Maniwa Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche, Beloved Tibetan Buddhist Retreat Leader and Stupa Master, Has Died

Maniwa Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche, a highly respected and beloved Tibetan Buddhist master in the Karma Kagyu tradition, died on September 3, 2025, in Kathmandu. The cause of death was complications from heart surgery. He was 75.

Ordained by His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche was revered for his exceptional mastery of many aspects of traditional Tibetan Buddhist teachings, including sutras, tantras, rituals, music, dances, arts, and sciences. He was one of only a handful of Buddhist teachers holding the title Maniwa, an honorific awarded to masters of the Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig in Tibetan), or bodhisattva of compassion, practice who have completed at least 1 billion repetitions of the Om Mani Peme Hung mantra—or have inspired others to collectively recite that many. According to a biography on the Karma Kagyu Calendar website, over the past twenty-five years, more than 20 billion Chenrezig mantras have been accumulated under Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche’s guidance.

Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche’s commitment to the dharma—and his students—was deep and wide-ranging. His first center in Nepal was a retreat place for nuns where he taught for three years. When the center proved too difficult to reach in winter and the rainy season, he built and oversaw a monastery west of Kathmandu for one hundred nuns. Throughout his work, Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche remained a strong champion of women in Tibetan Buddhism, the first Karma Kagyu lama to support training nuns as khenpos, the highest degree of Buddhist scholarship.

With Shamar Rinpoche, Sherab Gyaltsen started a retreat center In Pharping, a major Buddhist center in central Nepal, where he served as retreat master for the traditional three-year Tibetan Buddhist retreat. (He had completed his first three-year retreat under Bokar Rinpoche.) In Bhaktipur, east of Kathmandu, Sherab Gyaltsen established and oversaw the monastery Dhagpo Sheydrub Ling (Nala Gompa). Dedicated in 2015 by the Seventeenth Karmapa, Trinley Thaye Dorje, the building was constructed in traditional Tibetan Buddhist style.

Sherab Gyaltsen also rebuilt his old monastery, Manang Gompa, destroyed in the 2015 earthquake that devastated Nepal, and Nyeshang Gompa, which is part of the Swayambhunath complex. Swayambhunath is one of the two most important Buddhist sites in Nepal, situated on the western edge of Kathmandu. Several times a year, at Nyeshang, Sherab Gyaltsen led Nyung Ne, a rigorous purification and fasting practice, and Chenrezig, or Loving Eyes practice, for several thousand practitioners. He was also well-known for leading Amitabha and guru yoga practices.

Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche traveled worldwide offering teachings and empowerments. As retreat leader, he guided all the practices, and later, when asked what differences he saw between Eastern and Western practitioners, he cited their approaches to the dharma. In the East, “people go mostly for the rituals, pujas, empowerments,” he said. “They don’t often ask for instructions, meaning, or explanation.” He concluded, “I see more development in the West.” 

Renowned as a stupa master, Sherab Gyaltsen was sought after to consecrate stupas—Buddhist shrines—throughout Nepal, Europe, and North America. He also published numerous Buddhist texts in Tibetan, and in English, including A Collection of Rare Tibetan Texts, a bibliography of Tibetan texts, coauthored with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche.

Sherab Gyaltsen was well-known for his lifelong concern for orphans and impoverished children. His altruism inspired the founders of the Czech Republic–based Nala Foundation, established in 2012, where he served as spiritual advisor.

Sherab Gyaltsen was born in 1950 in Manang, Nepal, a remote Himalayan village in the high desert near Annapurna, on the border with Tibet. When he was 4 years old, he found a book lying on the ground and brought it home to his parents. Unable to read, his mother showed it to a monk from Samye Ling monastery in Tibet and asked what it meant that her son had found the book. The monk, in turn, told her to show it to a high lama. Although Sherab Gyaltsen’s father was ill at the time, he put his son on his back, wrapped the book in a khata, and went to see Shangpa Rinpoche, a tulku, with two requests: would Rinpoche do a divination to see if his illness was serious, and would Rinpoche tell him something about the book his son had found. As Sherab Gyaltsen later told Buddhism Today: 

[Shangpa Rinpoche] did not say what the book was. He just said I should start practicing the dharma when I turned 8 years old. If I did not start, I would not have a long life. To my father he said, ‘Even if you get the Long-Life Empowerment from one hundred lamas, you will die.’

Back home, Sherab Gyaltsen’s father reported Rinpoche’s instructions for the boy but said nothing about the prophecy of his death. Later that year, when Sherab Gyaltsen was just 4, his father died. At 8, he followed the tulku’s instruction and started studying the dharma. 

Sherab Gyaltsen learned to read and write, and when he was 12, did ngondro, the traditional Tibetan Buddhist preliminary practices. Then, from 13 to 15, as was customary at the time, he was invited to people’s houses to read important Tibetan Buddhist texts to them and offer pujas. At 15, Sherab Gyaltsen went to Rumtek monastery in Sikkim, where he took refuge with the Sixteenth Karmapa and became a monk. At that time, there was no shedra, or school, at the monastery, Sherab Gyaltsen said, “so the main education was to learn all the tantras.” For the next three years, he studied all the Tibetan Buddhist texts and rituals. He spent a lot of time with the Karmapa, and later recalled, “I had a very strong devotion and belief in him because I could see his qualities.” He was a very special teacher, Sherab Gyaltsen continued. “His ability to know things [was] unobstructed.” 

Sherab Gyaltsen was beloved for a teaching style that was “easily understandable yet profound. His explanations [were] filled with warm humor, stories, and practical advice,” states a tribute from Bodhi Path, an international organization of Buddhist Centers founded by Shamar Rinpoche. Those sentiments were echoed by countless students.

In a remembrance on Facebook, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche expressed the profound grief shared by Sherab Gyaltsen Rinpoche’s many followers: “To imagine this world without his compassionate presence, his guiding wisdom, and his gentle smile is almost unbearable. He was not merely a teacher—he was the very embodiment of awakened compassion, an enlightened master whose every breath was dedicated to the liberation of beings.”