Mentors never really know how important they are to a student. I’ve now had my share of students, and I am always a bit surprised to learn that I matter. Part of it is their replicability – we are fortunate to live in a world where many people want to learn. Every student is distinct, and I remember them, but they go on with their lives and I go on with mine, and the wheel keeps turning. Now as a student, I also know that if we are lucky, and I mean that special cosmic lucky that defies expectations, we get maybe one or two mentors who fundamentally (and usually, accidentally) reshape us. They teach us stuff, but most importantly, they teach us who we are, why we are, what we could and should be. It’s these twin threads pulling me in different directions that I feel now that I’ve heard that Peter Gregory has passed. I loved Peter. Peter helped make me who I am today, and also, I was just a student. This is just what Peter did, and I am not particularly special.

I first met Peter when I was finishing my BA at UMass in Chinese Language and Literature. Jay Garfield, who had corrupted me with Buddhist studies and Bohemian values (and also a fair amount of Scotch), led me to the unwise choice to go into an MA program mostly to work with Peter in Chinese Buddhism. My final undergraduate semester, I joined Peter’s class at Smith on Guanyin and Gender. That class marked my first real exposure to the sort of teacher who was right for me.

We like to think of teachers as good at everything, but Peter was slightly enigmatic, and this was mostly to conceal his impatience for students who were not great at discussing readings. After a few weeks in his seminar, he came to enjoy my willingness to say stupid things aloud. Because I was annoyingly persistent, after class we would adjourn to his office and I wouldn’t leave him alone until he told me why he chose those readings. We’d chat, he’d send me a pile of references to original Chinese texts, and then he’d kick me out because he needed to listen to jazz and open his binder containing the ongoing and never ending Zongmi Chan Preface translation (I later accidentally stole said binder). I imagine he would move a word or two around. He was infuriatingly meticulous. Or as we like to say in the profession, a scholar’s scholar.

Our relationship grew because I was an enthusiastic pest. Between my BA and MA, I spent the summer as a gravedigger. Every couple of weeks I’d pop in on Peter and Margi at home, covered in cut grass and ghosts, and Peter would take me into the attic office and we began what became a two year mentorship, the most important and humbling relationship of my intellectual life. That aforementioned Zongmi preface, which was basically done, became my training ground. Each week he’d give me a section, we’d read, and I would be fabulously wrong about everything. I am a slow student. I am not particularly bright. Peter patiently ground me into an adze. Week by week he made sure I could do one thing: read any classical Chinese that landed in front of me.

This was a beautiful and sweet experience for me. I don’t know what world it was that I lived in that made room for this. For a few hours a week, Peter and I, and then Myeong Beop, (when she was at Smith) simply read texts. This was the platonic form of student-teacher relationship. I know that I will never have this with a student. Universities are too busy now. For years I have thought back to all of these quiet moments, the twinkle in his eye when he saw my slow progress taking root. It made Northampton magical for me. It made life hum with possibilities. To go from my world where education didn’t matter to be able to talk with Peter about visiting the MET when he was young, and see how a person could live a life of feeling, gave me hope that I could someday be myself. And before I could finish my MA, life ran me over. I ended up at Harvard and for years I felt like I never honored the gift he gave me, the gift of learning with the promise of just being oneself. At night I worry that Peter never knew how much I loved him and our time together. But I have one email from 2013 where he wrote, “I look back fondly on that time.” It is a gift to know.

How do you repay a teacher? Simply put, you can’t. They are just doing what they do: teaching. Only the patriarch dreams of payback and honor and festschrifts. Peter was better than all that. He was a serious scholar who expected good work to be done. But I also know that his definition of good work was capacious. Living a good and true life was the most important thing. When I saw him at UCLA in 2023 (Robert’s retirement conference?)I was both frightened and overjoyed. I approached him to apologize for having vanished, explained how my life had taken hold, and he was still exactly Peter. Warm, loving, and with a certain enigmatic smile that said it was all ok. And I should visit him and Margi in Vermont sometime. And also… I can’t remember, but I was suddenly just me. He was just Peter. While Buddhism says everything is impermanent, I know there are some things that will last a kalpa of two. This relationship will always be teacher and student, and hopefully someday I can figure out how to repay the universe for it.

For an overview of Peter’s many scholarly contributions see:
https://networks.h-net.org/group/discussions/20063792/peter-n-gregory-1945-2025