• His Holiness the Dalai Lama
• Ven. Lama Thubten Yeshe - Founder of FPMT
• Ven. Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche - Spiritual Director of FPMT
• Ven. Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche
• Geshe Sherab
• Visiting Teachers

Ven. Lama Thubten Yeshe - Founder of FPMT

1935-1984

Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered Sera Monastic University in Tibet where he studied until 1959, when as Lama Yeshe himself has said, "In that year the Chinese kindly told us that it was time to leave Tibet and meet the outside world." Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, together as teacher and disciple since their exile in India, met their first Western students in 1965. By 1971 they settled at Kopan, a small hamlet near Kathmandu in Nepal. In 1974, the Lamas began touring and teaching in the West, which would eventually result in The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. Lama Yeshe died in 1984, his reincarnation Lama Tenzin Ösel Rinpoche was born to Spanish parents in 1985.