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Lama Yeshe visiting Sera Monastery in Tibet in 1982. Lama also visited Sera Monastery, where only seventy monks remained. He found the site of his old room, sat down on the rubble and meditated. Photo courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
The Tibetan New Year, Losar, falls on March 3 this year. For FPMT students, this day has additional significance as it commemorates the anniversary of the parinirvana of Lama Thubten Yeshe, who co-founded FPMT with Lama Zopa Rinpoche.
Lama Yeshe’s heart stopped beating just before dawn on Losar, March 3, 1984. He was forty-nine years old. In 1959, Lama Yeshe fled the Chinese Communists in Tibet, going into exile in India. He survived tremendous hardship living as a refugee monk in Buxa Duar, where Lama Zopa Rinpoche became his heart disciple. In 1967, the two lamas began teaching Western students, leading to the establishment and flourishing of Kopan Monastery in Nepal and the FPMT organization throughout the world.
As part of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s advice on how to celebrate Losar, Rinpoche recommends sharing stories and remembrances about Lama Yeshe. Here is an excerpt from Big Love: The Life and Teachings of Lama Yeshe:
Gelek Rimpoche and Thubten Yeshe loved to debate. One of their favorite tricks was to make their opponent laugh. “Monks love to laugh,” said Gelek Rimpoche. “If you win, they laugh, if you make a mistake, they laugh, if you joke, they laugh. Thubten Yeshe’s body language was very distinctive and he made people laugh with all sorts of silly gestures, jumping around, making shapes with his mala (rosary). At Drepung Loseling we were always looking for good opponents. Thubten Yeshe’s bright round eyes shone when he debated and everyone could see he was having a great time. But he was not just a clown. Rather, he was a natural communicator.”
Off the debating ground Thubten Yeshe was quiet and humble, but on it he was unmatched. “He was sly,” said another classmate. “He’d argue back and forth and then crack a joke to distract his opponent. If he felt he was losing, he’d turn to a third monk and say, ‘Well, how about you? Aren’t you going to debate with me, too?’ Then that monk jumped into the argument too, confusing the first challenger.”
“Afterward, Thubten Yeshe wrapped himself up and sat under a tree in long silent meditation,” recounted his friend Jampa Trinley. “I’d sneak up and hit him with my long yellow hat and say, ‘You should go off to the mountains, you yogi!’ Sometimes he liked to go over all the points of a debate with close friends.”
Another classmate, Geshe Thubten Thinley, recalled Thubten Yeshe’s talent for coming up with amusing one-liners. “He set the place on fire with his antics. A good debate was sheer joy to him and time meant nothing. He saw the funny side of everything in a flash. Debate is based on a logical progression toward a conclusion that must be either yes or no, arrived at by reasoning, scriptural references and mutual agreement by the two debaters. Thubten Yeshe never conceded defeat, no matter how strongly his case was proven wrong. He never gave an inch and always showed great flair and elegance in his arguments. He treated each monk with the same respect, regardless of whether they were in a higher class or had just entered the monastery. We had a friend there who enjoyed telling fortunes. He told us the one person in our group whom he could see doing something really special was Thubten Yeshe,” said Geshe Thubten Thinley.
As a member of the Lhasa aristocracy, Gelek Rimpoche had met Heinrich Harrer, the author of Seven Years in Tibet, and his co-escapee from British internment in India, Peter Aufschnaiter, who had arrived in Tibet in 1944 and Lhasa in 1946. There were very few Westerners in the country: a British consul, a trade representative and three English radio operators—two in Lhasa and another in Chamdo. Tibetans generally regarded Europeans as “barbarians.” But one day Thubten Yeshe happened to see one of these foreigners in the street: “‘Oh, a barbarian,’ I thought. So I stopped and had a really good look. I decided he was not a barbarian at all.”
Lama Yeshe taking photos of people taking photos at the zoo in Amsterdam, 1980. Photo by Jan-Paul Kool; courtesy of Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
You can read the entire chapter from Lama Yeshe’s biography Big Love from which the above is excerpted: “1941–58: Living a Monastic Life.” Learn about the creation of Lama Yeshe’s biography in the article “A Monumental Accomplishment: The Making of Big Love” from Mandala July-December 2019. For a remembrance of Lama Yeshe from Lama Zopa Rinpoche, see “Lama Zopa Rinpoche on the Qualities of Lama Yeshe.”
You can find teachings from Lama Yeshe on FPMT.org and Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive (LamaYeshe.com).
Through timely advice, news stories, and updates, FPMT.org and Mandala Publications share the wisdom culture inspired and guided by the teachings of FPMT founders, Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche.