| IN MEMORIAM: The Kindest of Friends Richard Gere remembers his teacher Ribur Rinpoche. |
Ribur Rinpoche Fund
I write at a time of sorrow and opportunity in the Tibetan community. With the recent passing of
Ven.
Ribur Rinpoche, I am reminded of his deep sense of responsibility to the refugee monks and nuns
living in monastic institutions in the South of India settlements, particularly those in need of
quality health care. As an act of remembrance and commitment, HTD has created the Ribur
Rinpoche Fund to provide as many as possible with medical insurance.
Rinpoche was a remarkable man. Following the Chinese occupation, he was subjected to 17 years
of imprisonment and torture, including some 35 of the notorious "struggle sessions" during the
Cultural Revolution. He was exiled in 1985, never to see his homeland again.
I first met Rinpoche in 1996 in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas at Dharamsala. I've never
known a kinder being. He overflowed with love, mischief and ferocious energy. He was always
fun and fascinating. No matter how painful his body, one always left him with the surety that all
good things were possible and liberation inevitable.
During his imprisonment and after, a primary concern of Rinpoche and something he spoke of
constantly, was the future survival and continuity of Tibetan Buddhism, which he felt was in the
hands of the trained geshes and khenpos and the monastic institutions that produced them, nearly
all of which were destroyed by the Chinese in the 1960's. These great seats of learning, which were
essentially the Harvards, Princetons and Yales of Central Asia, have been slowly rebuilt in exile,
mostly in the South of India.
Rinpoche saw that ill health and accidents in the monastic population were posing a serious threat
to the transmission of knowledge and spiritual practice to the next generation. For impoverished
monks and nuns living in remote refugee settlements, access to advanced medical care was simply
beyond their means and the monasteries did not have the resources to cover catastrophic illnesses
and accidents.
Ribur Rinpoche's first and most urgent request of me was to create a medical fund to take care of
these needs. Over the last seven years, the Tibet Health Initiative has provided the means for a
revolving roster of 800 monks and nuns at 15 monasteries and nunneries each year to receive
primary and catastrophic medical care, including life-saving operations. Hundreds of lives have
been profoundly affected and in the process the monasteries have been greatly strengthened.
Over the years, we have evolved an innovative and unique model that is essentially an integrated
medical insurance program. In January of this year, we sponsored a major evaluation of the
program by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers' enthusiasm
has encouraged us to undertake a three-year expansion of the Initiative to eventually serve more
than 5,000 monks and nuns.
Through our expanded program, access to quality care can be in reach for this entire community. A
gift of $100 to the Ribur Rinpoche Fund will pay health insurance premiums for more than 20
monks and nuns for a year, while $250 will provide benefits to more than 50. The potential of this
program is great, and I have personally pledged to match the moneys raised for the Fund to help
realize it.
In addition to profoundly impacting the Tibetan exile community, we feel this innovative and
unique program could serve as a model for refugee health care around the world, and with your
help we will be able to share it with people around the globe.
Supporting the Ribur Rinpoche Fund offers a unique opportunity to commemorate one man's
remarkable life by transforming into reality his vision of providing health care to the community he
served and loved. Your commitment will concretely change the lives of these men and women for
the better and make a genuine contribution to the preservation of Tibetan knowledge and culture.
Thank you for joining us in this unique and important endeavor.
Richard Gere
I write at a time of sorrow and opportunity in the Tibetan community. With the recent passing of
Ven.
Ribur Rinpoche, I am reminded of his deep sense of responsibility to the refugee monks and nuns
living in monastic institutions in the South of India settlements, particularly those in need of
quality health care. As an act of remembrance and commitment, HTD has created the Ribur
Rinpoche Fund to provide as many as possible with medical insurance.
Rinpoche was a remarkable man. Following the Chinese occupation, he was subjected to 17 years
of imprisonment and torture, including some 35 of the notorious "struggle sessions" during the
Cultural Revolution. He was exiled in 1985, never to see his homeland again.
I first met Rinpoche in 1996 in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas at Dharamsala. I've never
known a kinder being. He overflowed with love, mischief and ferocious energy. He was always
fun and fascinating. No matter how painful his body, one always left him with the surety that all
good things were possible and liberation inevitable.
During his imprisonment and after, a primary concern of Rinpoche and something he spoke of
constantly, was the future survival and continuity of Tibetan Buddhism, which he felt was in the
hands of the trained geshes and khenpos and the monastic institutions that produced them, nearly
all of which were destroyed by the Chinese in the 1960's. These great seats of learning, which were
essentially the Harvards, Princetons and Yales of Central Asia, have been slowly rebuilt in exile,
mostly in the South of India.
Rinpoche saw that ill health and accidents in the monastic population were posing a serious threat
to the transmission of knowledge and spiritual practice to the next generation. For impoverished
monks and nuns living in remote refugee settlements, access to advanced medical care was simply
beyond their means and the monasteries did not have the resources to cover catastrophic illnesses
and accidents.
Ribur Rinpoche's first and most urgent request of me was to create a medical fund to take care of
these needs. Over the last seven years, the Tibet Health Initiative has provided the means for a
revolving roster of 800 monks and nuns at 15 monasteries and nunneries each year to receive
primary and catastrophic medical care, including life-saving operations. Hundreds of lives have
been profoundly affected and in the process the monasteries have been greatly strengthened.
Over the years, we have evolved an innovative and unique model that is essentially an integrated
medical insurance program. In January of this year, we sponsored a major evaluation of the
program by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. The researchers' enthusiasm
has encouraged us to undertake a three-year expansion of the Initiative to eventually serve more
than 5,000 monks and nuns.
Through our expanded program, access to quality care can be in reach for this entire community. A
gift of $100 to the Ribur Rinpoche Fund will pay health insurance premiums for more than 20
monks and nuns for a year, while $250 will provide benefits to more than 50. The potential of this
program is great, and I have personally pledged to match the moneys raised for the Fund to help
realize it.
In addition to profoundly impacting the Tibetan exile community, we feel this innovative and
unique program could serve as a model for refugee health care around the world, and with your
help we will be able to share it with people around the globe.
Supporting the Ribur Rinpoche Fund offers a unique opportunity to commemorate one man's
remarkable life by transforming into reality his vision of providing health care to the community he
served and loved. Your commitment will concretely change the lives of these men and women for
the better and make a genuine contribution to the preservation of Tibetan knowledge and culture.
Thank you for joining us in this unique and important endeavor.
Richard Gere
May 1, 2006
IN MEMORIAM: The Kindest of Friends
Richard Gere remembers his teacher Ribur Rinpoche.
A beloved Tibetan teacher in the Gelugpa tradition, Ribur Rinpoche passed away in January 2006. Born
in the Kham region of Tibet in 1923, he received his geshe degree at Sera Me monastery in 1948. After
suffering many years of abuse in Tibet under Chinese rule, he was exiled to India in 1985 and eventually
came to teach in the United States.
I’VE NEVER FOUND it easier to talk to another human being. Although we shared no earthly
common language, our talks were so lively, spontaneous, and creative, it seemed like there was no
translator. I first met Ribur Rinpoche one rainy and very cold evening in 1998 at his residence at
Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India. I had been taken there by my dear friend Fabrizio Pallotti,
Rinpoche’s devoted student, translator, and jack-of-all-trades.
I remember being brought into Rinpoche’s rather damp, narrow room. The smell of cooked meat and
incense hung in the air. He was sitting on a low throne, facing a large glass-encased statue of Lama
Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelugpa tradition, with thousands of small lights illuminating it.
Everything sparkled. The sparkle was really coming from him. His smile welcomed me and I did my
prostrations. I felt warm and happy. I somehow had failed to bring a kata, or offering scarf, and instead
offered the wool scarf I was wearing. He laughed and accepted the gift. I sat cross-legged at his feet
while he and Fabrizio chatted in Tibetan. Without warning, my breathing changed and tears started
streaming down my face. I was sobbing like a child. Fabrizio asked me what was wrong, and I said I
didn’t know. Rinpoche looked down at me, smiling like the kindest of friends. After a while, he offered
me an orange, which I took, appreciative that something had happened that changed the mood. I started
laughing. Laughing and sobbing at the same time.
RINPOCHE STOPPED BREATHING at Sera Me Monastery on the full moon of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama’s recent Kalachakra Empowerment in Amaravati, India. He was eighty-four years old. He
had been in the U.S. for much of the previous eight years or so, teaching and practicing.
I was profoundly blessed to have him live in a house on our property outside of New York City for
several of those years, finishing what he (and we all) thought would be his final retreats. He had not been
well. The years of abuse under Chinese rule had not been kind to him physically, but, as was true for many
Tibetan monks, nuns, and laypeople, those difficult years had offered a unique opportunity to practice
dharma and achieve a remarkable degree of insight and compassion. Rinpoche’s mind and heart were
impeccable. Bobcats, deer, adults, and children were drawn to his retreat house. He performed the birth
rituals for my newborn son. Life was good for all of us. As Rinpoche completed his retreats, we built a
stupa. Happily, his health improved greatly, probably due in part to the improvement in food, the dry and
warm house, and the sensitive medical care of Dr. Woodson “Woody” Merrell, our neighbor and friend.
