Dr. Herbert Guenther died in his sleep on March 11, 2006, just six days before his 89th birthday. He was one of the primary leaders of the expansion of international scholarly study of Tibetan Buddhisim over the last six decades, and was particularly respected for his experimental use of a wide variety of modern intellectual systems to try to understand the philosophical import of Tibetan Buddhist systems.
While his scholarlship covered many subjects as found in his many publications, his greatest love was undoubtedly the Dzokchen (rdzogs chen) tradition. His many outstanding contributions on that subject included his outstanding From Reductionism to Creativity, as well as his translation of Longchenpa's famed trilogy in Kindly Bent to Ease Us, and he opened up these rich traditions to many scholars, practitioners and others.