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Lama Lodö was born in Sikkim, Nepal in 1939. At the age of eight he entered monastery to study the traditional subjects of the Karma Kagyu tradition: reading, writing, religious texts, singing and dancing. At fifteen he met Drupon Tenzin Rinpoche, who was the great meditation master of the The-Yak Monastery and a teacher of His Holiness the sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa. With his teacher's blessing, Lama Lodö eventually began traditional three-year retreat. Unfortunately, both student and teacher became ill during this time; Tenzin Rinpoche directly contributed to Lama Lodö's recover, but he died himself.
H.H Karmapa directed Lama Lodö to seek a new teacher in the Very Venerable Kalu Rinpoche, whom he called the Great Master of this age. Lama Lodö was able to pass his examination and began a new retreat under venerable Kalu Rinpoche. Lama Lodö spent years since then giving instruction in meditation, dharma and Puja. In 1974, H. H. Karmapa and Kalu Rinpoche sent Lama to the West. From 1976, he became a Senior Spiritual Teacher at the Kagyu Droden Kunchab Center in San Francisco. [http://books.google.com/books?id=BaOU1P-Bw3QC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=Venerable+Lama+Lod%C3%B6&source=bl&ots=coFu7keAWE&sig=DQc9AqVb5716o4dwEIsbU79RowE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=eb7jU847zPfJBL7NgGg&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=Venerable%20Lama%20Lod%C3%B6&f=false Source] +
Lama Migmar has been teaching and guiding students since 1989 and has been serving Harvard students, faculties, and staffs as a Harvard Buddhist Chaplain since 1997. He founded Sakya Institute for Buddhist Studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1990.
Lama Migmar has authored and published many books covering various subjects from Hinayana, Mahayana, and Vajrayana traditions. He established Mangalam Studio in 2013 to share spiritual arts, teachings, and practices. In 2017, Lama Migmar created the Mangalam Online Course to provide a rigorous and systematic way to study and practice Dharma anywhere in the world. He is one of the lead faculties at Kripalu in Berkshire, MA. Lama Migmar is also a visiting teacher at 1440, Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas, and The Art of Living Retreat Center. ([https://lamamigmar.net/ Source Accessed July 21, 2020.]) +
Lama Palden was one of the first Western women to be authorized as a lama in 1986, by her primary teacher, Kalu Rinpoche, following her completion of the traditional Tibetan three year, three month retreat. She has been a student and practitioner of Buddhism and of Comparative Mysticism for over 40 years. She is the founding teacher of Sukhasiddhi Foundation http://www.sukhasiddhi.org in the SF Bay Area, a Tibetan Buddhist center in the Shangpa and Kagyu lineages. Lama Palden has a deep interest in helping to make the teachings and practices of Vajrayana Buddhism accessible and practical for Westerners in order to help students actualize our innate wisdom, love and joy. As a teacher, she is committed to each student's unique unfolding and blossoming.
In 1993 Lama Palden completed a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. After licensing as a psychotherapist, she engaged in facilitating clients psycho-spiritual integration and development, through bringing together understandings and methods from Buddhism and Psychology, as well as from the Diamond Heart work, that she engaged with and trained in for many years. ([https://www.amazon.com/Lama-Palden-Drolma/e/B07NLJ87GM%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share Source Accessed August 13, 2020]) +
https://www.lamarod.com/about
Author of The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation through Anger and co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. +
Tulku Sherdor is Executive Director of Blazing Wisdom Institute. Born in Montreal, Canada in 1961, he began studying Buddhist Insight meditation from a very young age, and met his principal teacher, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, in Nepal in 1981. He was fortunate to study with other pre-eminent masters of the 20th century, including His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Khetsun Zangpo Rinpoche, Dung Say Trinley Norbu Rinpoche, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, Kalu Rinpoche, and many others. He completed a 3-year lama retreat in the Karma and Shangpa Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism, and a year-long solitary retreat in the Chogling Tersar practice lineage held by Tulku Urgyen. Over the past 18 years he has traveled far and wide, teaching and working with and translating for a great number of distinguished Nyingma and Kagyu meditation masters, such as helping Trangu Rinpoche establish the monastic retreat program at Gampo Abbey in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in the early 1990s; helping Kenpo Sonam Topgyal Rinpoche re-establish the vajrayana Buddhist tradition for the Chinese community in Thailand in the mid-1990s; and working closely with his precious teacher, His Holiness Orgyen Kusum Lingpa, to advance many philanthropic projects in Tibet dedicated to world peace. (Source: [http://www.blazingwisdom.org/id1.html Blazing Wisdom Institute]) +
