Tenzin dorjee biography
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Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la received the highest geshe degree, the lharampa rank. The uncle who was Geshe Donyo-la's older brother influenced Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la to become a monk.
Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la was ordained at six years of age at the Lhatse Cho De Monastery, which had been founded by the Great Fifth Dalai Lama. My work has been published by the Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, Foreign Affairs, Comparative Education, the Washington Post, the Journal of Democracy, China Brief, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.
In 2018, he was reappointed to the USCIRF and was unanimously elected Chair of the bipartisan commission. Next he went to Buxador, India, one of the principal settlement sites of the Tibetan monastic community in exile.
Tenzin Dorjee
He has traveled to Burma and Iraq to monitor religious freedom conditions and testified before the U.S. Congress on religious freedom conditions in Tibet and China. Geshe Tenzin Dorje-la's dharma relationship with Sera Je Khensur Rinpoche focused on memorizing.
Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la's Biography
Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la was born in the Lhatse district of Tsang province in Tibet.
He lived at the monastery with his uncleWangchuk Chopal, who was his teacher. His mother and Sera Je Khensur Rinpoche (Geshe Donyo-la) were brother and sister.
Many thanks to Khamlung Tulku for translation and help with this interview which was conducted by Ann Chávez in May 2010.
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Lecturer in the Discipline of Political Science at Columbia University
Areas of interest: conflict processes, civil resistance, transnational repression
I am a postdoctoral Early Career Fellow and Lecturer in the Discipline of Political Science at Columbia University, and Senior Researcher at Tibet Action Institute.
Another important teacher there was Tsangpa Thundrup-la, who was very strict and oversaw his memorizing. In 1961 he fled from Tibet with Sera Je Khensur Rinpoche, Geshe Ngawang-la, and Tzong Tse Rinpoche who now lives in Germany.
On first arrival in India they stayed in Kalimpong.
Later, when Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la was 13, his uncle Sera Je Khensur Rinpoche, returned to Lhatse Cho De Monastery, and took him to Sera Monastery in Central Tibet where he remained for 8 years in Tsangpa Kham Tsen.
While Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la was teaching at the Vajra Yogini Institute in France, Geshe Lhundub Sopa-la invited him to come to Deer Park to live and teach. He had tried to go there when he first got to India, but it was already full with 1,500 monks. I was a Charlotte Newcombe Dissertation Fellow (2023-2024) with the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Inaugural Stephanie G.
Neuman Fellow (2021-2022) at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. At Sera he met Venerable Geshe Lhundub Sopa-la who became his main teacher. Geshe Tenzin Dorjee-la had three brothers and three sisters.