Tomek Lehnert
 |
Tomek Lehnert |
Tomek Lehnert was born on
August 15,
1956 in
Gdańsk,
Poland. He studied
Civil Engineering at the Polytechnics of Gdansk and
English literature at the University of
Poznań. He was active in the students'
Solidarity movement in Poland in the early eighties.
In
1983, Lehnert became a practitioner of
Buddhism in the
Karma Kagyu school. He left
Poland in
1985 and during the next three years was co-director of the Karma Kagyu Buddhist center in
Copenhagen,
Denmark. During that time, he became a close associate and helper of
Lama Ole Nydahl. Lehnert has contributed to the Buddhist magazines
Kagyu Life in
Germany and
Diamentowa Droga (Diamond Way) in Poland. Since
1989, he has been involved in setting up Karma Kagyu centers in the
Americas,
Australia,
New Zealand and
Russia, as well as
Western and
Eastern Europe, traveling along with Ole Nydahl.
In
1998, Lehnert authored a book,
Rogues in Robes, describing the
conflict around the recognition of the 17th
Karmapa Lama. The book contains distinctively critical descriptions of several well-known Tibetan Buddhist teachers, such as
Kalu Rinpoche,
Chögyam Trungpa, and
Akong Rinpoche.
*
Tomek Lehnert,
Rogues in Robes: An Inside Chronicle of a Recent Chinese-Tibetan Intrigue in the Karma Kagyu Lineage of Diamond Way Buddhism, (Blue Dolphin Publishing 2000); ISBN 1577330269.
