Our Teacher

Venerable Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Tenzin

Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Tenzin, Geshe Wangdak, was born in 1934 in the Kham province in Tibet. At age ten he entered Ba Zingon Monastery. At 18, Rinpoche journeyed to central Tibet and joined the Loseling College at Drepung Monastery near Lhasa, where he studied until 1959. In 1960, after fleeing to India, he resumed his studies at Buxa, where a temporary monastery was established. In 1970, he moved to the newly relocated Drepung Monastic University in Mundgod, South India. After two years of intensive study and practice he moved to Sarnath, studying there until 1977. Rinpoche returned to Drepung to take his Geshe exams, and his scholastic achievement earned him the Geshe Lharampa degree.

Soon after completing his Geshe exams, he was invited to teach at Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India, where he was senior teacher for 14 years, teaching both sutra and tantra. While at Namgyal, Rinpoche received initiations and teachings of tantric practices of all four traditions of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1991, he was appointed Abbot of the monastery by H.H. the Dalai Lama, a position he held until 1994. In 1995, His Holiness appointed Khensur Rinpoche Abbot and Senior Resident Teacher at Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca, NY. He retired from Ithaca in 1998, and now resides at the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center in Middletown, Connecticut.

Besides his studies in the core curriculum under his tutor at Drepung, Khensur Pema Gyaltsen, Khensur Rinpoche received tantric initiations from H.H. the Dalai Lama and many other teachers.