tibetan Classics, where he is both president and editor-in-chief of the institute's translation series Classics in Tibet. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Mind and Life Institute, dedicated to fostering creative dialogue between the Buddhist tradition and Western science. (Full article...)

Nani Bala Barua (25 March 1911 – 1 September 1989), better known as Dipa Ma, was an Indian meditation teacher of Theravada Buddhism and was of Barua descent. She was a prominent Buddhist master in Asia and also taught in the United States where she influenced the American branch of the Vipassana movement. (Full article...)

Kūkai (空海; Japanese pronunciation: [kɯꜜː.kai], 27 July 774 – 22 April 835), born Saeki no Mao (佐伯 眞魚) posthumously called Kōbō Daishi (弘法 大師; [koː.boː daꜜi.ɕi], lit. 'the Grand Master Who Propagated the Dharma'), was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the esoteric Shingon school of Buddhism. He travelled to China, where he studied Tangmi (Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism) under the monk Huiguo. Upon returning to Japan, he founded Shingon—the Japanese branch of Vajrayana Buddhism. With the blessing of several Emperors, Kūkai was able to preach Shingon teachings and found Shingon temples. Like other influential monks, Kūkai oversaw public works and constructions. Mount Kōya was chosen by him as a holy site, and he spent his later years there until his death in 835 CE.

Because of his importance in Japanese Buddhism, Kūkai is associated with many stories and legends. One such legend attributes the invention of the kana syllabary to Kūkai, with which the Japanese language is written to this day (in combination with kanji), as well as the Iroha poem, which helped to standardise and popularise kana.
Shingon followers usually refer to Kūkai by the honorific title of Odaishi-sama (お大師様; "The Grand Master"), and the religious name of Henjō Kongō (遍照金剛; "Vajra Shining in All Directions"). (Full article...)

Xuanzang (Chinese: 玄奘; Wade–Giles: Hsüen Tsang; [ɕɥɛ̌n.tsâŋ]; 6 April 602 – 5 February 664), born Chen Hui or Chen Yi (陳褘 / 陳禕), also known by his Sanskrit Dharma name Mokṣadeva, was a 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator. He is known for the epoch-making contributions to Chinese Buddhism, the travelogue of his journey to the Indian subcontinent in 629–645, his efforts to bring at least 657 Indian texts to China, and his translations of some of these texts. He was only able to translate 75 distinct sections of a total of 1,335 chapters, but his translations included some of the most important Mahayana scriptures.

Xuanzang was born on 6 April 602 in Chenliu, near present-day Luoyang, in Henan province of China. As a boy, he took to reading religious books, and studying the ideas therein with his father. Like his elder brother, he became a student of Buddhist studies at Jingtu monastery. Xuanzang was ordained as a śrāmaṇera (novice monk) at the age of thirteen. Due to the political and social unrest caused by the fall of the Sui dynasty, he went with his brother 300 miles south to Chengdu in the current-day province of Sichuan, where he was ordained as a bhikṣu (full monk) at the age of twenty, studying Buddhist texts and practices at the monastery.

He later travelled throughout China in search of sacred books of Buddhism. At length, he came to Chang'an, then under the peaceful rule of Emperor Taizong of Tang, where Xuanzang developed the desire to visit India. He knew about Faxian's visit to India and, like him, was concerned about the incomplete and misinterpreted nature of the Buddhist texts that had reached China. He was also concerned about the competing Buddhist theories in variant Chinese translations. He sought original untranslated Sanskrit texts from India to help resolve some of these issues. (Full article...)

Kalinga II (Odia: ଦ୍ୱିତୀୟ କଳିଙ୍ଗ) was a powerful monarch and possibly an emperor from around the speculated era towards the end of 7th century BCE. He was the son of Chullakalinga, the youngest son of Kalinga I who had married a virtuous princess from Sagala (Madra). Kalinga II ascended the throne of the ancient state of Kalinga after the death of his paternal uncle Mahakalinga. Kalinga II finds mention in early Buddhist Jataka records of Chullakalinga Jataka (named after his father) and Kalingabodhi Jataka. He had spent most of his young life in the forests of Himavat where his father lived in exile. Trained with qualities of a king by his father and maternal grandfather, he was asked by Chullakalinga to go back to take the charge of his ancestral kingdom. (Full article...)

Shi Yongxin (simplified Chinese: 释永信; traditional Chinese: 釋永信; pinyin: Shì Yǒngxìn), born Liu Yingcheng (simplified Chinese: 刘应成; traditional Chinese: 劉應成; pinyin: Liú Yìngchéng), is a Chinese Buddhist monk who served as abbot of the Shaolin Temple from 1999 to 2025. He is known for his role in commercializing the temple and for controversies surrounding his personal life. (Full article...)

Agathocles I Dicaeus (Ancient Greek: Ἀγαθοκλῆς Δικαῖος, romanized: Agathoklês Dikaîos, meaning "Agathocles the Just") was a Greco-Bactrian/Indo-Greek king, who reigned between around 190 and 180 BC. He was likely from the dynasty of Euthydemus I, but he is also known to have commemorated both Diodotus I and Antiochus Nicator. (Full article...)