Surya Das (born Jeffrey Miller in 1950) is an American lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is a poet, chant master, spiritual activist, author of many popular works on Buddhism, meditation teacher, and spokesperson for Buddhism in the West. He has long been involved in charitable relief projects in the Third World and in interfaith dialogue. Surya Das is a Dharma heir of Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche, a Nyingma master of the non-sectarian Rime movement, with whom he founded the Dzogchen Center and Dzogchen retreats in 1991. His name, which means "Servant of the Sun" in a combination of Sanskrit (''sūrya'') and Hindi (''das'', from the Sanskrit ''dāsa''), was given to him in 1972 by the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surya_Das Source Accessed Feb 7, 2020]) +
Lama Tharchin Rinpoche was a Dzogchen (Great Perfection) master of Vajrayana Buddhism. He was the tenth lineage holder of the Repkong Ngakpas. This is a family lineage of yogis, or householders, and was the largest community of non-monastic practitioners in Tibet. Rinpoche was trained in His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche's monastery, engaged in five years of solitary retreat and then completed the three year retreat with three others under Dudjom Rinpoche.
In addition to Dudjom Rinpoche, his main teachers were Chatral Rinpoche, Lama Sherab Dorje Rinpoche, and Dungse Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. Rinpoche left Tibet by foot with his family in 1960. He lived in Orissa, India and Kathmandu, Nepal before coming to America in 1984 for health reasons. While in America, Dudjom Rinpoche asked Lama Tharchin Rinpoche to turn the third wheel of Dharma, the teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism.
As a householder with two sons, Rinpoche had a wonderfully kind and wise approach to working with Western students. His gentleness and jewel-like qualities embodied a living expression of the wisdom and compassion of the Buddhadharma. He was so rare and precious, not only because of his great realization, but also for his vast knowledge of Tibetan ritual arts, music, and dance, as well as the philosophical basis of the Vajrayana teachings. ([http://www.vajrayana.org/teachers/#hide1 Source Accessed Oct 14, 2015]) +
Lama Yeshe was a founder of the FPMT. A visionary teacher who was particularly skilled and intent on presenting the Buddhadharma to Westerners in a way that brought genuine transformation to arise deeply in their hearts and minds. He is the author of many books, including modern Buddhist classics like ''Introduction to Tantra'', and ''The Bliss of Inner Fire''.
Lama Yeshe passed away in 1984. Since his passing, the FPMT has grown to over 150 Dharma centers, projects and services in 37 countries. His reincarnation was recognized a few years later as a Spanish boy, Osel Hita, who is now in his early thirties and is teaching Dharma and pursuing interests in filmmaking. +
Lama Zopa Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and meditator who for over 30 years has overseen the spiritual activities of the extensive worldwide network of centers, projects and services that form the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT) which he founded with Lama Thubten Yeshe. (Source [https://fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/ FPMT.org]) +
Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche entered Parinirvana on Guru Rinpoche Day, October 24, 2023. He was a yogi and healer, a master of the Longchen Nyingtik, Padampa Sangye’s Shije and Machik’s Chod Lineages, and a great protector of the Dharma. His kindness, generosity, and patience were without limit and he benefited countless beings. His cremation ceremony was held at Tara Mandala Retreat Center in Colorado on November 22, 2023.
Lama Tsering Wangdu Rinpoche was a lineage holder of the Longchen Nyingthig, Shije, and Chod traditions. Born in 1935 in Tingri Langkor, Tibet, he received transmission and training from his root Lama, Naptra Rinpoche, and completed the traditional 108 charnel ground Chod pilgrimage before he was twenty. Naptra Rinpoche sent Lama Wangdu to Nepal on pilgrimage shortly before the Chinese closed the border in 1959. A well-trained and experienced yogi, he lived in Nepal ever since, spending much of his life in retreat and serving the Tibetan refugee community.
