Buddhism is not just about one or two small things; it is not some tiny philosophy. Lord Buddha explained the nature of every single phenomenon in the universe. - Lama Thubten Yeshe

Lama Yeshe Photo
Lama Yeshe
Lama Zopa Rinpoche Photo
Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Robina's Teachers

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Ven. Robina's heart lamas FPMT Spiritual Director Lama Zopa Rinpoche (left) and Founder Lama Thubten Yeshe. Photo Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Ven. Robina's heart teachers are Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. She has served Lama and Rinpoche and their international organization, The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, since meeting the Lamas in 1976.

Lama Thubten Yeshe was born in Tibet in 1935. At the age of six, he entered Sera Monastic University in Tibet where he studied until 1959, when as Lama Yeshe himself has said, "In that year the Chinese kindly told us that it was time to leave Tibet and meet the outside world." Lama Thubten Yeshe and Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, together as teacher and disciple since their exile in India, met their first Western students in 1965. By 1971 they settled at Kopan, a small hamlet near Kathmandu in Nepal. In 1974, the Lamas began touring and teaching in the West, which would eventually result in The Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition. Lama Yeshe died in 1984.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche was born in 1946 in Thami, in the Mount Everest region of Nepal, not far from the Lawudo cave where his predecessor had meditated for the last 20 years of his life. Lama Zopa Rinpoche is now the Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition and oversees all of its activities.

Click here to read more about Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and their organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Traditiona.