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FPMT 50th Anniversary
December 2025 marked 50 years since Lama Yeshe famously said, “We need an organization to keep this together.” Lama was reflecting on the success of a recent eight-and-a-half month tour of nine countries, the most extensive Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche would ever make. Lama asked nine of his senior students to discuss how to coordinate the rapidly growing collection of centers and students what would soon be known as the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT).
Lama Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe, New Jersey, USA, 1974. Photo by Jeff Nye.
Over fifteen fruitful years of working with Westerners (beginning in the late 1960s in India and Nepal) Lama Yeshe established 30 centers and 20 projects in thirteen countries. Lama Yeshe served as the FPMT organization’s spiritual director from 1975 until he passed away in 1984, at which time Lama Zopa Rinpoche took over. From that time until 2023 when Rinpoche showed the aspect of passing away, Rinpoche offered 39 years of his peerless guidance, and FPMT continued to flourish. The organization is now comprised of 133 centers, projects, services, and study groups around the world, reaching far beyond the Western scope.
What an unbelievable achievement the last 50 years have been for everyone who has served the FPMT organization in any way. We invite all of our friends in the FPMT Mandala–old students, new students, centers, projects, services, study groups, donors, teachers, board members, volunteers, and anyone who has benefited from FPMT in any way or offered their very kind service–to please join us over the next year to truly rejoice in what has been accomplished from the most humble beginnings.
Below you will find information about the lives of our lamas, some history about the organization, and several ways you and your center can get involved in this collective celebration. We look forward to all of your creative ideas on how to bring this year-long celebration to your own local activities and personal practices! Please use the hashtag #50YearsFPMT in your social media posts so we can all be connected in this way.
As an introduction to the rich 50 year history of FPMT, please read FPMT pioneer Dr. Nick Ribush’s recent reflection:
Fifty Years of FPMT: A Personal History.
Lama Yeshe, Lake Arrowhead, California, 1975. Photo by Carol Royce-Wilder.
Lama Yeshe
Lama Thubten Yeshe, born close to Lhasa, Tibet in 1935. Clearly a special child, he was soon recognized as the incarnation of a great yogini, Ache Jampa, the learned abbess of Rakor Gompa, near Chimelung, a popular pilgrimage spot and home to about one hundred nuns of the Gelug tradition. As a young boy, Lama Yeshe spent many days at the nunnery attending various ceremonies and religious functions. At his parents’ home he was taught the alphabet, grammar and reading by his uncle, Ngawang Norbu, who studied at Sera Monastery.
From a very early age he expressed the desire to lead a religious life. Whenever a monk would visit his home he would plead to leave with him and join a monastery. Finally, when he was six years old, he received his parents’ permission to join Sera Je, a college at one of the three great Gelug monastic universities located in the vicinity of Lhasa. He lived there with over 10,000 monks, under the charge of an uncle who was also a monk there. At the age of eight, he was ordained as a novice monk by the Venerable Purchog Jampa Rinpoche. Lama Yeshe lived under the rigorous monastic discipline of Sera Je until he was twenty-five years old. There he received spiritual instruction based on the educational traditions brought from India to Tibet over a thousand years ago.
From Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche, the Junior Tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he received teachings on the lam-rim, the graduated path to enlightenment. In addition, he received many tantric initiations and discourses from both the Junior and Senior Tutors to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as well as from Dragri Dorje Chang Rinpoche, Song Rinpoche, Lhatzun Dorje Chang Rinpoche, and many other great gurus and meditation masters. In addition, he studied the famous Six Yogas of Naropa, following a commentary based on the personal experiences of Lama Tsongkhapa. This phase of his education ended in 1959 when, as Lama Yeshe explained, “the Chinese kindly told us that it was time to leave Tibet and meet the outside world.” Escaping through Bhutan, he eventually reached northeast India where he met up with many other Tibetan refugees. In spite of considerable difficulties in such an alien environment, these Tibetans continued their studies at the settlement camp of Buxa Duar.
