Geshe Sonam

After doing his primary education, Geshe Ngawang Sonam joined Sera Monastic University in 1995 to devote his life to intensive study and practice of Buddhism.  In 2008, he was selected by the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to become one of the English translators for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Since then, he has accompanied His Holiness to various places in India and to around nine countries around the world. Following his more than twenty years of intensive monastic studies on the five major treatises of Buddhism, and upon clearing all the six successive years of examination, in Jan 2019, he was formally conferred the highest degree of Geshe Lharampa [Traditional degree equivalent to PhD in Buddhism] by Gelugpa Monastic Seat of Learning [Gelugpa Monastic University]. In Nov. 2016, His Holiness the Dalai Lama called him to work in His Office, and presently he works there as a translator and a Buddhist scholar.  Geshe Ngawang Sonam’s first book ‘In the Footsteps of Sidhartha’ was published in 2010. His translation of Shantideva’s work Bodhisattvacharyaavatara is going to print very soon. Alongside his office work, he also finds time to teach and attend conferences with modern scholars and scientists as a speaker.