Tibetan Lama Gelek Rimpoche is widely regarded as one of today’s greatest Tibetan Buddhist masters. Known for his compassionate wisdom and endearing wit, and for his practical and canny advice, he is also a Geshe Lharampa (roughly Tibetan equivalent of PhD with highest honors in Theology, Literature, and Metaphysics) of Drepung Loseling monastery of Tibet, and recognized as an important "incarnate Lama".

Rimpoche is particularly distinguished for his thorough familiarity with modern culture, and special effectiveness as a teacher of Western practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. Recognizing the unique opportunity for the interface of spiritual and material concerns in today’s world, Rimpoche has also maintained a dialogue with science, psychology, medicine, metaphysics, politics, and the arts.
Like His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Rimpoche teaches both ancient Tibetan Buddhist meditation and philosophy to Buddhists, as well as providing highly practical spiritual advice and "applied compassion and wisdom" to people of all faiths. He has been involved in dialogues and public teachings with contemporary spiritual teachers such as the reverend Marianne Williamson, Ram Dass, Roshi Joan Halifax, and Sharon Salzburg, and with friends such as Prof. Robert Thurman, the late Prof. Allen Ginsberg, composer Phillip Glass, psychologist Dan Goleman, Richard Gere, Jean Houston, and many other contemporary intellectual and cultural figures.

In 1988, Rimpoche founded Jewel Heart, a Tibetan Buddhist Center. His Collected Works now include the national bestseller Good Life, Good Death (Riverhead Books 2001) and the Tara Box: Rituals for Protection and Healing from the Female Buddha (New World Library 2004), as well as over 32 transcripts of his major Buddhist teachings, and numerous articles. Rimpoche is now a U.S. citizen and teaches throughout the world in North America, Europe, India, and South East Asia.

Born in Lhasa, Tibet, in 1939, Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche was recognized as an incarnate lama at the age of four. Carefully tutored from an early age by some of Tibet’s greatest living masters, Rimpoche gained renown for his powers of memory, intellectual judgment and penetrating insight. As a small child living in a monk’s cell in a country with no electricity or running water, and little news of the outside world, he had scoured the pictures of torn copies of Life Magazine for anything he could gather about America. Now Rimpoche brings his life experience and wisdom to both the east and the west.

Among the last generation of lamas educated in Drepung Monastery before the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet, Gelek Rimpoche was forced to flee to India in 1959. In the 1960 and 70s in India, working with the United States Library of Congress, Rimpoche edited and printed over 170 volumes of rare Tibetan manuscripts that would have otherwise been lost to humanity. Rimpoche was also instrumental in forming organizations that would share the great wisdom of Tibet with the outside world. In this and other ways, he has played a crucial role in the survival of Tibetan Buddhism.

Rimpoche was director of Tibet House in Delhi, India and a radio host at All India Radio. He conducted over 1000 interviews in compiling an oral history of the fall of Tibet to the Communist Chinese. In the late 1970’s Rimpoche was directed to teach Western students by his teachers, the Senior and Junior Masters to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Since that time he has taught Buddhist practitioners around the world.

Following the direction of his teachers, the Junior and Senior Tutors of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Rimpoche has been teaching westerners since the late 1970’s and now is teacher to countless friends around the globe. Founding Jewel Heart Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center in 1988, Jewel Heart centers can be found in the U.S., Malaysia, the Netherlands and Singapore. Videos of Gelek Rimpoche's teachings are available at www.jewelheart.org.