Ven. Thubten Gelek (Max Redlich) in Dharamsala, 2022. Photo courtesy of Tara Institute Facebook page.

Venerable Thubten Gelek (Max Redlich) passed away on November 26, 2023 in New Delhi, India.

Venerable Gelek, born July 13, 1944, was an IMI sangha member who offered many decades of service to the Dharma, starting in the early years of the FPMT organization. Below we share words from friends, and passages from Big Love: The Life & Teachings of Lama Yeshe, to celebrate Ven. Gelek’s devoted service to Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and the FPMT mandala.

An excerpt from the Tara Newsletter by Pete Giuliano gives praise to Ven. Gelek’s contributions to Tara Institute in Melbourne, Australia:

“Max was instrumental in the founding of Tara Institute in the early formative days of the center. He had been Co-Director of Tara House with Uldis Balodis in Kew up to 1982 . At the completion of his service, Lama Yeshe apologized for having pushed him too hard. Max did a lot of the work in finding 3 Crimea Street and famously predicted we would outgrow it within five years. We moved to Mavis Avenue in 1987, where he stayed with us over several different periods. He has been based in India for many years but would often return to Melbourne.

Adele Hulse, the author of Big Love shares about Ven. Gelek:

“His father was from a family of successful Jewish butchers and Redlich Butchers is still trading. His mother was a non-Jewish woman from Vienna, a model who once had to pose for Hitler. Max got into the meat trade. He wore white boning-room clothes and white boning-room boots and had a car and a driver because he was so busy and so successful. Then he heard Lama Yeshe speak in Melbourne and realized he had to change his entire life.”

More from Adele on her memories of Ven. Gelek:

“I had a very young child who was in and out of hospital when Max asked me if I would run a fashion business, importing from Ven. Marcel in Kathmandu and from the Delhi Centre. I had no business experience whatsoever. A week later $150,000 worth of baled stock arrived at my house and I ordered racks and got a secretary. Max arrived early every morning for a week, bearing beautiful fruit and cakes from Acland Street and made me breakfast while lecturing me about business. He started at the beginning and ended by telling me how you close a business. Everything happened just as he said it would. Three years later it was time to shut the business down because the purpose had been served – to create a profile to convince a bank to give a loan – and we were not in the fashion business. Max was unfailingly kind and patient and wrote me long letters about business.
I still have them.” 

Max Redlich, Dharamsala, 1978. Photo courtesy of Nick Ribush.

Longtime Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive director, Nick Ribush, recounts Ven. Gelek meeting the Dharma:

“I knew Max in Melbourne in the 60’s, several years before either of us had even heard the word ‘Dharma.’ I didn’t know him well, but he did seem to live the fast, high life of someone with plenty of money. Then, after I had left Australia in 1972 and finished up at Kopan, I didn’t hear of or from him until 1977, when I was giving a ten-day meditation course near Melbourne and he came up to see me there. He looked very cool, with long red hair down to his waist and a beautiful svelte girl on his arm, wondering what it was that I and, by now, many of his friends had gotten into. He wasn’t about to stay for any of the course, so I told him that if he really wanted to know he’d have to go to Kopan for the November course and hear it directly from the Lamas themselves. He did, and the rest is history.”

A excerpt from Big Love shares this first experience at Kopan in Ven. Gelek’s own words:

Many of his friends had become Lama’s students, but he found their devotion ridiculous. “[Lama Yeshe] was talking about emptiness and this guy asked if you would lose your personality if you realized emptiness. Lama said, ‘No!’ and shrieked with laughter. The guy was ready with more questions, but Lama was just bursting with laughter and I think that’s when he got me.” 

Ordination group with IMI sangha at Kopan Monastery, Nepal, January 1979. Ven. Max is pictured back row, third from left. Photo Courtesy LYWA.

