Charles Patton is an independent student of Classical Chinese with a specialization in Chinese Buddhist scriptures. He was a student at Ohio State University for several years and was ordained as a novice monk in June of 1998 by the Reverend Shih Yingfa of the Cloud Water Zendo in Cleveland, Ohio. He has worked both in the fields of inputting Chinese Buddhist texts and in translating Buddhist scriptures into English, being the present webmaster of the Gateless Passage and the homepage of the W3 East Asian Buddhist Canon Input Project. He has published translations of the Heart Sutra, Diamond Sutra, and Smaller Pure Land Sutra on the Gateless Passage website and is currently working on the Great Parinirvana Sutra.