While in Tibet, Lama Yeshe had already received instruction in Prajnaparamita (the Perfection of Wisdom), Madhyamaka philosophy and logic. In India his education continued with courses in the vinaya rules of discipline and the abhidharma system of metaphysics. In addition Tenzin Gyaltsen, the Kunu Lama, gave him teachings on Shantideva’s Bodhisattvacharyavatara (Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life) and Atisha’s Bodhipathapradipa (Lamp of the Path to Enlightenment). He attended additional tantric initiations and discourses and, at the age of twenty-eight, received full monk’s ordination from Kyabje Ling Rinpoche. It was here in Buxa Duar in 1962, that a young disciplined lama, called Zopa Rinpoche, came to Lama Yeshe as a disciple. Nine years younger than his teacher, Zopa Rinpoche was the reincarnation of the Lawudo Lama, Kunzang Yeshe, an accomplished and realized Sherpa lama from the Solu Khumbu region of Nepal. Educated at the Dung-kar Monastery in southern Tibet, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, too, had fled his country. The special relationship that would grow between these two lamas would benefit countless others and play a great part in fulfilling the prophecy of the eighth-century Tibetan saint, Padmasambhava, that “when iron birds fly, and horses run on wheels, Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth and the Dharma will come to the land of the redskins.”
An exquisite and definitive two-volume biography of Lama Yeshe, Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe was published by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive in 2020.
In 2025, Lama Yeshe would have reached the age of 90 years. To honor his profound legacy, Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa (ILTK), Italy, invited his students from across the globe to share their treasured memories and life-changing teachings with present and future generations. Throughout 2025 ILTK will be interviewing Lama’s direct students to share how his teachings impacted on their lives through short video. These interviews will be shared through the Institute’s social media channels and with the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
From Mandala, April-June 2009, early FPMT students remember their time with Lama Yeshe. Please read this collection of intimate reflections.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Kopan, November 2021. Photo by Ven. Lobsang Sherab.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Born in the Mount Everest region of Thame in 1945, Rinpoche was recognized soon afterwards by His Holiness Trulshik Rinpoche and five other lamas as the reincarnation of the great yogi Kunsang Yeshe. Rinpoche was taken under the care of FPMT’s founder Lama Thubten Yeshe, soon after leaving Tibet, in Buxa Duar, India, in the early 1960’s. Rinpoche was with Lama Yeshe until 1984 when Lama Yeshe passed away and Lama Zopa Rinpoche took over as spiritual director of FPMT.
At the age of ten, Rinpoche went to Tibet and studied and meditated at Domo Geshe Rinpoche’s monastery near Pagri, until the Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1959 forced him to forsake Tibet for the safety of Bhutan.
Rinpoche then went to the Tibetan refugee camp at Buxa Duar, West Bengal, India, where he met Lama Yeshe, who became his closest teacher. The Lamas met their first Western student, Zina Rachevsky in 1967, then traveled with her to Nepal in 1968 where they began teaching more Westerners.
Over the next few years they built Kopan and Lawudo monasteries. In 1971 Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave the first of his famous annual lamrim retreat courses, which continue at Kopan to this day.
Lama Yeshe served as the FPMT organization’s spiritual director from 1975 until he passed away in 1984, at which time Rinpoche took over. From that time until 2023, under 39 years of his peerless guidance, FPMT continued to flourish.
Ven. Robina Courtin wrote an incredibly moving eulogy of Lama Zopa Rinpoche which includes a gallery of 300+ photos of various stages in Rinpoche’s profound life.
Video: The Life of Lama Zopa Rinpoche (Ven. Roger Kunsang)
Video: Richard Gere’s Heartfelt Reflection: Remembering Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Additional Resources
Here we will share various resources to help you or your center celebrate FPMT’s rich history. Have a resource to share? Please let us know so we can add it!