Thubten Gyatso (Australian Monk)

Thubten Gyatso (Australian Monk)

Thubten Gyatso (born Adrian Feldmann) was ordained by Lama Thubten Yeshe in the 1970s and was one of the first Westerners to become a monk in the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. He is a Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition veteran who has been instrumental in establishing a number of Dharma centres in France, Taiwan, Australia and Mongolia.

Born in Melbourne in 1943, Adrian Feldmann graduated from the University of Melbourne with a degree in medicine. After practising medicine in Australia and overseas, he travelled for several years through Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, eventually finding his way to a Tibetan monastery in Nepal. After much study and soul-searching, he became ordained as the Buddhist monk, Venerable Thubten Gyatso. Since then he has run a free medical practice in Nepal, taught Buddhism and meditation in Nepal and in France, establishing monasteries in France and in Bendigo, Victoria, Australia.

In the late nineties, Gyatso lectured extensively in the USA. He then spent some years in Mongolia, where he was well regarded, and his teachings were presented on radio and television and published in the local newspapers.