12 Facts About Ngawang Wangyal

Ngawang Wangyal was born in the Astrakhan province in southeast Russia sometime in 1901 and died in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1983.

Ngawang Wangyal came to the United States from Tibet in 1955 and was the spiritual leader of the Kalmuk Buddhist community in Freewood Acres, New Jersey at the Rashi Gempil-Ling Buddhist Temple.

Ngawang Wangyal is considered a "founding figure" of Buddhism in the West.

Ngawang Wangyal developed the code for the CIA that aided the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet, spearheaded a two decade long undertaking to lift political proscriptions on US visits by the 14th Dalai Lama, opened the first Tibetan Buddhist Dharma center in the West, and trained the first generation of Tibetan Buddhist scholars in America.

Ngawang Wangyal taught at Columbia University and sponsored visits by monks and lamas from the Tibetan emigre settlement in India, instructing them in English so they could serve the Buddhist community in the United States.

Ngawang Wangyal translated two volumes of popular Tibetan and Sanskrit stories illustrative of Buddhist teachings, The Door of Liberation and The Prince Who Became a Cuckoo.

Geshe Ngawang Wangyal was a disciple of the eminent Buriat Mongol scholar and diplomat Agvan Dorzhiev.

In 1937, Geshe Ngawang Wangyal left Peking to return to Tibet via India after earning enough money to support himself until he received his geshe degree from Drepung.

In 1958, Geshe Ngawang Wangyal established and built the first Tibetan Buddhist dharma center in the West, Labsum Shedrub Ling, the Lamaist Buddhist Monastery of America, in Freewood Acres, New Jersey, later moved to Washington NJ and renamed the Tibetan Buddhist Learning Center, in Washington, New Jersey.

Ngawang Wangyal served as the monastery's head teacher until his death in January, 1983.

Ngawang Wangyal taught many students of Western background and contributed greatly to the spread of Tibetan Buddhism in the United States.

Ngawang Wangyal brought Geshe Lhundup Sopa to the monastery, where he stayed for several years before accepting a position at the Buddhist Studies program of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he became the first traditional Tibetan Buddhist scholar to become a tenured professor at an American university.