Miles Osgood talks to James Gentry about the thousand-year history of the Tibetan maṇi pill, back to its medieval origins in an age of Mongol invasions and epidemics, through an infusion of psychoactive fungi for experimental meditation in the 13th century, and as a shared token for today’s global Tibetan Buddhist diaspora.

James Gentry is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford. He specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, with particular focus on the literature and history of its Tantric traditions. He is the author of Power Objects in Tibetan Buddhism: The Life, Writings, and Legacy of Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen, which examines the roles of Tantric material and sensory objects in the lives and institutions of Himalayan Buddhists. Before joining Stanford, James was on the faculty of the University of Virginia. He has also taught at Rangjung Yeshe Institute’s Centre for Buddhist Studies at Kathmandu University, where he served as director of its Master of Arts program in Translation, Textual Interpretation, and Philology. He has also served as editor-in-chief of the project 84000: Translating the Words of the Buddha, which aims to commission English translations of the Buddhist sūtras, tantras, and commentaries preserved in Tibetan translation and publish them in an online open-access forum.