Compassion in Action, Education as Ministry

Tulku Tenzin Gyurmey Rinpoche (Tengyur Rinpoche for short) noticed a problem in his hometown of Tawang, India. There was an overall lack of access to education, especially “culturally-appropriate” schools that fostered a connection with local culture.

Because of this, financially-able families usually send children away for schooling. Families living in poverty could not afford to send their kids to school at all; even free schools often required families to buy uniforms and books.

“We talk about love and compassion all the time, but where is this love and compassion in action?” Tengyur Rinpoche said.

He imagined an alternative: What if these children had access to a free school, everything included, right here in their own hometown?

But he didn’t stop there. What if the adults had access to education, too?

He eventually turned this imagined alternative into a real option for the people in his community. In 2014, Tengyur Rinpoche founded Thubten Shedrubling Foundation (TSF) in Tawang, a non-profit dedicated to providing education to both children and adults. In 2017, TSF opened a free learning center for adults where the lay community could study Buddhist teachings and meditations more deeply, as well as gain computer and language skills.

Tengyur Rinpoche continued working toward opening a school, where children can learn and develop compassion.

“We want to bring our children up in an environment where they are not distant from their cultural heritage,” he said. “We want them to speak their mother tongue. We want them to feel they belong in their community.”

In March 2023, all of his hard work came to fruition, and TSF officially opened the Tashol Tengyur School, a school truly free for students in Tawang.

As the school’s founder and president, Tengyur Rinpoche is responsible for developing the school’s policies and program. Although the school is founded on Buddhist values, it is open to children from all religious backgrounds.

“We don’t teach Buddhism as a religion to the school kids because they are too young to understand it,” Tengyur Rinpoche said. Instead, Tengyur Rinpoche wants teachers to demonstrate Buddhist principles through methodologies rooted in Buddhist understandings of compassion.

To gain a better sense of how to design these programs, Tengyur Rinpoche applied to Harvard Divinity School’s Buddhist Ministry Initiative.

From ‘Education as Duty’ to ‘Education Is Universal’

There are two main reasons why Tengyur Rinpoche became a monk: The first, he says, is that his father, who was previously a monk in Tibet, wanted one of his sons to carry on the tradition. The second reason he became a monk is because his family saw something special in him.

“When I was around seven, my family says that I used to make certain claims, go to certain places in the monastery that we have in my hometown, and recollect mystic things,” said Tengyur Rinpoche. His family suspected he was a tulku, which means someone who is a reincarnation of a previous practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism.

Tengyur Rinpoche became a monk at the age of nine. Shortly after he arrived at the monastery in 1990, Tengyur Rinpoche’s teachers also began to share his family’s suspicions that he was a reincarnation.

“When a young boy shows certain signs that he might be one of the reincarnations, all of the signs are written down into a letter and then forwarded to the Dalai Lama,” said Tengyur Rinpoche.

A year later when Tengyur Rinpoche was 10 years old, the Dalai Lama confirmed that Tengyur Rinpoche was indeed a tulku, giving him the title of “rinpoche” to denote his new elevated status.

Tengyur Rinpoche quickly realized that his new title meant a new way of life with higher expectations, greater academic rigor, and additional restrictions.

“The first day was a big kind of shock because I could no longer sit with my friends in the school,” he said. “When you are recognized as a tulku, you have to excel in your studies. You have to be perfect in your character and manners. You should talk to people in a certain way, because even though you are a young kid, you have a high social authority.”

And these high expectations extended beyond the school and his peers. Tengyur Rinpoche was not only expected to quickly understand Buddhist rituals and texts in theory, but also how to appropriately use them in practice when providing spiritual guidance and leadership to the community, even as a child.

The pressure and expectations were high, but Tengyur Rinpoche says they ultimately made him a stronger person and leader.

“I may have missed out on a lot of the fun a ‘normal’ kid has, but I have also achieved things that compensate for that loss,” he said. These accomplishments include high academic achievement, such as earning a Geshe Lharampa, translating for the Dalai Lama, opening learning centers and schools in his community, and cofounding the organization Wisdom Bridges—based in New York—to support his community schools.

Education played a central role in Tengyur Rinpoche’s childhood, but amidst the pressure and expectations, he grew to see education as his duty as a monk and rinpoche.

“I studied because I needed to and my teachers wanted me to,” he said. “until 2010.”

It was around this time that Tengyur Rinpoche also picked up a copy of the Dalai Lama’s Ethics for the New Millennium. The book, he recalled, completely transformed his way of thinking and motivated him to learn more about universal ethics.

“Ethics are not limited to just one tradition or religion,” he said. “His Holiness talks about how ethics are human nature and that every human has the same compassionate capacity.”

Tengyur Rinpoche appreciated the theory behind these ideas and wanted to find a way to apply them in practice. He found a possible path in education and began laying the groundwork for the Thubten Shedrubling Foundation.

“My whole life, I never paid for my education. I never paid for my accommodation. I never paid for food, and I realize how fortunate I am,” he said. “Whatever you have received, the practice of a real monk is that you have to give it back to society.”

Education as Ministry

At HDS’s Buddhist Ministry Initiative, Tengyur Rinpoche's understanding of ministry has expanded.

“I thought that ministry was more about doing rituals,” he said. “Coming here, I realize that ministry is more than that. The Buddhist Ministry Initiative doesn’t just give you an academic education about different Buddhist schools of thought, but it wants you to incorporate what you learn and become a messenger to deliver those messages, even if you have to step out of your comfort zone.”

His BMI fellowship will end in May 2023, but his time at HDS will continue. Tengyur Rinpoche will return to campus in the fall as a master of theological studies degree candidate to complete one more year of study. He then intends to apply to a doctor of philosophy (PhD) program. He plans to use what he’s learned at BMI—and what he’ll learn next year—as he continues to develop the school curriculum and raise the funds he needs to keep the school running.

For Tengyur Rinpoche, his education initiatives to provide both children and adults with compassionate learning opportunities is a type of ministry. He hopes that the students who pass through the school will learn math, science, literature, and history, while also learning how to be caring and compassionate individuals.

The school, though free, does ask something of its students in return: that they promise to give back to their community when they grow up, and that they demonstrate compassion in action toward themselves and others.

—by Toby Cox, MTS '23, HDS Correspondent