In Nepal, Tibet, and China, Rinpoche is well known as an accomplished Chod practitioner and healer. Until 2018, he was the Abbot of Pal Gyi Langkor Jangsem Kunga Ling Monastery in Boudha, Nepal, which he founded in 2000.
([https://lamawangdu.org/ Source: Lama Wangud.org]) +
Yeshe Gyamtso completed two three-year retreats in the 1980s at Kagyu Thubten Chöling in Wappingers Falls, NY. Since then he has taught, interpreted for several Tibetan Buddhist teachers, translated a number of biographies of Buddhist historical figures, and written two books on Buddhist practice. Recent translations include Luminous Clarity (2016), Shower of Blessings (2015), and Siddhas of Ga (2013). (Source: 2017 Translation & Transmission Conference) +
Schmithausen received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Vienna in 1963. He was an associate professor of Indology at the University of Münster from 1970 to 1973, moving to the University of Hamburg from 1973 until his retirement in 2005. His main fields of research are the Yogacara tradition of Indian Buddhism and Buddhist ethics, particularly the ethics of nature. He was elected a Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1995. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambert_Schmithausen Source Accessed Jan 17, 2020]) +
Lamchen Gyalpo Rinpoche was born in 1939 in the Nangchen region of eastern Tibet as the reincarnation of Lama Phurga (1883-1938). Lama Phurga was famous for his ability to see into a person’s past, present, and future lives.
In 1961, Rinpoche went into exile in India. In 1985 he established Jangchub Ling in Dehradun, India to serve as the seat for His Holiness Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche and proceeded to serve as his private secretary. During a global teaching trip in 1986, His Holiness Drikung Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche bestowed the title Lamchen-pa (knower of the path).
As His Holiness's private and general secretary, he worked with His Holiness on the history of the Drikung Kagyu tradition. Lamchen Gyalpo Rinpoche received teachings from many profound masters and practiced them all from the preliminary stages to the arising and completion stages, punctuated with three major retreats and propitiation of deities. Later he established several Dharma centers in the United States and Taiwan. For the past years Rinpoche has been busy traveling around the world to share his extensive knowledge of the Dharma to his many students. ([https://drikungdharmasurya.org/lamchen-gyalpo-rinpoche/ Adapted from Source Oct 17, 2025]) +
A student of the Second Pabongkha, Dechen Nyingpo, and Tenzin Trinle Kunkhyen. +
Venerable Jampel Tenzin, known to his Western students as Gen Lamrimpa, passed as glorious as he lived. A lifetime meditator, he unified his words and his actions. Humility to the nth degree, kindness and love consistently given to all those whom he came in contact, and a wisdom that clearly recognized reality were his trademarks. His smile lit up the sky and made one feel inner joy and contentment.
Gen Lamrimpa lived most of his adult life in Dharamsala, Northern India. Initially, in the early 1970's, he lived for several years moving from cave to cave at the top of the mountains above Dharamsala. Often without food, meditating in a foggy and often wet place under a large rock overhang, he never feared. Food always seemed to appear when he really needed it. Many times self- rationed flour was about to finish, or was finished for one or two days, and almost like magic, or a gift from the buddhas, more flour, and maybe tea, or if very fortunate a little butter and tsampa (roasted barley flour) would arrive. These years of physical hardship, he told me later, were the best years for meditation; even though he claimed not to know much at that time.
Later he moved to a mud and stone one-room retreat hut where several other retreatants lived and practiced above the Tibetan Children's Village (TCV) near Trijang Rinpoche's Stupa. There he stayed nearly 18 years. Until 1990 he had no electricity, nor water. Water had to be fetched from afar, by carrying 40-50 lbs. of water up and down steep slopes often through snow or mud. Using candle and daggum (thick woolen Tibetan cape used for warmth during winter meditation), he meditated from 5 a.m. until 1 a.m. There were no week-ends or holidays off. There were breaks for preparing and eating food, gathering wood and fetching water, and occasionally teaching students who came by after lunch.
