Khensur Rinpoche Lama Lhundrup Rigsel

Abbot of Kopan Monastery

Geshe Lhundrup Rigsel was born in Tibet in 1941, to a poor peasant family. He joined Sera Monastery while still a boy, and in 1959 fled from the Chinese invasion to India. In Buxa, the refugee camp in Northern India where many of the monks were sent by the Indian government, he met Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa, an studied with the great masters such as Geshe Rabten and others.

In the late sixties he was sent by the Abbot of the exiled Sera Monastery to South India to start clearing land for the new monastery. In 1972 he was called to Kopan by the late Lama Yeshe, to teach philosophy to the Kopan monks for three months. The rest is history.