In 1712 Italian Jesuit priest Ippolito Desideri set off an dangerous mission to Tibet, his goal to win souls to Roman Catholic Christianity. But his plan was not to merely preach the gospel, or to combine preaching and charitable works. He would learn Tibetan, familiarize himself with Tibetan paganism, and seek to persuade them to convert through a series of rational arguments, put forth in a learned treatise in the style of Tibetan Buddhism.

What happened when he got there? In this episode Dr. Donald S. Lopez Jr. discuss his recent book, co-authored with Dr. Thupten Jinpa, Dispelling the Darkness: A Jesuit’s Quest for the Soul of Tibet. In this book they not only tell Desideri’s major-motion-picture-worthy story, but they also translate some of his writings. Dr. Lopez discusses both the stories and some of the central ideas of Desideri’s works. Boldly, Desideri tries to refute the central Buddhist doctrines of rebirth and of emptiness.

• Dr. Lopez’s home page
• Dr. Thupten Jinpa
• “The White Lama Ippolito: An Italian Jesuit in Tibet“
• “Dispatches from Nirvana: 45 Years of Buddhist Studies”
• other talks by Dr. Lopez on YouTube
• Curators of the Buddha
• From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha
• Elaboration on Emptiness
• The Story of Buddhism
• Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West
• The Lotus Sutra: A Biography
• Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed
• Burnouf, Introduction to the History of Indian Buddhism
• The Gelukpa (or Geluk) tradition of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy
• The Rites Controversy
• Mission to Tibet: The Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Account of Father Ippolito Desideri S. J.
• Theories of Religious Diversity
• Thomas Aquinas
• emptiness
• Nāgārjuna
• no self
• The Questions of Milinda
• The Apostles’ Creed
• This episode’s thinking music is “Nitynitya Vastu Viveka” by Ars Sonor.