Khyongla Rato
Khyongla Rato was a reincarnate lama and scholar of the Gelugpa order of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in 1923 in the southeastern Tibet in the region called Kham. In 1928, senior Gelugpa monks divined that a five-year old boy living in this remote part of Tibet was the reincarnation of the ninth Khyongla of Tibet.
On his sixth birthday, monks on horseback took him from his parents’ home to a monastery some distance away where he was installed as its spiritual head. For over three decades he lived the sober life of a monk, studying at the most famous monasteries in Tibet and earning the Lharampa Geshe degree. In 1959, along with thousands of monks, as well as the Dalai Lama, he fled on foot over the Himalayas to safety and to a radically different life in India, and eventually the United States.
In 1975, he founded The Tibet Center, the oldest Tibetan Buddhist Center in New York City. In the ensuing years, Rinpoche gave lectures at the center, with the purpose of keeping the Dharma flourishing and evolving to suit the needs of the modern world. Rinpoche’s lectures, twice a week was the main vehicle he used to that end. He taught all who came, free of charge.
He penned his autobiography, My Life And Lives, giving a rare insight into the life of a modest Buddhist monk, his narrow escape over the Himalayas due to the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet, and his eventual life in America.
Rinpoche passed away May 24, 2022 in Dharamsala. Soon after Rinpoche’s transition, His Holiness the Dalai Lama composed, “A Prayer for a Swift Return”. Rinpoche’s students at the center and around the world recite this prayer to hasten Rinpoche's return to preside over The Tibet Center in the future.
Khensur Rinpoche Nicholas Vreeland
Venerable Khensur Nicholas Vreeland is the Director of The Tibet Center. He holds a Ser Tri Geshe Degree from Rato Dratsang, a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Karnataka, India, where he studied for 15 years. In 1998, he returned to New York City to assume administrative and teaching responsibilities. He is the editor of the books, An Open Heart, a New York Times best seller, and the recently released, A Profound Mind, both authored by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Khensur Rinpoche has been a photographer since he was 13 years old, and assisted Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. The recent exhibition of his work, entitled Photos for Rato, toured major cities around the world and raised most of the funds needed for the construction of Rato Monastery’s new campus and temple, which was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama on January 31, 2011.
View his photos recently exhibited at the Leica Gallery NYC, NY...
Return to the Roof of the World
On April 20, 2012 His Holiness the Dalai Lama appointed Geshe Vreeland, as the new Abbot of Rato Monastery. This was an historic moment; the first time that a Westerner had been appointed as abbot of an important Tibetan Buddhist monastery. On making the appointment, The Dalai Lama stated, “Your special duty (is) to bridge Tibetan tradition and Western world.”
At the Center, Khensur Rinpoche offers classes in Buddhist practice and theory on a weekly schedule. Ancient Indian and Tibetan texts are taught together with methods for integrating them into daily meditation and practice.