Thomas Francis Cleary (24 April 1949 – 20 June 2021) was an American translator and author of more than 80 books related to Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, and Muslim classics, and of The Art of War, a treatise on management, military strategy, and statecraft.
[3] Cleary became interested in Buddhism when he was a teenager; his researches into Buddhist thought began with a desire to learn during this time of his life.
Thomas Cleary's most widely disseminated translation has been of Sun Tzu's The Art of War (Sunzi Bingfa).
[citation needed] He also translated, beginning in 1984, the monumental Avatamsaka Sutra (also called Huayan Jing, or the Flower Ornament Scripture).
[6] Another major translation was of the commentaries of the 18th century Taoist sage Liu Yiming, who explains the metaphoric coding of the main Taoist texts dealing with the transformation of consciousness, and the fusion of the human mind with the mind of Tao.