Lobsang Lhalungpa, 1924-2008: Day to forgive, remember

Tibetan scholar’s widow says she feels sadness, not anger, about crash police say is alcohol-related

Doug Mattson | The New Mexican

5/4/2008 - 5/5/08

Gisela Minke sat in the front row for her husband's memorial service, bruised and in a wheelchair, and through a spokeswoman forgave the man police say killed Tibetan scholar Lobsang Lhalungpa in a suspected alcohol-related crash.

"I feel no anger about what happened last Sunday, only sadness that such accidents happen time and time again due to the serious problem that drugs and alcohol have created. My heart goes out to the Lucero family," Minke said in a prepared statement read Sunday by Eleanor Caponigro, who was a student of Lhalungpa's.

Minke and Lhalungpa, 82, were on St. Michael's Drive on April 27 when their car was struck by a pickup that bolted out of the Kmart parking lot, according to police. The four people in the truck ran off, police said, and Lhalungpa died the next day of his injuries.

The driver, Roque Lucero, 40, of Santo Domingo Pueblo, later admitted being behind the wheel but denied having been intoxicated. Santa Fe police say the case will be presented to a grand jury.

A short distance from the crash site, more than 400 people gathered for the memorial service in a makeshift Buddhist temple in the College of Santa Fe's Alumni Hall, a metal building decorated with candles that burned alongside portraits of Lhalungpa and the Dalai Lama as 11 monks sat upon pillows onstage.

Friends and family spoke of Lhalungpa's intelligence, compassion, patriotism and sense of humor. The crowd broke for tea and cookies before reassembling to hear the monks chant and perform music. The monks, based in Atlanta, interrupted a cultural tour to come to Santa Fe.

Lobsang Samten, a former ritual master for the Dalai Lama who lives in Philadelphia, worked with Lhalungpa for seven months as a fellow technical adviser on the set of Kundun, a Martin Scorsese film about the Dalai Lama. Samten visits Santa Fe often and said he regarded Lhalungpa as a friend who taught him about honesty and simplicity.

Before the service, Samten, a believer in reincarnation, said Lhalungpa "will come back as a great teacher and giving of his great wisdom and compassion."

Lhalungpa served as a translator for the Dalai Lama on special occasions. One of Lhalungpa's sons, Samphe Lhalungpa, who works for the United Nations, said his father left Tibet in 1947 for India — before China invaded Tibet — where he taught some 150 Tibetan students to help them preserve their language and culture.

He later started a radio program to inform Tibetans about conditions in India and the rest of the world. In 1970, he moved to Canada, where he taught at the University of British Columbia. Five years later, he moved to the U.S. and worked on translation and writing projects in New York and Washington, D.C., and he and Minke retired to Santa Fe 18 years ago. The couple had friends here and loved the landscape, which reminded him of Tibet.

"It was fitting that he should be here in Santa Fe and find a kind of peace in the dry hills and big-sky vistas of this land where ancient cultures and ways still resonate," Samphe Lhalungpa told the crowd.

"It is hard when you live in exile to find a home and connectedness, and that happened for him here," he added, before leading the crowd in the Tibetan national anthem.

Contact Doug Mattson at 986-3087 or dmattson@sfnewmexican.com.