Profile

Geshe Lobsang Tenpa was born in Ortok in Kham (Eastern Tibet) in 1963. His father was captured and tortured whilst fighting the Chinese invasion of 1950 before his family went on to suffer greatly during the Cultural Revolution with his mother starving to death.

During his teenage years Lobsang Tenpa earned his living as a nomadic farmer. By the age of 17 he had become increasingly interested in Buddhism. As reading scriptures was forbidden at the time, he conducted his studies in secret. In the early 1980s some of the monasteries were reopened, enabling him to join one founded by Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche.

In 1984 he left Tibet to further his studies at the prestigious Drepung Gomang Monastery in South India. There he received a Geshe degree (PhD equivalent) in 1997. He spent a significant amount of time in the 1990s in Russia teaching Buddhism.

While abroad Lobsang Tenpa and Rinpoche were in continuous communication. In 2000 Lobsang Tenpa returned to Tibet at the request of Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche in order to assist with humanitarian projects. During that time Rinpoche and his associates were being subjected to increasingly tight surveillance and soon after arriving Lobsang Tenpa was detained and subsequently tortured.

Upon his release he managed to escape from Tibet and in 2001 he received political asylum in the United States. He now lives in New York where he is an executive member of the Tibetan community of New York and New Jersey. He contributed significantly to Human Rights Watch's report Trials of a Tibetan Monk: The Case of Tenzin Deleg.