Deer Park's Guiding Spirit
Geshe Sopa is recognized worldwide as one of the great living spiritual masters of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is particularly renowned for maintaining the high standards of scholarly learning while personally embodying the qualities of humility, tolerance and compassion.
Though trained in his youth in one of the most rigorous Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, Geshe Sopa’s life work has been centered in the heartland of America. Here, Geshe Sopa has spent forty years inspiring all those he meets—as a Buddhist monk, a university professor, a committed peacemaker, a consummate teacher and as an extraordinary human being.
Geshe Sopa’s abilities were apparent from a very early age in Tibet, leading him to be selected as one of the scholars to personally test His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his final examinations – even before he had completed his own examinations.
Just two years after many Tibetans were forced into exile by the communist Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked Geshe Sopa to travel to the United States, giving him his lifelong mission of bridging cultures and sharing the Dalai Lama’s vision of global human values and ethics.
Geshe Sopa was the first Tibetan to be tenured in an American university, and went on to teach Buddhist philosophy, language and culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 30 years. During that time, he trained many of this country’s first generation of respected Buddhist scholars and translators, including Jeffrey Hopkins, José Cabezón and John Makransky.
Geshe Sopa founded Deer Park Buddhist Center in 1975, after students began requesting instruction outside the formal academic setting. Deer Park today remains a full-scale monastic and teaching center upholding the Dalai Lama’s tradition in the Midwest, attracting students from around the world to its annual programs.
Geshe Sopa has facilitated an ongoing relationship between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which His Holiness has visited five times, and from which he has received an honorary doctoral degree.
As a trustee on the international committee for the Peace Council, Geshe Sopa has traveled to Belfast, Jerusalem and Chiapas in Mexico as part of Peace Council projects to work toward ending the violence in those troubled areas, reflecting Geshe Sopa’s heartfelt commitment both to public service and to non-violence.
For generations of students, Geshe Sopa has been a shining example of the human capacity for developing kindness and wisdom. With his international support, a solid tradition behind him and his own personal qualities, Geshe Sopa has been the guiding force behind the Deer Park Buddhist Center and Monastery, and has been instrumental in planting the roots of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States.
Though trained in his youth in one of the most rigorous Buddhist monasteries in Tibet, Geshe Sopa’s life work has been centered in the heartland of America. Here, Geshe Sopa has spent forty years inspiring all those he meets—as a Buddhist monk, a university professor, a committed peacemaker, a consummate teacher and as an extraordinary human being.
Geshe Sopa’s abilities were apparent from a very early age in Tibet, leading him to be selected as one of the scholars to personally test His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his final examinations – even before he had completed his own examinations.
Just two years after many Tibetans were forced into exile by the communist Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1959, His Holiness the Dalai Lama asked Geshe Sopa to travel to the United States, giving him his lifelong mission of bridging cultures and sharing the Dalai Lama’s vision of global human values and ethics.
Geshe Sopa was the first Tibetan to be tenured in an American university, and went on to teach Buddhist philosophy, language and culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 30 years. During that time, he trained many of this country’s first generation of respected Buddhist scholars and translators, including Jeffrey Hopkins, José Cabezón and John Makransky.
Geshe Sopa founded Deer Park Buddhist Center in 1975, after students began requesting instruction outside the formal academic setting. Deer Park today remains a full-scale monastic and teaching center upholding the Dalai Lama’s tradition in the Midwest, attracting students from around the world to its annual programs.
Geshe Sopa has facilitated an ongoing relationship between His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which His Holiness has visited five times, and from which he has received an honorary doctoral degree.
As a trustee on the international committee for the Peace Council, Geshe Sopa has traveled to Belfast, Jerusalem and Chiapas in Mexico as part of Peace Council projects to work toward ending the violence in those troubled areas, reflecting Geshe Sopa’s heartfelt commitment both to public service and to non-violence.
For generations of students, Geshe Sopa has been a shining example of the human capacity for developing kindness and wisdom. With his international support, a solid tradition behind him and his own personal qualities, Geshe Sopa has been the guiding force behind the Deer Park Buddhist Center and Monastery, and has been instrumental in planting the roots of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States.
Like a Waking Dream: The Autobiography of Geshe Lhundub Sopa
Among the generation of elder Tibetan lamas who brought Tibetan Buddhism west in the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps none has had a greater impact on the academic study of Buddhism than Geshe Lhundub Sopa. He has striven to preserve Tibetan religious culture through tireless work as a professor and religious figure, establishing a functioning Buddhist monastery in the West, organizing the Dalai Lama's visits to the U.S., and offering countless teachings across the country. But prior to his thirty-year career in the first ever academic Buddhist studies program in the United States - a position in which he oversaw the training of many among the seminal generation of American Buddhist studies scholars - Geshe Sopa was the son of peasant farmers, a novice monk in a rural monastery, a virtuoso scholar-monk at one of the prestigious central monasteries in Lhasa, and a survivor of the Tibetan uprising and perilous flight into exile in 1959.
In Like a Waking Dream, Geshe Sopa frankly and observantly reflects on how his life in Tibet - a monastic life of yogic simplicity - shaped and prepared him for the unexpected. His is a tale of an exemplary life dedicated to learning, spiritual cultivation, and the service of others from one of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism.
Among the generation of elder Tibetan lamas who brought Tibetan Buddhism west in the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps none has had a greater impact on the academic study of Buddhism than Geshe Lhundub Sopa. He has striven to preserve Tibetan religious culture through tireless work as a professor and religious figure, establishing a functioning Buddhist monastery in the West, organizing the Dalai Lama's visits to the U.S., and offering countless teachings across the country. But prior to his thirty-year career in the first ever academic Buddhist studies program in the United States - a position in which he oversaw the training of many among the seminal generation of American Buddhist studies scholars - Geshe Sopa was the son of peasant farmers, a novice monk in a rural monastery, a virtuoso scholar-monk at one of the prestigious central monasteries in Lhasa, and a survivor of the Tibetan uprising and perilous flight into exile in 1959.
In Like a Waking Dream, Geshe Sopa frankly and observantly reflects on how his life in Tibet - a monastic life of yogic simplicity - shaped and prepared him for the unexpected. His is a tale of an exemplary life dedicated to learning, spiritual cultivation, and the service of others from one of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism.