A Lost Treasure
Family and Friends Gather to Celebrate the Life of a Tibetan Buddhist Scholar
Coming from as far as Switzerland and Canada, a few hundred people gathered Sunday afternoon at the College of Santa Fe to celebrate the life of Tibetan Buddhist scholar and northern New Mexico "living treasure" Lobsang Lhalungpa, 80, who died last week in a car crash.
The drab interior of Alumni Hall was transformed into a riot of color with prayer flags and banners, reams of soft fabric and Asian rugs. On a small central stage sat monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery in India, surrounding a photograph of a serenely smiling Lhalungpa.
"I want to thank you all in this community for cherishing him," said Samphal Lhalungpa, Lobsang's son. "He found a home (in Santa Fe), and that's hard when you're in exile."
The family members, friends, students and associates who spoke during the hour-and-a-half long memorial service praised Lhalungpa's work as a scholar and teacher in the areas of Tibet and Buddhism, as well as his decades of service to the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government in India. But they also remembered his kindness and compassion and, with occasional bursts of gentle laughter, the mischievous side of his personality.
"He's not only a wonderful husband and father and scholar, but an actor," said Losang Samten, a teacher and former monk, chuckling as he recalled Lhalungpa's small role as a government official in the Martin Scorsese-directed film "Kundun."
Samten, who traveled to Santa Fe from Philadelphia for the service, said he first became aware of Lhalungpa decades ago, through Lhalungpa's work with an India-based Tibetan radio program. The two became acquainted in 1996, when they spent several months together in Morocco working as technical directors for "Kundun," about the 14th Dalai Lama.
"He was such a wonderful human being, so kind and so knowledgeable about history in Tibet," Samten said.
He added, "He calls me a dear friend. I see him as a mentor, a spiritual guide and a teacher."
Lobsang's wife, Gisela Minke, recalled, in a statement read aloud during the service by a friend, how she and her husband first met in New Jersey in 1975. After years in New York and Virginia, the couple moved to Santa Fe in 1989.
Lhalungpa, Minke said, "told me this was the place most like Tibet he'd seen in North America and he'd had the most profound meditations."
"Starting a new life in Santa Fe was one of the best things we did," she said.
Samphal recalled growing up with his father in a house where writers, journalists and artists, as well as the "occasional crackpot," regularly dropped by. Lhalungpa, he said, had a tolerance for outsiders, including homosexuals, rarely seen at that time.
"It's fitting that my father should live and die here in Santa Fe, because he found a peace in the dry hills and big sky," Samphal said.
Lhalungpa died April 28, one day after the car he and Minke were traveling in was hit by Roque Lucero, 40, on St. Michael's Drive, near the site of Sunday's memorial service.
Empty beer cans were found inside Lucero's truck, and two passengers later told police that Lucero, who has three prior DWI charges, had been drinking the night before the accident.
Lucero fled the scene after crashing his car but admitted to police last week that he was responsible for the crash, although he did not admit drinking. He has not been charged with a crime, and police say the case will likely be taken to a grand jury.
The circumstances of Lhalungpa's death were touched on just a few times during Sunday's service. Minke, notably, said in her statement that, "I feel no anger about what happened last Sunday, only sadness that such things happen again and again."
Said Dawa Lhupchug, co-founder of Tibet Center New Mexico in Albuquerque, "Lhalungpa was one of the great oak trees of the Tibetan culture."
"It has shattered and we know we will feel the ripples for some time," he said. "But I hope his advice and the way he lived his life will give us strength."
