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Geshe Namgyal Wangchen was born in Tibet in 1934 and educated at Drepung Monastary. In 1959, along with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and 100,000 other Tibetans, he fled the Chinese occupation of his homeland. During the 1980’s he began teaching Western students in London, England. He now lives and teaches in the reestablished Drepung Monastery in India. (Source: [https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/geshe-namgyal-wangchen/ Wisdom Publications]) +
Geshe Nawang L. Nornang (Nor nang Ngag dbang blo mthun) was born on 9 December, 1924, the wood-rat year, to Rdo rje rgyal po and Dbyangs can of the aristocratic Nor nang family, the sixth of their nine children, at a time when his father was commissioner of Sku rnam Rdzong in Dwags po.
In 1933, Geshela entered the G.yul sgang private school in Lhasa where he studied reading and writing until 1937. Thereafter he spent a year under the tutelage of his maternal uncle, Thub bstan kun mkhyen, one of the chief secretaries (drung yig che mo) of the Ecclesiastic Office (Yig tshang).
In 1938, he took his novice vows in the presence of the Stag brag Regent, and he was enrolled in Dwags po Bshad sgrub rnam rgyal ba’i gling, a monastery noted for its strict devotion to scholarship and discipline. There he was tutored by Dge bshes Blo bzang dbyigs bsnyen in logic, philosophy and ritual, following a standard Dge-lugs-pa curriculum which included the Abhisamayālaṃkāra and other Prajñāpāramitā works, the Abhidharmakośa and its commentaries, the Madhyamakāvatāra and the major works of Tsong kha pa on Madhyamaka, works by the 19thgdan rab of Dwags po, Rje byams pa chos mchog and on logic by Phur bu lcog yongs ‘dzin. As a chos mdzad, a monk whose family makes a substantial contribution to the monastery and is thereby excused from the obligatory labor of a young monk, he was also allowed to visit his family in Lhasa for three months a year.
In 1946, Geshela took his vows as fully ordained monk and served as a tutor at Bshad sgrub gling. In 1948, he served for two years as monastic treasurer (phyag mdzod). In 1950, monastic stores were almost depleted due to the over-enrolment of monks, and the monastery petitioned the government for a permit to solicit funds and supplies. Geshela was in charge of this mission and travelled extensively throughout Central Tibet in order to do so. He also visited India twice on wool-trading trips in 1953 and 1956, when he also completed the pilgrimage at Bodh Gaya during the 2500th anniversary of the parinirvāṇa of the Buddha. He also continued his studies toward the geshe degree which he completed just before the 1959 revolt in Tibet. Unfortunately the political turmoil of that year prevented the formal conferral of the degree.
From 1954 on, as the representative for his monastery, he also went annually to Lhasa for the “Great Prayer Festival” (Smon lam chen mo), when the government would honor a request to supply monasteries with fiscal help.
At the time of the revolt in 1959, he was in Lhasa for the Great Prayer Festival. After the Dalai Lama fled, he returned to his monastery, but Chinese military movements in the area forced him to flee south through E, Gnyal, Bya yul, Klo yul and the Northeast Frontier Area of India. After two months at Misamari refugee camp he took up residence in Kalimpong with relatives and lived there until 1960, when he and his niece, Lhadon Karsip (Rnam rgyal lha sgron Skyar srib), were brought to the University of Washington by Professor Turrell V. Wylie as Tibetan language instructors in the University’s newly-established Tibet Studies Program, the first of its kind in the United States.
At this time, the Far Eastern Languages Department at the University of Washington had also contracted with the US Office of Education under the National Defense Education Act to produce the first systematic study and teaching materials of the Lhasa dialect of Tibetan. His work with the linguists Chang Kun and Betty Shefts Chang over the next three years resulted in their Manual of Spoken Tibetan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), as well as material that Chang & Shefts published later (Spoken Tibetan Texts, Taipei:Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1978-1980). After the NDEA contract expired in 1963, Geshela was hired by the Department of Asian Languages and Literature as Tibetan language instructor, where he remained until his retirement in 1985.
During this time he also coauthored with Melvyn C. Goldstein Modern Spoken Tibetan: Lhasa Dialect (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970). It would be no exaggeration to say that, through these works, particularly the latter, Geshela became the primary teacher of Lhasa Tibetan to a generation of scholars. In addition to his language teaching duties, Geshela worked tirelessly for his students and colleagues at the University of Washington, giving generously of his time and knowledge to help students and scholars with their projects, whether they involved translations from Tibetan, questions in Buddhist philosophy or other social and cultural subjects. His influence and assistance, acknowledged or otherwise, is found in many works of students who passed through the Tibetan program at the University of Washington and elsewhere for more than a quarter of a century and even well beyond the time he retired. He was always available to help many new Tibetans settle in when they came to live in the Seattle area, and he volunteered to teach Tibetan to Tibetan children for more than twelve years. ([https://asian.washington.edu/news/2014/11/24/memory-geshe-nornang-1924-2014 Source Accessed Oct 31, 2023])
Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey was born on the 13th of the fifth Tibetan month in the year of the Iron-Bird (1921) in the town of Yätsak (or Ya Chak) in the Trehor district of Tibet's eastern province Kham. He was soon enrolled in the large local Dhargyey Monastery of the Gelug tradition, where he took pre-novice ordination vows. Although he was enrolled there he studied mainly in the village Sakya monastery, Lona Gonpa where he received instruction in reading, writing, grammar etc, and learned numerous texts and practices by heart. His teachers there included two of his uncles, as well as Kushu Gonpä Rinpoche, who was a master of all the five major fields of learning.
Gen Rinpoche left his home country to further his spiritual education at Sera Monastery, the great monastic university in Lhasa. There he underwent extensive training in all the five divisions of Buddhist philosophical study: Logic, Perfection of Wisdom, the Middle View, Metaphysics, and Ethical Discipline. This was interspersed with periods of intensive retreat at some of the many hermitages near Sera. By the time he was nineteen he had already mastered his studies sufficiently to become a scriptural teacher, and he began to have many students of his own. At the age of 21, he took full ordination vows of a Bhikshu from the widely renowned Purchog Jamgön Rinpoche. He also received numerous teachings, initiations and commentaries from the great Lamas of that time such as Kyabje Trijang Dorje Chang (His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Tutor), Bakri Dorje Chang, Lhatsün Dorje Chang, Gönsar Dorje Chang and others. His monastic teachers were the great scholar-practitioners Gen Sherab Wangchuk, Gen Chöntse, and the now Gyume Kensur Ugyän Tseten.
He studied in Sera in Tibet for twenty years until, in 1959, Chinese oppression forced him to leave Tibet. Two years earlier he had been appointed tutor to two high incarnate lamas, Lhagön Rinpoche and Thupten Rinpoche. The three escaped from Chinese occupied Tibet together taking a long and dangerous journey of nine months under Chinese gunfire and snowstorms until they reached the Mustang region of Nepal. From Mustang it was a comparatively easy journey to India, where they joined His Holiness the Dalai Lama and some of Gen Rinpoche's other teachers.
In India, after a brief pilgrimage to the sacred Buddhist sites, he took up his studies once again, and for several continued tutoring the tulkus (incarnate lamas). In the mid 1960s, he was chosen along with fifty-five other scholars to attend an Acarya course at Mussourie (north of Delhi). During his year in Mussourie, he and the other scholars wrote textbooks for the Tibetan refugee schools being established in India at that time. He then returned to Dalhousie where, over various periods, he continued to teach another seven incarnate lamas. He also finished his Geshe studies and, in oral examinations held at the Buxador refugee camp in Assam in eastern India (the seat of Sera monastery at that time) he gained the highest grade (First Class) Lharampa Geshe.
In 1971 he was asked by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to start a teaching program for westerners at the newly constructed Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, northern India. Two of his incarnate lama disciples, Sharpa Rinpoche and Kamlung Rinpoche, acted as translators. He stayed there, teaching very extensively to thousands of Westerners, until 1984. During this time he himself received extensive and often exclusive teachings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and from both of the tutors, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche and Kyabje Ling Rinpoche.
In 1982 he travelled to the West for the first time to take up a one-semester visiting professorship for at the University of Washington in Seattle. This was followed by a year-long extensive tour of Buddhist teaching centres all over North America, Europe and Australasia.
He spent six weeks in New Zealand during this tour, and at the end of the visit he was requested to establish a Buddhist centre here. In 1985 His Holiness advised Gen Rinpoche to come to New Zealand, initially for one and a half years, to establish a centre. After a six month tour of Australia, he arrived in Dunedin in mid 1985. Due to the success of the Buddhist centre he remained here, occasionally travelling to other parts of New Zealand and to Australia on teaching tours.
Gen Rinpoche gave his last formal teaching in February 1995 in Dunedin. Gen Rinpoche entered into the death process on the 11th August 1995 (the 16th of the 6th Tibetan month) remaining in meditation for of three days.
His body was cremated with full traditional Tibetan funerary rites at Portobello, near Dunedin on 17th August (22nd of the 6th Tibetan month). Kushu Lhagön Rinpoche, one of Gen Rinpoche's tulku disciples, presided over the Great Offering to His Holy Body Ceremony at a specially built cremation stupa. ([https://dbc.dharmakara.net/GNDBiography.html Adapted from Source Feb 24, 2023])
Geshe Ngawang Sonam received his novice monk’s vows in 1996 from the late Kyabje Dhakpa Rinpoche and his full ordination as a Bikshu from His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in 1997. In 2008, after placing first in his examinations in his last year of Madhyamika Philosophy, he was selected to become one of the English translators for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Since 2008, he has travelled extensively with His Holiness to nine countries around the world. In 2009, Sera Mey Monastery conferred upon him the Rigchung Degree.
In 2011, he travelled to several Tibetan camps in South India and gave extensive talks on Buddhism. He joined the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in 2016 and simultaneously completed his two final years of Gelugpa University Examinations. He became a Geshe Lharampa, [equivalent of Doctor of Divinity] in January 2019. Geshe Ngawang Sonam has been a speaker at conferences with scientists on many occasions, including two panels on Quantum Physics and Buddhism last fall. He has taught in India at various Buddhist communities and given lectures at Tibetan schools and college hostels. ([https://drikungdharmasurya.org/2022/01/venerable-geshe-ngawang-sonam/ Source Accessed Apr 7, 2025]) +
Geshe Tenley is the Resident Teacher at Kurukulla Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies in Boston. He was born in the Kham region of Tibet and attended Sera Jey Monastic University in India. He received his geshe degree (equivalent to a Western doctorate) from Sera Jey in 2008. He is very approachable and personable, and people often comment on his kindness and warm-heartedness.
In addition to teaching classes and leading pujas several times a week at Kurukulla Center, Geshe-la is involved in an amazing array of activities to bring benefit to people in the Boston area, including teachings and pujas for the local Tibetan community, interfaith celebrations with religious leaders of other faith traditions, events at other local Buddhist organizations, and serving as a chaplain for Boston-area hospitals. ([https://namdrol-ling.com/geshe-ngawang-tenley/ Source Accessed Oct 29, 2021]) +
Born in Gayul in Kham in 1974, he joined Labda Ganden Monastery in 1988 and learned prayers and rituals. In 1994, he arrived in India and joined Sera Je Monastery and started his study of Buddhist literature, including the five great treatises. In 1998, he received full monastic ordination from H.H. the Dalai Lama and finished training in the Middle Way and Perfection Studies in 2002 and 2006 respectively. In 2012, 2014, and 2016, he sat for the Grand Geluk Examinations and received the certificates of Karam, Lopen, and Lharam Geshe respectively. Following this, in 2017, he undertook tantric studies at Gyume College and was awarded first place. He presented a paper at the conference on Abhidharma among Buddhist and Bön and organized the conference on the Middle Way view at Sera Monastery and the conference on reality in Pramāṇa literature at Ganden Monastery. Since 2006, he has also been teaching Buddhism and Tibetan language to youth and regularly writes and speaks in newspapers, radio, online forums on Tibetan religion and culture, and gives classes and lectures. Currently, he is about to complete his research on the Middle Way views of the Tibetan Buddhist traditions and is undertaking an in-depth study of Middle Way literature while also teaching at Sera Je. +
Born in 1979 in Khyungpo Tengchen, he became a monk at the age of eight under Lamrim Lama Pema Dorje and joined Dilgo Samtenling Monastery, where he studied reading, writing, prayers, and rituals. In 1996, he arrived in India and joined Ganden Shartse College. He finished his study of the five great treatises and in 2012 sat for the series of Grand Geluk Examinations. In 2018, he finished the course with the final defense for Lharam Geshe at the Grand Prayer Festival. After this, he undertook tantric studies at Gyuto Monastery and in 2019 he served on the Academic Council of Ganden Shartse. He currently teaches at Ganden Shartse and is also undertaking research on the Middle Way under the International Geluk Commission. +
Geshe Pema Dorjee is an internationally recognized authority, scholar, and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. His fluent English, keen intellect, clear and practical explanations, warm-hearted nature, and infectious sense of humor enrich his talks and discussions with meaning and inspiration.
He was born into a nomadic family in Tibet in 1951. They escaped from the invading Chinese, and he settled in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the home of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
From 1973 to 1981 at the Institute of Buddhist Dialectics founded by H.H. the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, he completed an undergraduate degree and two Masters degrees in Buddhist Philosophy, one in Prajnaparamita (the Perfection of Wisdom) and one in Madhyamika (the Middle Way).
For the next 16 years, he dedicated himself to the Tibetan Children’s Village School located in Dharamsala. For nine of those years, he taught Tibetan Buddhism, language, and culture. In 1990, he was appointed Principal of the school, and from 1993 to 1997 he was its Director.
In 1995, he earned his Geshe degree at the Drepung Loseling Monastery.
Geshe Pema Dorjee served for two years as the Principal of the Tibetan Teachers Training Center. He was then named the first Principal of the College for Higher Tibetan Studies, and he remained in charge of that College from 1997 to 2002.
The Tibetan government-in-exile asked him to undertake various tasks. The Cabinet, for example, appointed him to the Higher Level Textbook Review Committee. His Holiness appointed him as a member of the Public Service Commission. The Department of Health appointed him as spiritual counselor to former political prisoners who had been tortured.
In 2001, H. H. the Dalai Lama asked Geshe Pema Dorjee to revive an important part of Tibetan Buddhism that had fallen into desuetude, the Bodong tradition. Fulfilling this task required him to establish both a scholarly project and a very practical one. To find the lost writings of that ancient tradition, to study them, translate them, and publish them, he founded in 2003 and continues to direct the [[Bodong Research and Publication Center]] in Dharamsala. To educate new monks in the Bodong tradition, he founded and continues to direct the Bodong monastery and school known as Porong Pelmo Choeding in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Although he insists that he is only a simple monk, Geshe Pema Dorjee lives the compassionate life about which he preaches. He travels to the most remote and impoverished regions of Himalayan India and Nepal. After a thorough analysis of what is most needed, he creates, organizes, directs, and raises funds for numerous humanitarian projects.
These projects include establishing schools, arranging medical care for the sick and injured, providing care for the elderly, creating an orphanage, supporting a drug rehabilitation center, educating villagers to protect them from human trafficking, creating a safe house for street girls, helping young people in Tibetan refugee camps, introducing new agricultural techniques, and providing safe water, toilets, and smokeless cookstoves.
Since 1997, he has donated much of his time to teaching and lecturing about Buddhist philosophy in countries around the world, including Sweden, England, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Finland, Norway, France, Estonia, India, Nepal, and Israel.
Since 2009, Geshe Pema Dorjee has lectured and taught in cities across the United States, including New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, Miami, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston and Cambridge. (Source: [https://tibethouse.us/presenter/geshe-pema-dorjee/ Tibet House US])
Geshe Rabten (1921–1986) was a Tibetan Geshe born in Tibet in 1921.
He was a student at Sera Monastery in Lhasa, and achieved Geshe status before leaving Tibet in 1959. He became known as a debater, scholar, and meditation master.
Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche were guided by him in their early days outside of Tibet.
In the mid 1960s Geshe Rabten was a religious assistant to the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama asked him to teach Dharma to Westerners in Dharamshala in 1969.
He went to teach in Switzerland in 1974.
He was the founder of the Rabten Choeling Centre (which was originally named Tharpa Choeling) in Switzerland in 1979. He remained there till his death in 1986.
Other centres that he founded in Europe included the Tibetan centre in Hamburg, Tashi Rabten at the Letzehof, Puntsog Rabten in Munich and Gephel Ling in Milan. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geshe_Rabten Source Accessed Feb 23, 2023]) +
Geshe Sonam Ngodrup, was born in 1968 in the Ganze region of Kham, Tibet and left at the age of 13 to study Buddhism in India. He was ordained as a novice monk at Sera Jey Monastery that year, and at the age of 21 received full ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Over the years he regularly attended many of His Holiness’ teachings in India. At Sera Jey, he studied the philosophical texts primarily with Khensur Rinpoche Dorje Tashi, Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Delek, and Geshe Karma Sonam.
Geshe la graduated as a Geshe Lharampa from Sera Jey Monastery in first position in 2003, and in 2004 completed a year of tantric studies at Gyumed Monastery in Hunsur. He was one of the most popular petri geygan (official scripture teachers) at Sera Jey with several hundred students, teaching complex topics of the monastic curriculum. He also served in various capacities at the monastery including as khangtsen gen at Tehor Khangtsen. In addition, Geshe la taught sutra studies at Dzongkhar Choede and Gyumed monasteries where his classes were in high demand. In 2011, Geshe la came to the West, teaching the topics of the Basic Program first at Nalanda Monastery in France and then at Maitreya Institute in the Netherlands, in addition to courses on introductory Buddhism throughout Europe. While in Europe he received teachings and empowerments from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche in particular.
In 2019, Geshe la settled in Canada. He is a well-loved teacher whose vast scriptural knowledge is tempered by a naturally humble nature and profound non-sectarian approach to the study of the teachings. ([https://lamayesheling.org/teachers-and-facilitators/ Source Accessed Nov 24, 2025]) +
Geshe Sonam Rinchen was born in 1933 at Dhargyey, in the Trehor Kham region of Eastern Tibet. At the age of thirteen, he decided to become a monk and entered Dhargyey Monastery, where he excelled in his studies and in debate. When he was nineteen, he made the two and a half month journey on foot to Central Tibet in order to enter Sera Je College of Sera Monastery. He became a fully ordained monk and remained there for the next six years until his studies were interrupted by the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, which forced him into exile in India.
For the following nine years, he lived with many other monks under extremely harsh conditions in Buxa Duar, West Bengal, in what had previously been a British internment camp. In 1967, he entered what is now the Central University of Tibetan Studies in Sarnath and stayed there until 1976, obtaining the degrees of Shastri and Acharya with honors. In 1980, he took the public examinations for the monastic title of Geshe. He received the highest qualification, that of Geshe Lharampa.
Geshe Sonam Rinchen taught at the Library of Tibetan Works & Archives in Dharmsala, India for over 30 years. He published ten books in collaboration with his translator Ruth Sonam including Aryadeva’s Four Hundred Stanzas on the Middle Way, The Heart Sutra, The Bodhisattva Vow, the Six Perfections, How Karma Works, and Atisha’s Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment. ([https://sravastiabbey.org/advisory-member/geshe-sonam-rinchen/ Source Accessed Sep 29, 2022]) +
Venerable Geshe Tenzin Chodrak (Dadul Namgyal) is a prominent scholar in Tibetan Buddhism. He has a doctorate (Geshe Lharampa) in Buddhism and Philosophy from the Drepung Monastic University earned in 1992. He also holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Panjab University in Chandigarh, India.
Author of several articles on Buddhism, Geshe-la was also a professor of Philosophy at Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies at Sarnath, Varanasi, India for seven years. In addition, he has been the Spiritual Director of LSLK Tibetan Buddhist Center, Knoxville, USA.
Due to his facility in both Tibetan and English, he has served as interpreter and speaker for numerous conferences exploring the interface of Buddhism with modern science, Western philosophy and psychology, and other religious traditions on both a national and international level. His language ability has also enabled him to serve as an English language translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama throughout the world.
As a published author and translator, Geshe-la’s credits include a Tibetan translation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s ''Power of Compassion'', a language manual, ''Learn English through Tibetan'', and a critical work on Tsongkhapa’s ''Speech of Gold''. He also serves as a Board Member for Tibet House, New York.
From 2010 until recently, he had served as Senior Resident Teacher at Drepung Loseling Monastery in Atlanta. Around the same time, he began full-time position as Senior Translator/Interpreter with the Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-based Ethics at Emory University, Atlanta. There he was working in producing a six-year bilingual (English and Tibetan) science curriculum and preparing additional research & pedagogy materials in Modern Science for use in Tibetan monasteries and nunneries.
Geshe-la visited several times, inspiring us with his passion for Madhyamaka philosophy and his sheer joy in sharing Buddha’s teachings. See photos of Geshe-la teaching at Sravasti Abbey in 2016.
The Sravasti Abbey community is delighted that Geshe-la is now a resident teacher at the Abbey. He brings his abundant knowledge, compassion, and humility and acts as an excellent role model for new monastics at the Abbey. Since joining our community, he has decided to go by his ordination name, Venerable Tenzin Chodrak. (Source: [https://sravastiabbey.org/advisory-member/geshe-dadul-namgyal/ sravastiabbey.org])
Geshe Tenzin Namdak is a highly respected Buddhist scholar and teacher, and the resident Geshe at Jamyang Buddhist Centre London, where he leads structured study programmes including FPMT’s Discovering Buddhism, Exploring Buddhism, and Basic Program, advanced teachings on Buddhist philosophy, Lojong (mind training), and the Lamrim (stages of the path to enlightenment).
He also offers special courses on traditional texts written by great Indian and Tibetan masters such as Nagarjuna, Atisha, Shantideva, and Je Tsongkhapa, as well as special teaching evenings and weekend intensives. All of his teachings are offered in English. In addition, Geshe Namdak leads regular Puja and prayer practice services on behalf of the Jamyang community.
One of the first Westerners to complete the full traditional Geshe degree, Geshe Namdak trained for over 20 years at Sera Jey Monastic University in India, receiving a rigorous monastic education in classical Buddhist philosophy and psychology. He completed the one-year Vajrayana study programme at Gyume Tantric College, deepening his expertise in the Buddhist Tantras. ([https://jamyang.co.uk/geshe-namdak-biography-2025/ Source Accessed Oct 28, 2025]) +
Geshe Tenzin Zopa holds a doctorate in Buddhist Philosophy from Sera Jey Monastic University in South India and is a master in Tibetan Buddhist rituals. He is currently the Resident Teacher at Losang Dragpa Buddhist Society, Malaysia and was for a long time the Director of the Tsum Valley Project (in the Himalayan region), which provides Buddhist study and practice facilities and accommodation for the community in the Valley. Geshe Tenzin
Zopa is the principal and focal point of the award winning film titled "Unmistaken Child" which chronicles the search for the reincarnation of his great master. Geshe Tenzin Zopa has a contemporary style of teaching which he combines with the ancient wisdom derived from his years of philosophical studies and debate, thereby benefitting everyone who has met or heard him teach. Geshe Tenzin Zopa is the face of a dynamic and socially engaged Buddhism in the 21st century. ([http://www.tenzinzopa.com/Ebooks/Cttb_Book_Final_Complete.pdf Source Accessed Jan 14, 2021]) +
Geshe Thubten Ngawang was the spiritual director of Tibetisches Zentrum V. Hamburg (Tibetan Centre Germany).
In 1979 Geshe Rinpoche was appointed spiritual director of the Tibetan Centre by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Patron of the Centre. Geshe Rinpoche was a living example of a Buddhist monk and gave teachings on Tibetan Buddhism throughout Germany for 23 years. Through his continual presence he played an important role in the initial establishment and the transmission of the Buddhist doctrine to the West.
As a scholar and meditation master who received most of his religious education in old Tibet, Geshe Thubtan Ngawang belonged to a generation of Tibetan lamas who directly experienced what is most probably the last flowering of their advanced civilization and bear the responsibility for the preservation of the Tibetan religion and culture in exile.
An important concern of his was the friendly exchange with representatives of other religions, scientists and other groups in society. School classes and adult groups visit the Tibetan Centre regularly in order to learn about Buddhism from an authentic source. In 1984 the so-called interfaith dialogue was established at Hamburg University. Geshe Thubten Ngawang played an active role in the discussions with representatives of various religious groups.
In 1998 the Tibetan Centre, under the leadership of Geshe Thubten Ngawang, organized its largest event in Schneverdingen/Lüneburg Heath. Here His Holiness the Dalai Lama taught “Buddhas Weg zum Glück” (Buddha’s path to happiness). At the invitation of Geshe Thubten Ngawang His Holiness resided in the meditation house Semkye Ling for ten days and blessed it with his presence. Before that the Patron had visited Hamburg and the Tibetan Centre at Geshe Rinpoche’s invitation in 1982 and 1991.
From 2000 onwards, alongside his active teaching programme, Geshe Rinpoche continued his preparatory practices for his three-year retreat, which he was planning to begin at the end of 2003. ([https://www.phayul.com/2003/01/16/3624/ Adapted from Source Mar 31, 2021])
Geshe Thubten Soepa was born in Zanskar, India in 1955. At the age of fourteen he entered the monastery of Dromo Geshe Rinpoche in Kalimpong and at 19, he was sent to Sera Je Monastery in South India.
Geshe Soepa took his novice vows before Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche and his full vows before Kyabje Ling Dorjechang, the 97th head of the Gelug tradition (Tib: Ganden Tri Rinpoche). He also received many teachings and initiations from them, as well as from Ganden Zong Rinpoche. He attained the lharumpa geshe degree at Sera Je in 1997.
After three years as resident teacher at Dzongkha Chode monastery, Lama Zopa Rinpoche invited Geshe Soepa to be the resident geshe of Aryatara Institut in Munich, Germany, where he taught for ten years.
Geshe Soepa has travelled extensively in Europe and the United States, and teaches at many FPMT centers around the world. He is respected for his teachings on cherishing animals and is well known for his advocacy of animal rights and his stance on leading a vegetarian life.
''Protecting the Lives of Helpless Beings'', a book by Geshe Soepa, presents a detailed discussion in support of vegetarianism and animal welfare.
He passed away in Mysore, India, on November 2, 2022. ([https://www.lamayeshe.com/teacher/geshe-thubten-soepa Source Accessed Oct 29, 2021]) +
Geshe Tsultim Gyeltsen (1923 – February 13, 2009) was a Tibetan lama and human rights activist living in the United States. Gyeltsen had been described as "one of the last living Tibetan Buddhist masters to have been trained in Tibet" before 1959.
Geshe Gyeltsen founded the Thubten Dhargye Ling Buddhist center in 1978. He was a member of the same Buddhist sect, known as the Gelug or Yellow Hat sect, as the 14th Dalai Lama.
Gyeltsen was born Jamphel Yeshe in 1923, in Kham, an eastern ethno-cultural Tibet. He became a Buddhist monk when he was seven years old. He traveled to the Gaden Monastery near Lhasa when he was sixteen years old. Gyeltsen remained as a student at the monastery for the next twenty years.
Gyeltsen and fifty other Tibetan monks fled to India following the 14th Dalai Lama during the 1959 Tibetan uprising. His group, which included fifty monks, travelled for a month over the Himalaya Mountains. Upon reaching the Indian town of Dalhousie, he completed his Buddhist studies at Gyuto Tantric College. He earned the rank and title of Geshe, which has been described as a "doctorate of Tibetan Buddhism", while living in a refugee camp in West Bengal. Gyeltsen went to England in 1963, where he spent more than a decade educating Tibetan refugee children in Tibetan language, culture, and Buddhist philosophy in the United Kingdom. In 1970, Gyeltsen undid his vows and married Jennifer Humphries. While married, Gyeltsen continued teaching Buddhism. In 1976, his wife gave birth to their only child; a boy they named, Tsewang Gyeltsen.
Gyeltsen immigrated to the United States from the United Kingdom in 1976. Shortly after, he and his wife mutually divorced. Gyeltsen then reinstated his vows as a monk and began teaching Tibetan language, meditation and religious studies as a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of California, Los Angeles. Gyeltsen founded the Thubten Dhargye Ling Buddhist Center in Los Angeles (later Long Beach) in 1978. Gyeltsen also founded Tibetan Buddhist centers throughout North America, including Texas, Colorado, Alaska, Mexico, the Grass Valley in northern California, as well as Europe.
Gyeltsen hosted the Dalai Lama on visits to Los Angeles on six separate occasions. The most recent visit by the Dalai Lama was in 2006.
He served as a member of the board of directors of the International Campaign for Tibet, an independence group founded by actor Richard Gere. Gyeltsen wrote the books ''Mirror of Wisdom and Compassion: The Key to Great Awakening''.
Geshe Gyeltsen died on February 13, 2009, at his home at the Thubten Dhargye Ling Buddhist center at the age of 85 after a short illness. Gyeltsen cremation ceremony was held in southern India. His relics were then returned to the center. Gyeltsen is survived by a son, Tsewang Gyeltsen of Long Beach; a sister and several nieces and nephews. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geshe_Gyeltsen Source Accessed Jan 29, 2025])
Ngawang Wangyal (Tibetan: ངག་དབང་དབང་རྒྱལ་, Wylie: ''Ngag-dbang Dbang-rgyal''), aka Sogpo (Mongolian) Wangyal, popularly known as "Geshe Wangyal" and "America's first lama," was a Buddhist lama and scholar of Kalmyk origin who was born in the Astrakhan province in southeast Russia sometime in 1901. He developed the code for the CIA that aided the Dalai Lam's escape from Tibet, spearheaded a two decade long undertaking to lift political proscriptions on US visits by the Dalai Lama, opened the first Tibetan Buddhist dharma center in the West, and trained the first generation of Tibetan Buddhist scholars in America. He is considered a "founding figure" of Buddhism in the West.
(Read more [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngawang_Wangyal here]) +
Professor Geshe Yeshe Thabkhe was born in 1930 in Lhokha, Central Tibet, and became a monk at Drepung Loseling Monastery at the age of thirteen. After completing his studies in 1969, Geshe Thabkhe was awarded the highest academic degree offered in the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism. Since 1972, he has served as professor of the Indian tradition of Buddhist philosophy at Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, the only Tibetan university in India. He has also served as a lecturer at the School of Buddhist Philosophy, Leh, Ladakh, and at Sanskrit University in Sarnath. His works include Hindi translations of Tsongkhapa’s ''Essence of Good Explanation of the Definitive and Interpretable'' and Kamalaśīla’s commentary on the ''Rice Seedling Sutra''. He was the primary traditional source for the English translation of Tsongkhapa’s ''Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path''. He is a resident teacher at the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in New Jersey and has also taught at Drepung Loseling in Georgia, Jewel Heart in Michigan, and Sravasti Abbey in Washington State. (Source: [https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/geshe-yeshe-thabkhe/ Wisdom Publications]) +
Geshe Yeshe Tobden was born in 1926 to a family of wealthy farmers in Ngadra, a village one day's walk south of Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and became a monk at age twelve. After the Chinese invasion of his homeland in 1959, he was arrested, but escaped, and spent two years crossing the Tibetan Plateau on foot until reaching the border with India. He completed his geshe studies in India, and spent several years teaching at the university in Varanasi. When he was forty-four, he told the Dalai Lama of his desire to live out his days in meditation retreat, for, from his boyhood, he had deeply desired the realization of reununciation, bodhichitta, and emptiness. Released from his duties at the university, he made his main residence a one-room hut above McLeod Ganj, the town in India where the Dalai Lama lives. There he lived for the remainder of his life, apart from a few teaching tours abroad, notably to fledgling Buddhist centers in Italy where these teachings were delivered. Geshe Yeshe Tobden passed away in McLeod Ganj in 1999.
(Source: [http://www.wisdompubs.org/author/geshe-yeshe-tobden Wisdom Publications]) +
