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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]) +
Laura Harrington received her received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Columbia University and subsequently taught Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Asian Religions, Buddhist Art and Comparative Asian Medical Traditions at Trinity College and Wesleyan University. Her interests also include Tibetan Buddhism in the United States.
Professor Harrington’s research focuses on the study of Buddhist material culture, with a particular emphasis on the role of embodiment and emotion in the production of religious belief. Her interests also include the impact of so-called “modernity” discourse on the study of Tibet. She is contributing editor (with Robert Barnett) of the volume ''New Perspectives on Tibetan Traditionality'', and contributing editor for the books ''Tibetan Astro-Science'' (Tibet Domani, 2000) and ''Kālachakra'' (Tibet Domani, 1999). Her present book in progress is titled ''Secular Incarnations: Buddhist Tantra in Euro-American Thought''.
Her recent publications include a translation of a Tantric commentary by the second Dalai Lama of Tibet, and an exploration of a Tibetan Buddhist ritual through the lens of cognitive aesthetics. ([https://www.bu.edu/core/people/laura-harrington/ Source Accessed Dec 4, 2023]) +
Laura Swan began her study of Tibetan and Buddhadharma in 2005 at Rangjung Yeshe Institute and continued her studies at Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling’s monastic shedra. She has translated for Samye Translations, 84000, Rangjung Yeshe Publications, and more recently for the Khyentse Vision Project. ([https://www.lotsawahouse.org/translators/laura-swan/ Source Accessed Jan 20, 2025]) +
Dr Laxman S. Thakur till recently held the Dr Y. S. Parmar Chair Professor, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India. +
Ph.D. Research Scholar, School of Buddhist Studies & Civilization, Gautam Buddha University,
Greater Noida, UP, India +
Lea Terhune is a professional writer and journalist based in India, where she has lived since 1982. Currently editor of SPAN (a magazine of the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi), she has also worked as a correspondent and producer for CNN International, ABC News Radio, and Voice of America. Her work has appeared in The Far-Eastern Economic Review, Asiaweek, International Herald Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Yoga Journal, and ABCNews.com. She lives in New Delhi. (Source: [https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/lea-terhune/ Wisdom Experience]) +
Lead Educational Technologist
Amod Lele helps faculty navigate a wide array of technologies for use in their classes and professional life. He leads and manages a team of educational technologists and has been a part of BU’s Educational Technology team for more than eight years. Amod is interested in the use and promotion of open educational resources (OER) in higher education. He holds a PhD from Harvard University in religious studies and has almost ten years of college and university teaching experience. He regularly teaches a course on Indian philosophy in the CAS philosophy department. As a lifelong learner, Amod also earned an M.S. degree in Computer Science from Metropolitan College in 2016. In his spare time, he publishes [https://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/?s=amod+lele scholarly articles on Buddhist ethics] and [https://loveofallwisdom.com/ writes a biweekly updated blog] on cross-cultural philosophy. ([https://digital.bu.edu/edtech/what-we-do-edtech-2/our-team-edtech/ Source Accessed Nov 5, 2021])
Dissertation: ''Ethical Revaluation in the Thought of Śāntideva.'' Advisor: Prof. Parimal Patil. Available at http://loveofallwisdom.com/other-writings/ +
Leo M. Pruden (March 1938 - October 1991) was an American scholar and translator. His major works include a translation into English of Louis de La Vallée Poussin's six-volume French translation of the Abhidharma-kosa. For this translation, Pruden consulted the Sanskrit source text, as well as contemporary Chinese and Japanese sources.
Pruden studied at Tokyo University, in the Department of Indian and Buddhist Studies, from 1961 to 1964.
He began teaching on the Abhidharma at Brown University (1970-1971), and subsequently at the Nyingma Institute (Berkeley, California), and at the University of Oriental Studies (Los Angeles).
In 1973, Pruden and Venerable Dr. Thich Thien-An co-founded the American University of Oriental Studies in Los Angeles, California. This institution was later restructered as Buddha Dharma University. ([https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Leo_M._Pruden Source: Encyclopedia of Buddhism online]) +