We received the gift of an additional four years of Rinpoche’s kindness and inspiration. Toward the end
of 2005, after beating a difficult cancer, Rinpoche began what I think we all knew were his final good-
byes. He was putting things in order and thanking those he felt had been kind and generous to him. In
October 2005, he returned to Sera Me Monastery where he left his body behind.
I’ve never met a kinder being. He overflowed with spunk, mischief, and ferocious energy to the end. He
was always fun and fascinating. No matter how painful his body was, one always left him with the
surety that all good things were possible and liberation inevitable.
Rinpoche was completely devoted to the practice of bodhicitta (the heart/mind of enlightenment), to His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, and to his root guru, the great Pabonka Rinpoche. He was a special spiritual
friend to Gehlek Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and many other important lamas. His passing signals
the inevitable loss of a generation that is the last living link to pre-Chinese-invasion Tibet.
RINPOCHE SPOKE constantly of the future survival and continuity of authentic Buddha-dharma,
which he felt was in the hands of the trained geshes and khenpos—the great scholars of Tibetan
Buddhism—and the monastic institutions that had produced them, virtually all of which were destroyed
by the Chinese in the 1960s. These great seats of learning, essentially the Harvards, Princetons, and Yales
of Central Asia, have been slowly rebuilt in exile, mostly in the south of India. With resources so scarce,
the health of the qualified monks and nuns—the living repository of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom—has not
been well cared for. As I’ve heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama say on many occasions, it takes an
enormous amount of energy (usually twenty years of higher education) to make a geshe. It’s unthinkable
that it would be wasted through ill health and early death.
Ribur Rinpoche’s first and most urgent request of me was to create a medical fund to take care of the
needs of Tibetan monastics. Over the last seven years, the Tibetan Health Initiative has been supplying
primary and catastrophic medical care, including major operations, to nearly a thousand monks and nuns
at fifteen monasteries and nunneries. With his passing, we’ve created the Ribur Rinpoche Fund, further
expanding this care, with the clear intention to eventually benefit the entire Tibetan community in exile
and the even more needy community inside Tibet. [See below for more information.]
Rinpoche was in clear light meditation for five days before he left his body for good. The ashes of his
cremation pit contained hundreds of holy relics. We all miss him terribly.
Actor Richard Gere is President of Healing the Divide and Chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet.
THE RIBUR RINPOCHE FUND
To honor Ribur Rinpoche’s wishes, Healing the Divide, a nonprofit organization founded by Richard Gere, has
established the Ribur Rinpoche Fund to raise support for health insurance for destitute Tibetan monks and nuns.
The Ribur Rinpoche Fund is an outgrowth of Healing the Divide’s Tibetan Health Initiative, which pioneered a
comprehensive membership-based health plan seven years ago in partnership with the Manipal Corporation, a
leading Indian hospital system. Now, Healing the Divide is expanding the program to take advantage of new
affordable health insurance programs that are becoming available to the rural poor in India. The Ribur Rinpoche
Fund is non-sectarian, and members of the public are invited to contribute toward the health care of individual
monks and nuns. A donation of $100 will provide health insurance for approximately thirty individuals. Richard
Gere is providing a Challenge Grant to Healing the Divide that will match donations one-for- one. For further
information, visit healingthedivide.org.
IN MEMORIAM: The Kindest of Friends
Richard Gere remembers his teacher Ribur Rinpoche.
A beloved Tibetan teacher in the Gelugpa tradition, Ribur Rinpoche passed away in January 2006. Born
in the Kham region of Tibet in 1923, he received his geshe degree at Sera Me monastery in 1948. After
suffering many years of abuse in Tibet under Chinese rule, he was exiled to India in 1985 and eventually
came to teach in the United States.
I’VE NEVER FOUND it easier to talk to another human being. Although we shared no earthly
common language, our talks were so lively, spontaneous, and creative, it seemed like there was no
translator. I first met Ribur Rinpoche one rainy and very cold evening in 1998 at his residence at
Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, India. I had been taken there by my dear friend Fabrizio Pallotti,
Rinpoche’s devoted student, translator, and jack-of-all-trades.
I remember being brought into Rinpoche’s rather damp, narrow room. The smell of cooked meat and
incense hung in the air. He was sitting on a low throne, facing a large glass-encased statue of Lama
Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelugpa tradition, with thousands of small lights illuminating it.
Everything sparkled. The sparkle was really coming from him. His smile welcomed me and I did my
prostrations. I felt warm and happy. I somehow had failed to bring a kata, or offering scarf, and instead
offered the wool scarf I was wearing. He laughed and accepted the gift. I sat cross-legged at his feet
while he and Fabrizio chatted in Tibetan. Without warning, my breathing changed and tears started
streaming down my face. I was sobbing like a child. Fabrizio asked me what was wrong, and I said I
didn’t know. Rinpoche looked down at me, smiling like the kindest of friends. After a while, he offered
me an orange, which I took, appreciative that something had happened that changed the mood. I started
laughing. Laughing and sobbing at the same time.
