Biography
Losang Samten (Tibetan: བློ་བཟང་བསམ་གཏན།, Wylie: blo-bzang bsam-gtan) is a Tibetan-American scholar, sand mandala artist, former Buddhist monk, and Spiritual Director of the Chenrezig Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia. He is one of only an estimated 30 people worldwide who are qualified to teach the traditional art of Tibetan sandpainting.He has written two books and helped to create the first Tibetan sand mandala ever shown publicly in the West in 1988. In 2002, he was made a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment of the Arts. In 2004, he was granted a Pew Fellowship in Folk and Traditional Arts.
Born into a Buddhist family in Chung Ribuce (Ü-Tsang, Tibet) in 1953,Samten spent two months crossing the Himalayas with his family to Nepal in 1959.After arriving in Dharamsala, India in 1964 or 1965,Samten entered Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, taking the vows of a novice monk there in 1967. He probably took full ordination at Namgyal in 1969.
While enrolled at Namgyal, Samten also studied the arts of ritual dance and sand mandala construction at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. (Both institutions are closely associated with the 14th Dalai Lama.) In 1985 he earned a Master's Degree in Buddhist Philosophy, Sutra, and Tantra from Namgyal Monastery.
After fleeing central Tibet as a child refugee in 1959, Samten studied, debated, and practiced for more than two decades in exile at Namgyal Monastery: since its establishment (in either 1564 or 1565) by the 3rd Dalai Lama, the personal monastery of all the Dalai Lamas. In 1975, Samten began the intensive three-year program which would ultimately enable him to construct traditional mandalas out of sand. He earned the formal title Geshe in 1985, having won a Master's Degree in Buddhist Philosophy, Sutra, and Tantra: roughly equivalent to a Western academic institution's Ph.D. Samten then served the 14th Dalai Lama as his personal attendant from 1985–1988, after which, he moved to the US.
In 1988, Samten was charged by the 14th Dalai Lama to come to the United States to demonstrate the sand mandala art form; marking the first time that a Tibetan mandala was constructed in the West, at New York City's American Museum of Natural History.Moving to Philadelphia in 1989, he joined Kelsang Monlam (from Drepung Gomang Monastic College, d. 2012, age 87), and eventually became the spiritual director of the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia. Samten left monastic life in 1995.He has established seven separate dharma centers in the U.S. and Canada, and currently resides in Philadelphia.
In 1997, Samten worked on the Martin Scorsese film Kundun – about the young 14th Dalai Lama – as religious technical advisor, sand mandala supervisor, and actor.
Samten has also written two books, including Ancient Teachings in Modern Times: Buddhism in the 21st Century. His history of Namgyal Monastery is written in Tibetan.
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