His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Naresh Mathur. Photo courtesy of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

We are saddened to share the news that Naresh Sahai Mathur passed away at the age of 67, in New Delhi, India, on April 25, 2021, of COVID-19. Naresh was an early student of FPMT founders Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and a long-time FPMT volunteer. Kabir Saxena, also a long-time FPMT student who currently serves as the spiritual program coordinator at Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre in New Delhi, wrote a personal remembrance of Naresh to share with the international FPMT community.

By Kabir Saxena

With the recent untimely passing away of Naresh Mathur—another victim of the second murderous wave of COVID-19—the Indian Buddhist sangha, his friends worldwide, as well as the Tibetan community, have lost an invaluable supporter, legal advisor, and much beloved friend.

Naresh was born in Old Delhi in 1954, close to where some twenty-five years later the pioneers of Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre would be living. It’s a testimony to his great intellectual and spiritual thirst that he was willing and able to seek beyond his quality education in sociology and law at two of Delhi’s esteemed establishments and find himself at the doors of both Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre and Tibet House in Delhi.

While the practice of law provided his bread and butter, it was Buddhist studies that quickly established their prominence in Naresh’s heart and mind. Early on he had the great good fortune to receive personal, one-on-one teachings on lamrim and Madhyamaka from the renowned Geshe Palden Drakpa, who became a lifelong friend of the family and a recipient of Naresh’s generous medical help. It was, I believe, this deep experience of the teachings with Geshe-la that made Naresh a lifelong proponent of the sublime Nalanda parampara (tradition), with its emphasis on the guru-disciple relationship, logical inquiry, and debate. It was to these teachings that Naresh returned again and again; even in the last decade of his life, he was an important part of the core group of students at Geshe Dorji Damdul’s Tibet House Nalanda Masters Course.

Naresh was a lover of knowledge, a philosopher in the true sense of the word, and all his life he combined that with his work as a lawyer in the High and Supreme Courts in Delhi.

Naresh Mathur

When I first met him in 1980, he was a bright and extremely handsome young man, much impressed by his contact with Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Naresh went on to be a director of Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre, an organizer of the Dharma Celebrations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Delhi, and the creator of Root Institute for Wisdom Culture’s Trust Deed in 1984 in Bodhgaya. He remained a trustee until a few months before his death.

His dedication to the cause of bringing the Dharma back to Indian people was profound and lasting. He participated in the teachings His Holiness gave to small groups of Indian students in the early 1980s and despite his heavy workload would, almost thirty years later, travel to Bodhgaya for the weekends to give teachings in Hindi to local students.

Naresh unstintingly helped the Tibetan cause with his legal talents and the list of his efforts on their behalf would be too long to include here. As an example, it was largely due to his legal actions that the Tibetan Colony of Majnu Ka Tila in Delhi was saved from destruction. Tenzin Geyche Tethong, former secretary to His Holiness, recalled how he had known Naresh since 1980 and how he greatly admired his interest in and knowledge of Buddhism, and also appreciated Naresh’s contribution to the Dalai Lama Trust of which he was a trustee.

In addition to his connection with Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and FPMT, Naresh had a close connection with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche and his Deer Park Institute in Bir, as well as with Samdhong Rinpoche, whose Gandhian vision, critique of modernity, and Dharma advice were like nectar for Naresh.

Naresh was a lover of the meditative dhrupad style of Indian classical music, and we also spent many happy moments listening to Bob Dylan together. He could also be quite mischievous, and we would especially enjoy making silent and secret fun of speakers at conferences whom we considered not up to the mark.

He was a practitioner, especially of the Madhyamaka and the Kalachakra, and was increasingly drawn to extended practice in the last year of his life, according to his wife, Antonella. Throughout his life he had inspired and encouraged a younger generation of students by his example.

For me, and I am sure for many others, including his dear circle of Italian and international friends, Naresh was like family. His deep soulful eyes were those of the eternal seeker and lover; they grabbed you. My father, to whom Naresh was very loving and generous, used to say that going by Naresh’s piercing gaze, he was always in a state of otherworldly intoxication!

In his last year, during long walks together in the woods near his home in south Delhi, Naresh would always steer the conversation to the Dharma, the importance of a grounding in lamrim, and his great love and obsession: the presentation of emptiness in the Gelug tradition. Despite his allegiance to many lamas of different schools of Tibetan Buddhism, he always seemed to be happily and no doubt karmically tethered to the pole of Lama Tsongkhapa’s works and Geshe Palden Dragpa’s teachings.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Naresh Mathur. Photo courtesy of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

After his passing, His Holiness the Dalai Lama made the encouraging pronouncement that Naresh was his disciple, that we should not worry, and that he would take a good rebirth and would remember this life of his. The passing of this kind-hearted and generous man, still somewhat unreal and unbelievable to some of us, leaves a big void in many lives. Naresh is survived by his wife, Antonella, a gifted healer; daughter, Mudita, a talented graphic designer; and son, Atisha, a profound, upcoming teacher of the Dharma, especially of Buddhist logic, the subject matter his dear departed father so admired and communicated so readily to those fortunate enough to cross his path.

The FPMT India community organized a moving online prayer meeting and memorial for Naresh Mathur on May 5, 2021, with Naresh’s family and many long-time students around the world joining in. You can watch the two-hour recording of the Zoom call:
https://www.facebook.com/1652241455007411/videos/457118005515720/?__so__=channel_tab&__rv__=all_videos_card

For more on practices recommended by Lama Zopa Rinpoche at time of death and other resources to support yourself and loved ones at time of death, please visit fpmt.org/death/.

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