Duncan Steen, who "was perhaps best known as the reader of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations on Naxos AudioBooks, which has sold in the tens of thousands," has died, the Guardian reported. He was 65. Steen was also ordained as a Buddhist monk with the name Jinananda in 1986, and was widely recognized as a teacher of, and writer on, Buddhist meditation.
Although he wrote a number of secular books, including The Essential Englishman (1989) and a translation of Sophocles's Oedipus the King (recorded with Michael Sheen in the title role), Steen went on to write almost exclusively on Buddhist topics, producing "a string of titles based on the seminars of his teacher, Urgyen Sangharakshita, as well as The 100 Minute Buddha (2009) and Karma and Rebirth in a Nutshell (2009)," the Guardian noted.