Lise Lotte, Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Maria Damsholt.. Photo thanks to CVM and Maria Damsholt.

Lise Lotte Brooks passed away of ALS on May 29, 2024 at age 77 in Denmark. 

Lise Lotte founded Center for Wisdom and Compassion (CVM) in 1996 with Maria Damsholt. Here we share her obituary, which is also the story of CVM, written by Maria Damsholt: 

Lise Lotte was born in Copenhagen 1946 of Danish parents. Around 1970 her parents got a divorce and Lotte chose to stay with the father, so he should not feel abandoned. It shows her kind mind. But not long after she went to Nepal to visit her old friend Åge Delbanco in Kathmandu. There she met her first husband, Chotak, and of course Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. She soon took Buddhist refuge there.

Lise Lotte and Chotak. Photo by Åge Dlebanco courtesy of LYWA.

Later her husband became a monk, and Lama Yeshe invited Lotte to live at Kopan Monastery with their two sons Thor and Jon. The little family built a nice little house up there which remained at Kopan for many years. Lotte took care of the children, and Chotak (the father) was able to go there and say hello. 

Later her husband disrobed but was pursuing relationships with other women. I remember Lotte told me that Lama Yeshe told her to take her two children, move on in her life, and be proud and trusting in her own abilities. Lama Yeshe supported Lotte very much.
 
At some point Lotte moved to Sweden to a collective with the two children. They also lived at Vajrapani Institute in California, and at the new FPMT center Manjushri Institute on the countryside in England. She also moved to Hong Kong and made a business of making clothes and selling them. She made very good friends everywhere. She was so very good at connecting with people.
 
Around the time I met Lotte, toward the beginning of the 1990s, she started the company Silk Bliss, where she designed the clothes, and had them made in Hong Kong or elsewhere in China.
 
I myself took refuge with Lama Zopa Rinpoche in Holland at Maitreya Institute in 1990 and went to a long retreat in Dharamsala, where I had the luck and good fortune to meet Lama Zopa Rinpoche in an audience while the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe, Lama Osel, was a kid playing around there at Tushita Retreat Centre in Dharamsala.

Rinpoche encouraged me to translate some Dharma books and to go ahead with a project taking care of people who were dying. He gave us the three principles we still work from within that project, and somehow planted the idea in me that we should have a Danish FPMT center. Coming back home I really wondered how to do that, since all the Buddhists I met was connected to other lamas. But I prayed for it to happen.
 
I met Lotte through Kari Cuelenaere, whom I met in Kathmandu the year before I took refuge. At the time when I met Lotte, she had moved back to Denmark and lived in Ballonparken on Amager. Since she also knew Kari and she wanted to bring some goods to Kari, I managed to go out there and meet Lotte. One day I asked Lotte, if we should start a FPMT center in Denmark and lo and behold, she said yes. Luckily at that time I lived in a big house in Emdrup so we had our first gompa there. Among others Lakha Lama joined us in opening the new center. 

Maria, Kari Cuelenaere and Lise Lotte in the beginning of the 1990s. Photo courtesy of Maria Damsholt.

In the autumn 1997 we were called to the grand opening of the Jamyang Centre in London. Rinpoche gave us the name Tong-nyi Nying-je Ling, Center for Wisdom and Compassion (CVM). Lotte was to be the director and I was to be the coordinator of the death and dying project which at that time I called, Center for Conscious Living & Dying (later we got the name Pure Land of Medicine Buddha), and Rinpoche said it was most important to teach and be aware of the Buddhist way of helping people when they die.
 
While we stayed in Emdrup, Rinpoche came and blessed the center around 2000. Rinpoche gave Tara initiation and Medicine Buddha initiation. Lotte managed to get all the beautiful pictures of Lama Tsong Khapa and framed them in frames painted with gold. Lotte also managed to get carpets in our gompa and made a lot of very nice dark red cushions. She was able to sew very, very nice things and she always looked so beautiful too. She was very efficient. After Rinpoche left, we were almost drunk from pure happiness. We could not stop laughing.
 
After some years Lotte managed to find a place in Copenhagen, Klerkegade, where we rented a business flat. Lotte made a big curtain to draw for the altar so we could use the place for courses and supervisions for Center for Conscious Living and Dying. 
 
Other dedicated Dharma students became involved in CVM and Tine Norup and I went to Vajrayogini Institute for a course with Rinpoche to ask if we should move in the place where Phendeling Buddhist Center was establishing itself, or find a place for us alone, since Klerkegade was too expensive for us.

According to Rinpoche it was even better to move into Phendeling’s big place. And since the death and dying project was able to get funds, we had furniture, printing machine, sound equipment, etc. and we could pay for the office.

In 2015 Rinpoche came again and gave Medicine Buddha initiation. We had a picnic at Nykøbing Sjælland where Rinpoche gave a teaching on how to bless the food among other things and held a meeting for the Nordic and Baltic FPMT centers and projects. Rinpoche and his entourage stayed at Lotusgaard, where Lotte had lived for some years with her husband Glenn and where they had a bed and breakfast.
 
At that time Lotte was no longer director of the center but she was very involved in translating Dharma books into Danish through the publishing service Forlaget Dharma Visdom. Lotte has translated the books Lamrim Outlines by Karin Walham and How to Meditate by Sangye Khadro into Danish. Sangye Khadro was going to be our residential teacher, but it became too expensive for us, so we had to move out of Nybrogade, which was such a beautiful place, and since then CVM has mostly had its physical events at Phendeling.
 
Lotte was a very, very kind and loving person. She was an excellent center director, good at connecting with people. She had a very tender mind, but she also could be very firm. She had to be firm with me sometimes. For that I respected her very much.
 
She was beautiful outside and inside. I will miss her for her peaceful, calm, and tender mind. And for all the laughter we had together in many situations. I was the first person outside the family she told about her sickness which was a special gift of trust from her side I appreciate very much. 

Written by Maria Damsholt, co-founder of CVM and coordinator of Pure Land of Medicine Buddha. Edited for inclusion on fpmt.org. 

Please pray that Lise Lotte may never ever be reborn in the lower realms, may she be immediately born in a pure land where she can be enlightened or to receive a perfect human body, meet the Mahayana teachings and meet a perfectly qualified guru and by only pleasing the guru’s mind, achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

More advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche on death and dying is available, see Death and Dying: Practices and Resources (fpmt.org/death/).

To read more obituaries from the international FPMT mandala, and to find information on submission guidelines, please visit our new Obituaries page (fpmt.org/media/obituaries/).