More from Big Love on Ven. Gelek’s early connection and service to Lama Yeshe:

At first skeptical of the level of devotion evident among so many of his friends, Max had changed after watching his father die. He became super-devoted and ran around trying to do good in any way he could. Lama called him “Max Relics” and found plenty for him to do. There was no end to Lama’s orders and Max tried to do it all.

“One day I was tearing around trying to do everything as usual and a drop of rain fell,” Max recalled. “So I raced around, found an umbrella and came back only to tear off to do something else. I was erratic and overly busy. Lama just gave me this disparaging look, shook his head and said, ‘Jewish army!’ I’d been in the Israeli army during the Six-Day War in 1967, so Lama was indicating I was anything but disciplined. Whenever we were looking for praise, he made sure we didn’t get it.”

… Max was asked to help Lama Yeshe pack. “I gathered it was a big deal to be asked to do this, but I had no idea what to do. I was just standing there waiting for instructions when Lama asked me to sit on the bed. I had a hunch he was about to play a trick on me and sure enough, a rubber spider suddenly appeared. He thought it was so funny when I instinctively moved out of its way. I stood up and Lama actually picked me up and walked with me around the room, carrying me. Lama Zopa Rinpoche was there too. I just didn’t know what to think,” Max recalled.

“[1978] Then it was time to go. Lama sat in a rocking chair in this big sitting room at the back of Manjushri Institute and about a hundred people lined up to say goodbye to him. They came in the door and bent low as they gave him a khata. The warmth and love between them each time was palpable. He treated each individual student as if they were the only one in the whole world, even though they were with him for just sixty seconds. It actually gave me some idea of what he meant when he said, ‘Communicating, dear? You communicating?’ Lama definitely communicated.

“I assumed it was Nick who had arranged for me to become Lama’s lay attendant that time. He knew I had made quite a lot of money from my business in Melbourne and probably thought that if I had the privilege of carrying Lama Yeshe’s bags to London I would become more interested in the Dharma. Then they could get some money out of me.” Max had made his fortune in the meat trade. Lama Yeshe got him to set up a number of businesses associated with Dharma centers to “purify” the money, but not all were successful. 

Lama Yeshe, left with Ven. Max Redlich (Thubten Gelek) back left, Ven. Thubten Gyatso, and Ven. Thubten Wangchuk, during the First Enlightenment Experience Celebration at Tushita Meditation Centre, Dharamsala, India, 1982. Photo courtesy LYWA.

Peter Kedge, a longtime FPMT student and former member of the FPMT Inc. Board of Directors, offered the following words when hearing of Ven. Gelek’s passing:

“Max was always so kind and helpful. I traveled with Lama and Rinpoche and organized their world teaching tours from 1976 to 1979. There was no money apart from that which centers sent in advance and some couldn’t manage that. We had to use cash and traveler’s cheques which made travel quite difficult. Max was a serial entrepreneur and ran a successful business in Melbourne.

“He asked how he could help with the tours and when I explained, he immediately arranged a Diners Club card which we could use and then reimburse Max when the bills were due. That was a huge help and one of many ways Max helped Lama and Rinpoche develop FPMT.

“He was always thinking of ways to make money for FPMT. When we were first trying to establish business in Hong Kong, Max opened an electronics store in Melbourne so we could ship electronic goods to him.

“Later after Lama Yeshe had passed, Rinpoche wanted to ask Osel some important question. Rinpoche asked Max to personally represent him and ask Osel. Rinpoche’s reason to ask Max was that Max had had a very pure relationship with Lama Yeshe and so was the right person to approach Osel on Rinpoche’s behalf.

“Max served and contributed in many often unseen and unsung ways.”

John Douthitt (Pelgye) recounts Ven. Gelek’s role in his taking ordination and some stories Ven. Gelek shared with him:

“In 1977 Max and I sat our first Kopan course together and quickly became friends. I arrived determined to be a monk, I would have taken robes the day I arrived had that been an option. Max spent the entire month coming up with one reason after another why I should NOT take ordination. I did take ordination after the course and then heard that someone had anonymously offered a generous yearly donation to cover my needs. I didn’t know anyone who had spare money except Max so I asked him and yes, it was him. I said, ‘But you’ve been trying to convince me to NOT take ordination.’ He told me he had wanted me to be sure it was what I really really wanted because it was too important of a decision to make without fully thinking it through.

