The UK-based Tibetan monk Kelsang Gyatso, who has died aged 91, split from the Tibetan Buddhist mainstream to found, in 1991, the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT), which became one of the UK’s fastest-growing religious groups. His disciples considered him a “fully realised” master, while his detractors regarded him as a rogue teacher and a threat to the Dalai Lama.
A small, pixie-like man, whose sharp eyes peered from behind large glasses, Kelsang lived in a small room in the NKT’s Cumbria base and had few personal possessions. His life was devoted to study, meditation and teaching, and he wrote 24 books that have been translated into numerous languages.
Born in western Tibet as Lobsang Chuponpa, he became a monk aged eight, taking the monastic name Kelsang Gyatso, and went on to study at Sera, one of the great monasteries of Tibet’s dominant Gelug school. He was trained in the traditional method of intense scholastic study and debate, and he studied for a geshe degree, an advanced distinction in Buddhist scholarship. He left Tibet for India in 1959 at the time of the Chinese invasion and over the next two decades he spent long periods in retreat in the Himalayan foothills.
Interest in Tibetan Buddhism was growing in the west, and disciples of Kelsang’s former classmate, Lama Yeshe (also a member of the Gelug school), were transforming a crumbling priory in Cumbria into the Manjushri Institute. This was a focus for Yeshe’s growing network, the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). At Yeshe’s request in 1976, their joint teacher Trijang Rinpoche invited Kelsang to become its resident teacher.
Kelsang was respected as a scholar and meditator, but it was soon clear that his vision for teaching westerners differed from that of FPMT leaders. While agreeing that Buddhism should be accessible to westerners, Kelsang believed in rigorous adherence to the teachings of Tsongkhapa – the school’s 15th-century founder – which he considered “pure Buddhism”. While FPMT leaders shared the Dalai Lama’s openness to teachings from other Tibetan Buddhist schools, Kelsang opposed “mixing up lineages”.
A crisis came when Kelsang proposed opening a centre near York that was loyal only to him, rather than the FPMT as a whole, and the FPMT leaders asked him to step down. What happened next has been hotly debated, but the result was that Kelsang stayed at Manjushri, eventually becoming its spiritual director, and his centres split from the FPMT.
Behind Kelsang’s exclusivism lay his fervent belief that Tsongkhapa’s teachings must be rescued from the “degeneracy” of modern-day Tibetan Buddhism. He set about reformulating those teachings in a series of commentaries on key texts by Tsongkhapa and others. These books offer succinct formulations of Buddhist doctrines that are enlivened by everyday examples but make few concessions to the perspectives of science or modern scholarship.
From 1987 Kelsang undertook a three-year retreat and in 1991 he announced that the eight centres and 20 groups under his direction were to become the New Kadampa Tradition, independent of the Gelug sect but claiming to maintain Tsongkhapa’s lineage. NKT centres would follow a study programme based solely around Kelsang’s books (excluding even Tsonghkhapa’s own works) and he would be the only spiritual guide for NKT students.
His offer of a “pure Buddhism” transmitted through systematic study and tantric empowerment proved attractive, and the NKT ballooned dramatically, becoming one of the most visible and influential Buddhist groups in Britain and then spreading to many other countries. According to the NKT itself, by 2022 there were 1,300 NKT centres worldwide, though this number includes small groups along with established centres.
Tensions between Kelsang and the Gelug hierarchy exploded in 1996 when the Dalai Lama proscribed the worship of the Tibetan deity Dorje Shugden. While devotees such as Kelsang regard Shugden as a Buddha, opponents consider him a demon. This arcane dispute again followed the fault-line between Gelug exclusivists and liberals, and pitted Kelsang against the Dalai Lama.
Groups associated with the NKT mounted protests at the Dalai Lama’s events in western countries. In response, Kelsang was formally expelled from the Sera monastic community, which also rescinded his geshe degree, and was now largely isolated from Tibetan Buddhism.
Kelsang portrayed himself as a mouthpiece for the timeless wisdom of Tsongkhapa and the archetypal Buddhas. If this sounds like modesty it also meant that, so far as the NKT is concerned, Kelsang was the sole arbiter of Buddhist teaching. All Tibetan Buddhism holds that the teacher may helpfully be regarded as a Buddha, but for Kelsang’s detractors, not least the growing number of disaffected former members, the veneration that surrounded him was a “personality cult”, and his teaching offered a “quasi-fundamentalist” certainty.
In August 2009, Kelsang stepped down as general spiritual director of the NKT and did not teach in public after 2013. New leadership arrangements were put in place for appointing successors, centralising control of NKT centres and preventing deviation from Kelsang’s teachings.
The NKT’s dramatic growth testifies to the appeal of Kelsang’s message and his personal devotion to Buddhist practice is unquestioned. However, his trenchant approach and the fierce opposition it provoked mean his legacy will be fiercely contested.
He is survived by a sister, the nun Ani Konchog.
• Kelsang Gyatso, Buddhist monk and teacher, born 4 June 1931; died 17 September 2022