After one of my regular weekly afternoon-evening visits to receive teachings, with a full stomach of Genia's simple, yet delicious food, Genia told me to be careful of snakes. I told him there were no snakes here in the Himalayan foothills at 6000 feet elevation. He was silent, and handed me a torch (flashlight). Off I went with torch in hand. Soon crossing the path in front of me was a snake, (not a rope), the only one I saw in my many years in Dharamsala.
Last October 30th, about 4:30 a.m. I felt he was calling me. As I went into his room, he opened his eyes, and asked me to help sit him up and give him some water. Along with the water I gave him chin.lap (blessed substances). After three deep breaths, he stopped his gross breathing. Sitting behind him on his meditation seat, I held his back straight for several hours, then secured him using a mediation belt lying nearby. For five days his body remained fresh, and his mind remained in meditation in the state of clear light unified with emptiness―a remarkable, extraordinary achievement. Those of us who knew him were not surprised. He passed as he lived: clear, profound, and spacious.
Source: Ven. Tenzin Choerabt from the Winter, 2004 issue of the Snow Lion Newsletter.
Lara Braitstein is Associate Professor of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism at McGill University. She has also taught at the Karmapa International Buddhist Institute (K.I.B.I.) in New Delhi, and the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Kathmandu. She teaches Mahayana & Vajrayana Buddhist Philosophy, Buddhist Hagiography, and Tibetan/Himalayan Buddhist literature and historiography. She translated the 14th Shamarpa’s ''The Path to Awakening'', and is the author of ''The Adamantine Songs'': Study, Translation, and Tibetan Critical Edition, a study of Saraha’s Mahamudra poems. Her recent research is a study dedicated to untangling the history and representation of the 10th Shamarpa Chodrup Gyatso (1742-1792).
Her research has been supported by SSHRC (2008-11) and Bukkyō Dendō Kyōkai (2009), and she is a member of the FRQSC funded research group Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire sur le Tibet et l’Himalaya (GRITH), an initiative that brings together academics in Québec carrying out research about the greater Himalayan region (https://www.grith.fss.ulaval.ca/en).
([https://www.mcgill.ca/religiousstudies/lara-e-braitstein Source: Adapted from McGill University Webpage]) +
Kyabje Lati Rinpoche (1922 – 12 April 2010) Born in the Kham region of Eastern Tibet in 1922, Lati Rinpoche was identified as the reincarnation of a great practitioner by Gongkar Rinpoche and entered monastic life at the age of 10.
At the age of fifteen, he enrolled in Gaden Shartse Norling College, one of the 'great three' Gelukpa university monasteries of Tibet.
In 1959, Lati Rinpoche sat for the Geshe Lharmapa examination and he was conferred as "Geshe Lharampa". In 1960, Lati Rinpoche joined the tantric college in Lhasa, and started intensive study in Tantra. In 1964, Lati Rinpoche left Tibet to join the 14th Dalai Lama in exile. On arrival in Dharamsala, he was appointed as the Spiritual Advisor to the 14th Dalai Lama.
From 1976, Lati Rinpoche taught at the Namgyal Gomba (the 14th Dalai Lama's personal monastery). In the same year, he was appointed as the Abbot of the Shartse Norling College of Gaden Monastery, a replacement university in the like of Gaden Shartse Norling College, for the monkhood in exile. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lati_Rinpoche Source Accessed July 24, 2023]) +
Latri Khenpo Nyima Dakpa Rinpoche is a senior geshe at Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India, and one of the new generation of Bön Masters. Rinpoche is the lineage holder and abbot of Latri Monastery in the Kham region of eastern Tibet. Rinpoche received his Geshe degree (Doctorate of Bön) in 1987 from the Bön Dialectic School at Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India. He is officially recognized as a Rinpoche by Menri Monastery.</br>
Rinpoche’s early education came from his father, a well-known lama and the lineage holder of the Latri lineage, in the Kham region of eastern Tibet. Further education came from Tsultrim Nyima Rinpoche, the lama of Dorpatan Monastery in Nepal. Rinpoche later entered Menri Monastery in Dolanji, India, the main monastery of Bön religion and education. There, he was taught by His Holiness Lungtok Tonpai Nyima Rinpoche, the 33rd sMenri Trizin (abbot); His Eminence Yongdzin Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche, the Lopon (head teacher) of all Bön education; and master Geshe Yungdrung Namgyal, a teacher of the Bön Dialectic School at Menri. At the request of His Holiness Menri Trizin, Rinpoche founded and is the President of the Bön Children’s Home in Dolanji, India, that provides housing, clothing, food and education for orphaned and underprivileged Bön children from northern India, Nepal, Bhutan and Sikkim. He is also the Vice-Chairman of the LAC for the Central School for Tibetans in Dolanji.</br>
Rinpoche was the first Tibetan Bön monk to teach Bon in the United States. Rinpoche has adhered strictly to the authentic Yungdrung Bon texts and teachings as passed down for thousands of years. He is the author of Opening the Door to Bon, the premier guide to the Ngondro practices for Western students of Bon. Rinpoche has taught Bön teachings in the U.S., Europe and Asia since 1989. Rinpoche is an immensely respected monk and teacher throughout the world for his authoritative, compassionate, and engaging teaching of Bön, and his ceaseless service to Bön.</br>
He is the founder and Spiritual Director of Yeru Bön Center (headquartered in Minneapolis, with a branch in Los Angeles); Shen Ten Ling Bön Centre in Vienna, Austria; Shen Chen Ling Bon Center in Minsk (Belarus); Sharza Ling Institute in Poland (with headquarters in Warsaw and a retreat center in Zhedoa, Poland); the Bön Shen Ling Center in Moscow; the Bön Shen Drup De Center in Kharkow, Ukraine; and Yeru Canada. Rinpoche is currently supervising a stupa construction project for world peace at the Kungdrol Ling Retreat Center in Thailand. [https://yeruboncenter.org/latri-nyima-dakpa-rinpoche/ Yeru Bon Centre]
Lal Jadusingh is an independent scholar and translator who completed the translation of the three Bhavanakramas of Kamalashila. The Bhavanakramas are important Buddhist texts on meditation written by the 8th-century Indian master Kamalashila. Jadusingh's translation of these works represents the culmination of a task he began over 40 years ago. (Generated by Perplexity Feb 11, 2025) +
Launcelot Alfred Cranmer-Byng (23 November 1872 – 15 January 1945) was an author and sinologist. He was a member of the Byng baronets family, landowners in Essex.
His father was Lt. Col. Alfred Molyneaux Cranmer-Byng and his mother was Caroline Mary Tufnell. His brother Hugh Edward Cranmer-Byng (1873–1949) was also an author and playwright. Both brothers were brought up at Quendon Hall in Newport, Essex. Launcelot was educated at Wellington College and Trinity College, Cambridge. From around 1912, the two brothers were associated with the 'Warwick Circle' at Easton Lodge, whose other members included H. G. Wells, Ramsay MacDonald and the folk song collector Cecil Sharp.
Cranmer-Byng is best known for The Never Ending Wrong (1902), The Odes of Confucius (1908) and Lute of Jade: Selections from the Classical Poets of China (1909). Salma (1923), was a play in three acts with a Persian setting, produced in Birmingham. A Feast of Lanterns (1936), published as part of John Murray's long-running Wisdom of the East series, of which he was a founder and editor, is a later anthology of ancient Chinese poetry, introduced and translated by Cranmer-Byng.
His translations of Chinese poetry were set to music by composers including Granville Bantock (Songs from the Chinese Poets), Rebecca Clarke, Bernard van Dieren, Harry Farjeon (The Lute of Jade song cycle, 1917), Charles Tomlinson Griffes (Five Poems of Ancient China and Japan, 1917) and Peter Warlock ('Along the Stream' from Saudades, 1923).
Cranmer-Byng served in World War I as a captain. His first wife died in 1913 and he married Daisy Elaine Beach in 1916. There was one son, John Launcelot Cranmer-Byng (1919–1999). They lived at Horham Hall[3] and at Foley Mill, Thaxted in Essex. Cranmer-Byng, a long-term county Alderman and Justice of the peace, died at Great Easton, near Dunmow, at the age of 72. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Launcelot_Cranmer-Byng Source Accessed Nov 25, 2024]) +
