Peter D. Hershock is director of the Asian Studies Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, USA. A noted expert on Buddhism, he has written about the philosophical and historical dimensions of Buddhist practice in Chan Buddhism and Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Chan Buddhism. He has also made use of Buddhist thought to address contemporary issues in Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age and Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence.