Lama Yeshe Ling is honoured to welcome Khensur Rinpoche to our community. This is a very precious and rare opportunity to receive teachings from one of the few remaining traditionally trained Lamas from Tibet. Without having to travel to India or Nepal, we can make a close connection with these teachings and highly qualified teacher right here!
Khensur Rinpoche is also the uncle of our Geshe Sonam, making this visit even more special.
Program details and dates are to come. We will welcome your support and participation to make this event a success. Many opportunities for sponsorship and volunteering will be possible. Please stay tuned for more details.
*** Please say prayers that Rinpoche’s attendants will also get Canadian visas. This will allow Khensur Rinpoche to be with us for a longer time.
The 74th abbot of Sera Jey Monastery, Khensur Rinpoche Jetsun Lobsang Delek, was born in 1939 in Kardze, Kham (Eastern Tibet). Known to his students and friends as Gen Umalajugpa, he is one of the few remaining great lamas partly trained in Tibet.
Khensur Rinpoche entered monastic as life as a getsul (novice monk) at his home monastery in Kardze, but at the age of seventeen left his hometown to study Buddhist philosophy at the great monastic university of Sera Jey in Lhasa.
Following the annexation of Tibet in 1959, he escaped to India with a few of his fellow monks to follow His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The first years in India were difficult, with Khensur Rinpoche and a handful of other monks staying at the former British prison outpost of Buxadaur in West Bengal, repurposed to allow the monks to revive their monastic studies and traditions. In 1965 he received the full gelong ordination from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and in the 1970s relocated to South India to help re-establish Sera Monastery on land granted by the Indian government.
In addition to working to re-establish Sera Jey in exile, Khensur Rinpoche engaged seriously in his studies of Buddhist philosophy, completing his Lharampa Geshe degree with first position honours in 1982. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the respective monastic communities requested him to serve in several important leadership roles after he completed his education: in 2005 he served for three years as the abbot of Gyume Tantric College, one of the two main study centres within the Gelug tradition for the study of Vajrayāna. In 2012 he was appointed as the abbot of Sera Jey monastery, one of the largest Gelug philosophical universities in exile and served in that role for five years.
Even while serving in these important leadership roles, Khensur Rinpoche continued to teach advanced Buddhist philosophy to his many monastic students, in addition to traveling to Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, USA, Switzerland, Belgium and Canada to teach dharma to interested students. In particular, it is a rare opportunity for students to meet a lama trained partly in old Tibet and thoroughly accomplished in the study of both sūtra and tantra, including the completion of many important retreats. His deep knowledge and unassuming and compassionate nature deeply touch audiences wherever he goes.