Historical descriptions and recollections routinely characterize early Western participants as backpackers on the hippie trail (extended overland tours of Asia), to whom Lama Yeshe's style of discourse especially appealed.

[4] In December 1973, Lama Yeshe ordained fourteen Western monks and nuns under the name of the International Mahayana Institute.

In his description of the FPMT, Jeffrey Paine emphasizes the charisma, intuition, drive, and organizational ability of Lama Yeshe.

Paine asks us to consider how a refugee with neither financial resources nor language skills could manage to create an international network with more than a hundred centers and study groups.

[5] David N. Kay makes the following observation: Lama Yeshe's project of defining and implementing an efficient organizational and administrative structure within the FPMT created the potential for friction at a local level.

The organization's affiliated centers had initially been largely autonomous and self-regulating, but towards the late-1970s were increasingly subject to central management and control.

[6]As a result, says Kay (and Samuel's analysis concurs), at the same time that the FPMT was consolidating its structure and practices, several local groups and teachers defected, founding independent networks.

At issue was whether the centers and their students ought to identify primarily with Lama Yeshe, local teachers, the Gelugpa tradition, or Tibetan Buddhism as a whole.

[10] On 3 May 2019, Sera lama and FPMT teacher Dagri Rinpoche was arrested for groping a woman aboard an domestic Indian flight.

The FPMT International Office responded by suspending Dagri Rinpoche from its list of teachers, and commissioning FaithTrust Institute to conduct the requested investigation.

A “draft” summary report was eventually published—so labeled by the FPMT in anticipation of revisions, but the FaithTrust Institute considered its work complete.

Besides abuse, the summary also noted a pattern of "coercive or retaliatory behaviors" aimed at silencing complainants; criticized the FPMT for its lack of any clear mechanism to handle such complaints (pp.

The authors accordingly describe the FPMT as "an international network of Gelugpa dharma centers headquartered in Portland, Oregon, but founded by Tibetan and Sherpa monks in India and Nepal (one of whom has apparently reincarnated as a Spaniard), and whose funding comes disproportionately from ethnic Chinese communities in East / Southeast Asia.

In addition to its local board and officers, each FPMT center also has a spiritual program coordinator and in many cases, a resident geshe or teacher (and perhaps other Sangha as well).

The center directors and spiritual program coordinators from various countries meet every few years as the Council for the Preservation for the Mahayana Tradition (CPMT), in order to share experience and deliberate points of mutual concern.

[29] Jessica Marie Falcone's Battling the Buddha of Love: A Cultural Biography of the Greatest Statue Never Built (Cornell University Press, 2018; based on her Ph.D. dissertation in cultural anthropology for Cornell) is about the controversy, and the meaning of the proposed statue to FPMT participants and Kushinagari protesters.

[30] Wisdom Publications, now a well-known publisher of Buddhist books, originated at Kopan Monastery, Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1975 under editor Nicholas Ribush.