RINPOCHE STOPPED BREATHING at Sera Me Monastery on the full moon of His Holiness the
Dalai Lama’s recent Kalachakra Empowerment in Amaravati, India. He was eighty-four years old. He
had been in the U.S. for much of the previous eight years or so, teaching and practicing.
I was profoundly blessed to have him live in a house on our property outside of New York City for
several of those years, finishing what he (and we all) thought would be his final retreats. He had not been
well. The years of abuse under Chinese rule had not been kind to him physically, but, as was true for many
Tibetan monks, nuns, and laypeople, those difficult years had offered a unique opportunity to practice
dharma and achieve a remarkable degree of insight and compassion. Rinpoche’s mind and heart were
impeccable. Bobcats, deer, adults, and children were drawn to his retreat house. He performed the birth
rituals for my newborn son. Life was good for all of us. As Rinpoche completed his retreats, we built a
stupa. Happily, his health improved greatly, probably due in part to the improvement in food, the dry and
warm house, and the sensitive medical care of Dr. Woodson “Woody” Merrell, our neighbor and friend.
We received the gift of an additional four years of Rinpoche’s kindness and inspiration. Toward the end
of 2005, after beating a difficult cancer, Rinpoche began what I think we all knew were his final good-
byes. He was putting things in order and thanking those he felt had been kind and generous to him. In
October 2005, he returned to Sera Me Monastery where he left his body behind.
I’ve never met a kinder being. He overflowed with spunk, mischief, and ferocious energy to the end. He
was always fun and fascinating. No matter how painful his body was, one always left him with the
surety that all good things were possible and liberation inevitable.
Rinpoche was completely devoted to the practice of bodhicitta (the heart/mind of enlightenment), to His
Holiness the Dalai Lama, and to his root guru, the great Pabonka Rinpoche. He was a special spiritual
friend to Gehlek Rinpoche, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, and many other important lamas. His passing signals
the inevitable loss of a generation that is the last living link to pre-Chinese-invasion Tibet.
RINPOCHE SPOKE constantly of the future survival and continuity of authentic Buddha-dharma,
which he felt was in the hands of the trained geshes and khenpos—the great scholars of Tibetan
Buddhism—and the monastic institutions that had produced them, virtually all of which were destroyed
by the Chinese in the 1960s. These great seats of learning, essentially the Harvards, Princetons, and Yales
of Central Asia, have been slowly rebuilt in exile, mostly in the south of India. With resources so scarce,
the health of the qualified monks and nuns—the living repository of Tibetan Buddhist wisdom—has not
been well cared for. As I’ve heard His Holiness the Dalai Lama say on many occasions, it takes an
enormous amount of energy (usually twenty years of higher education) to make a geshe. It’s unthinkable
that it would be wasted through ill health and early death.
Ribur Rinpoche’s first and most urgent request of me was to create a medical fund to take care of the
needs of Tibetan monastics. Over the last seven years, the Tibetan Health Initiative has been supplying
primary and catastrophic medical care, including major operations, to nearly a thousand monks and nuns
at fifteen monasteries and nunneries. With his passing, we’ve created the Ribur Rinpoche Fund, further
expanding this care, with the clear intention to eventually benefit the entire Tibetan community in exile
and the even more needy community inside Tibet. [See below for more information.]
Rinpoche was in clear light meditation for five days before he left his body for good. The ashes of his
cremation pit contained hundreds of holy relics. We all miss him terribly.
Actor Richard Gere is President of Healing the Divide and Chairman of the International Campaign for Tibet.
THE RIBUR RINPOCHE FUND
To honor Ribur Rinpoche’s wishes, Healing the Divide, a nonprofit organization founded by Richard Gere, has
established the Ribur Rinpoche Fund to raise support for health insurance for destitute Tibetan monks and nuns.
The Ribur Rinpoche Fund is an outgrowth of Healing the Divide’s Tibetan Health Initiative, which pioneered a
comprehensive membership-based health plan seven years ago in partnership with the Manipal Corporation, a
leading Indian hospital system. Now, Healing the Divide is expanding the program to take advantage of new
affordable health insurance programs that are becoming available to the rural poor in India. The Ribur Rinpoche
Fund is non-sectarian, and members of the public are invited to contribute toward the health care of individual
monks and nuns. A donation of $100 will provide health insurance for approximately thirty individuals. Richard
Gere is providing a Challenge Grant to Healing the Divide that will match donations one-for- one. For further
information, visit healingthedivide.org.
