Geshe Ngawang Wangyal

by Joshua Cutler, co-director of the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center, with assistance from Amy Miller

This July, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama will give an unprecedented six days of instruction on Tsong-kha-pa's masterpiece, The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. For the teaching's sponsor, the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center (TBLC), this extraordinary event is the icing on its 50th anniversary cake. And what better way to celebrate 50 years of service to Buddhism in America than with a dharma extravaganza of this magnitude?

As with much in our culture, Buddhism has seeped into American life with great flourish and has flowered into a vast array of forms, but no story of American Buddhism would be complete without a recognition of the passionate energy and devotion that TBLC's founder, Geshe Wangyal, poured into Buddhism on this soil. The tranquil, park-like setting of TBLC's current grounds masks a long history of Geshe Wangyal's ferocious efforts on behalf of Americans. As a priest who immigrated to the US in order to serve a Kalmyk-Mongolian community in Howell Township, New Jersey, Geshe-la (as he was often called) founded TBLC (then called Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America) in 1958 with personal funds earned through teaching at Columbia University.

Geshe-la became a monk at the age of six; his youth in Kalmykia in Eastern Europe was relatively stable as he pursued studies in Tibetan medicine and Buddhist philosophy. This semblance of security, however, changed with the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918 and the Russian Civil War. "The subsequent purges of religion and enforced atheism," said Cutler, "kept him on the move for the next 35 years until he finally arrived in this country." Never again to see his homeland of Kalmykia, Geshe-la traveled through Russia to study at Drepung Monastery in Lhasa, Tibet. He spent the next 20 years traveling throughout Asia; he learned English and edited the Tibetan Buddhist canon in Beijing, served as abbot of a monastery in Mongolia, won debates in the sacred residence of Manjushri in China, translated for English diplomatic envoy Sir Charles Bell in Manchuria, and served as a language instructor for a French envoy in Vietnam. Although he returned to Southern Tibet and hoped to create a retreat house there, the Chinese armies arrived on the border of Tibet in the 1950s. No stranger to the effects of Communism, Geshe-la quickly fled to Kalimpong, India, from where he determined to immigrate to America as a refugee.

The Stupa at the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center (TBLC), located at the heart of the center*

As he sailed into New York harbor on La Liberté in 1955, Geshe Wangyal brought with him a host of experiences in adapting in the face of life's adversities and uncertainties and an unswerving commitment to Buddha's teachings. "It is as if he embodied the radical changes that Buddhism was going through like a tree sucking up nourishment from the soil," said Cutler. "And this tree was then transplanted from one continent to another and is slowly taking root in new soil. Isn't it amazing what one person can do with his life?"

And so, as thousands congregate this July for the exquisite teachings of HH the Dalai Lama, they will benefit from Geshe Wangyal, not only as the master gardener who prepared the ground but also as the bountiful tree under whose shade Americans now gather. For information on His Holiness the Dalai Lama's July teachings, please see: www.dalailamajuly2008.com

To prepare for the teachings, these books are recommended: