Losang Samten is an American Tibetan scholar, sand mandala artist, former buddhist monk, and Spiritual Director of the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia. In 2002 he was made a National Heritage Fellow.
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Born into a buddhist family in Chung Ribuce, Tibet, Samten left with his family to Nepal and then to Dharamsala, India in 1959. He entered the Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala as a novitiate and in 1967 became a monk in that order. While there he also studied the sand mandala art at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. Both institutions are associated with the 14th Dalai Lama. In 1985 he earned a Master's Degree in Buddhist Philosophy, Sutra, and Tantra from the Namgyal Monastery.
In 1988 Samten was charged by the 14th Dalai Lama to come to the United States to demonstrate the sand mandala art form; marking the first time that a Tibetan mandala was displayed in the west. In 1989 Losang moved to Philadelphia to become the founder and spiritual director of the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia. Since then he has been commissioned to create works for numerous museums and institutions, including the Chicago Field Museum, Columbia University, Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Institution to name just a few. In 1997, he worked on the Martin Scorsese film Kundun as religious technical advisor, sand mandala supervisor, and an actor.