Ani Jinpa Palmo (Eugenie de Jong)

By mark

Published on March 29, 2021

Contributing Translator

Ani Jinba was born in 1946 in Holland. She first traveled to India in 1968, and met most of the great Tibetan masters during the 10th commemoration of the Lhasa uprising in Dharamsala in 1969, where she received teachings from the Dalai Lama. She traveled to Dalhousie with Kalu Rinpoche to receive the Treasury of Oral Instructions, and started studying colloquial and literary Tibetan with various tutors in Dalhousie and Rewalsar. By the end of 1969, she received ordination as a nun from the 16th Karmapa, and in 1971 she moved to Tashi Jong to stay with her first main teacher, Khamtrul Dongyu Nyima Rinpoche, who also gave her getsul ordination. She studied at the Khampagar Monastic College with the Sakya Khenpo Rinchen, and from 1972 onwards started doing some oral translation for western Dharma students. In 1974 she translated her first Tibetan text, a short biography of Machik Labdron, published in Tsultrim Allione’s book Women of Wisdom, and since then has translated many sādhanas and commentaries at the request of various western Dharma students.

During the mid-seventies, Ani Jinpa served as HH Dilgo Khyentse’s oral translator, and in 1981 returned to Holland where she was invited to translate a text from the Tibetan Library at the Kern Institute in Leiden. She chose the biography of Vairotsana, and during a three-year retreat in Dordogne from 1982–1985 she was able to consult many teachers about this text. She didn’t get time to complete this text until 2004, when it was published as The Great Image, the Life of Vairochana (Shambhala Publications). During the 1990s, she was requested by the Vajra Vairocana Translation Committee to translate three sets of oral teachings by HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, two of which were published as Pure Appearance and Primordial Purity. From 2004–2008, she worked on the biography of the late HH Dilgo Khyentse, which was published in 2008 by Shambhala Publications as Brilliant Moon. In conjunction with the Padmakara Translation Group, she translated part of the Guide to the Words of My Perfect Teacher by Khenpo Ngawang Pelzang (Shambhala Publications, 2004). Requested by students of the late HH Penor Rinpoche, she translated a series of his oral teachings, which was published as An Ocean of Blessings (Shambhala Publications, 2017).

She is currently engaged in translating one of the sūtras for the 84000 project as well as the biography of Gyalwa Gotsangpa. She lives in India and Nepal during the winter and spends most of the summers in Europe.