Press Release For Immediate Release Deer Park Buddhist Center 4548 Schneider Drive Oregon, Wisconsin 53575

Geshe Lhundub Sopa passed away quietly in his room at Deer Park Buddhist Monastery on August 28, 2014. He was 92years old. Sopa was one of the world's foremost scholars of Tibetan and a profoundly gifted teacher. He was the founder of Deer Park Buddhist Center and Deer Park Monastery. Geshe Sopa was a Professor of at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he served as a faculty member for close to thirty years. He worked with many inter-religious organizations, including the International Peace Council, an organization of internationally recognized spiritual leaders and Nobel Peace Prize winners.

Honored by His Holiness the Dalai and held in high regard by countless others throughout the world, Geshe Sopa lived humbly, referring to himself as just a simple Buddhist monk.

The only child of poor Tibetan farmers, Geshe Sopa was drawn to a religious life at a very early age. When he was nine years old, Geshe Sopa took his novice monastic vows and entered Ganden Chönkhor Monastery. Eight years later he made an arduous journey, walking over high mountain passes in bone-chilling weather, to enter Sera Je Monastery, one of the three leading centers of advanced Buddhist education in . Within a very short time, Geshe Sopa demonstrated that he was a scholar of the highest caliber. He studied constantly, often staying on the debate grounds all night to hone his skills in explaining and defending Buddhist doctrine. He impressed the leading teachers at Sera Je Monastery with his devotion, effort, intellect and understanding of vast teachings on a myriad of Buddhist subjects.

Geshe Sopa's attainments at Sera Je Monastery were so profound that he was selected, at an uncommonly young age, to be one of the debate examiners of the when he stood for his Geshe Degree (the equivalent of an advanced Ph.D.). At the time, Geshe Sopa had not yet obtained his own degree; he received it three years later and was designated as the highest among the scholars who received their Geshe degree that year.

When Geshe Sopa debated the Dalai Lama, his questioning focused on the topic of Buddha Nature and opening of the Buddha . Three years later, after they had escaped from Chinese-controlled Tibet, the Dalai Lama said that it was time for Geshe Sopa to go to the West to open the Buddha Lineage there. By then, Geshe Sopa had developed a deep friendship with the Dalai Lama that would last throughout his life.

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At the request of the Dalai Lama, Geshe Sopa accompanied three young reincarnate who came to the United States in 1962 to study English. They lived in a small Mongolian Buddhist monastery in New Jersey, where Geshe Sopa met Professor Richard Robinson, who had recently started a Buddhist Study Program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Invited to join the program, Geshe Sopa moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 1967 and remained in the area for the rest of his life.

In the early 1970s, a small group of individuals came to Madison to ask Geshe Sopa for religious teachings. Those students had been traveling in South Asia and met two highly skilled Buddhist teachers in Nepal. With their visas running out, they asked the teachers where they could go in the United States to receive instructions on . The teachers said they should go to Madison, Wisconsin, to study with their own teacher, Geshe Sopa. Shortly after the students came to Madison, Geshe Sopa established what was to become Deer Park Buddhist Center, one of the most important Tibetan Buddhist Centers in the West.

A few years after founding Deer Park Buddhist Center, Geshe Sopa established a full- fledged monastery. The Center and its monastery have become a place where the pure teachings of Tibetan Buddhism have been preserved and will continue to be passed on purely in the future. Geshe Sopa brought other highly respected Tibetan Buddhists to serve as resident teachers at the Deer Park Buddhist Center. Like Geshe Sopa, each had been designated as the highest among the scholars who had received Geshe degrees that year.

Over the years, the Dalai Lama and many of the most accomplished Tibetan Buddhist masters came to Deer Park to visit Geshe Sopa, teach a variety of advanced courses, and confer initiations. In 1981, the Dalai Lama performed, for the first time in the West, one of the most important Tibetan Buddhist initiations, the Initiation - an Initiation that had rarely been given anywhere.

In addition to being a renowned religious leader, Geshe Sopa was also an academic of great note. Unaware that he was one of the world's most knowledgeable scholars of Tibetan , Geshe Sopa was hired at the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a language instructor. When the breadth and depth of his scholarship became known, he was asked to join the faculty and promoted to full Professor. While on the university's faculty, Geshe Sopa trained a generation of leading Tibetan Buddhist scholars and translators who in turn joined faculties at several universities throughout the West.

Geshe Sopa was a humble person who never told others of his exceptional attainments. However, those at the highest level of Tibetan Buddhism knew exactly who he was. Thomas Merton, a highly acclaimed Christian monk, once asked the Dalai Lama to teach him a very advanced meditation practice. The Dalai Lama answered that because he did not have enough time, Merton should go and study with Geshe Sopa instead.

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Geshe Sopa was totally unassuming. He left it to others to discover his true nature. For example, one author went halfway around the world before he discovered who Geshe Sopa was. He had taken some classes from Geshe Sopa at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, but wrote, ",,,although he was nice enough, I never thought he was that wise or that special." However, when he went to a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal he saw Geshe Sopa's portrait prominently displayed. At dinner with an older monk, the author said "You know, there was this old guy named Geshe Sopa where I went to school…" "Geshe Sopa!" the monk exclaimed, looking up from his bowl. "Geshe Sopa is a Buddha! Everybody knows that!" *

Those who knew Geshe Sopa miss him very much and eagerly look forward to his return.

* William Elliott, Tying Rocks to Clouds; Meetings and Conversations with Wise and Spiritual People, 1995, Quest Books, Wheaton, IL, pg. 16,17.

For a concise biography of Geshe Lhundub Sopa, see http://deerparkcenter.org/NewFiles/sopa.html

For a more complete account of Geshe Sopa’s life, see his autobiography, Like a Waking Dream, 2012, Wisdom Publications, Boston, MA.

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