He was, back then, wealthy.  He’d figured out how to take the unwanted scraps of meat production and make them into something which WAS wanted.  He told me stories about buying a Bentley solely on the basis that it was the only car he could find which was more expensive than a Rolls Royce and he had one of the 3-4 cellphones in the whole of Australia at the time in his Bentley; another of those cellphones in his other car.

He told me that he lived in a simple one bedroom apartment but, since he could, he figured he ought to buy a bluestone, one of the most expensive houses he could buy.  After rattling about in that big house for a spell, he put in a ramp so he could drive his motorcycle up into the front room but eventually that lost its luster, too, and he realized that he was not occupying hardly any more space in the house than he had in the one bedroom apartment so he sold he house and moved back to a small apartment.

From longtime IMI sangha member, Wongmo,

“Max and I were quite close friends when we lived at Tushita Retreat Center, as it was known in those days…late 70’s-mid 80’s.  He was an interesting character, having had an energetic youth and then Dharma practitioner. He’d tell me colorful stories of being in the family abattoir business in Australia.

“Max was known for his penchant to forever be searching for mystic, psychic observations. He’d carry around his I Ching book that was so well used that its pages were torn and dirty. Goodness only knows what questions he had for people he found for mos, predictions, and so on. He even traveled all the way to Land of Medicine Buddha in California to be near Pemo, to ask her for mirror readings.

“Our dear Max suffered from strong rlung (Tib.; Sanskrit: prana), and would often hold his hand to his heart area while speaking with you. 

“He was so enthusiastic about the teachings, lamrim and so on, and well spoken, that I’d beg him to teach courses at Tushita but all he ever agreed to do was lead group discussions, which people so enjoyed. Then he served as director of Tushita for a couple of years.

“After Lama Yeshe’s passing, Rinpoche asked Max to oversee the building of Lama’s stupa at Tushita. Max did complete that project, but with great difficulty trying to organize the local Indian builders and so on. After that Max wanted to do some retreats but Rinpoche asked him to oversee the building of Gen Jampa Wangdu’s stupa.

“There was something about Max that made it just so interesting and nice to be around him.”

After hearing news of Ven. Max’s passing, Geshe Kelsang Wangmo put in prayer requests for Ven. Gelek at a number of monasteries in India, and Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala requested prayers from His Holiness the Dalai Lama and many other high lamas. Its was reported that His Holiness made prayers holding a photo of Ven. Gelek at his heart. Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche offered prayers in front of relics of the Buddha while in Vietnam. Tushita also made generous offerings on Ven. Gelek’s behalf to the many meditators surrounding Trijang Rinpoche’s stupa in Dharamsala on Lama Tsongkhapa Day, December 8, 2023.

Ven. Gelek was cremated in Delhi, India on December 2, 2023. Kabir Saxena, spiritual program coordinator of Tushita Meditation Centre in Delhi and longtime friend of Ven. Gelek, asked Ajeer Vidya, who was born in the same village as the renowned Kunu Lama Rinpoche (who gave teachings to His Holiness the Dalai Lama on Shantideva’s famous text), to oversee the cremation and immersion of Ven. Gelek’s ashes in Delhi. Ajeer met Ven. Gelek some years ago and respected him. Following the cremation, Ven. Gelek’s ashes were immersed into the Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi and meets the Ganga,(Ganges), before the latter reaches Benares  (Varanasi).

The body of Ven. Gelek being prepped for cremation.

Ajeer Vidya immersing Ven. Gelek’s ashes into the Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi and meet the Ganga,(Ganges), before the latter reaches Benares (Varanasi).

Please pray that Ven. Gelek may never ever be reborn in the lower realms, may he be immediately born in a pure land where he 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/).