Bhikkhu Sanghasena

Sanghasena was born in Ladakh and brought up in a religious family within the region's Buddhist tradition. At the age of seventeen he joined the Indian Army. In 1977 he left the army to follow a religious vocation and became a disciple of the Buddhist scholar Venerable Acharya Buddharakkhita Mahathera, abbot of the Mahabodhi Society vihara in Bangalore, where he received full ordination and studied Buddhist doctrine and meditation.

He returned to Ladakh and founded the Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre in 1986, beginning in a single rented room in Leh. In 1991 the centre acquired 200 acres of barren land at Choglamsar, about ten kilometres from Leh, and developed it as the Mahabodhi Devachan campus; the same year it opened a hostel for girls from remote parts of Ladakh.

The Mahabodhi Residential School followed in 1992, together with a meditation centre and the Mahabodhi Charitable Hospital, the first non-governmental hospital in Ladakh. A mobile health clinic began in 1993, a boys' hostel and a New Delhi branch in 1996, and a nunnery in 1997. Later projects included a branch school at Tingmosgang (1999), a home for the aged and destitute (2003), the Jetavana monastery for young monks (2004), a literacy programme for elderly women and the first school and hostel for blind and visually impaired students in Ladakh (both 2005, the latter inaugurated by President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam), a branch school at Bodhkharbu in Kargil district (2006), a vocational training programme (2007) and branches in Jammu and Chandigarh. A tree-planting programme, the Mahabodhi Green Project, has been running since 1992.

Sanghasena has convened a number of international gatherings in Ladakh, among them the Sakyadhita conference on Buddhist women in 1995, an interfaith conference for young adults with the International Association for Religious Freedom in 1998, an international Buddha Jayanti celebration in 2005 attended by President Abdul Kalam, a youth Sangha conference with the World Buddhist Sangha Council in 2008, and a Buddhist–Muslim dialogue conference with Taiwan's Museum of World Religions in 2010. In 2002 he instituted the Acharya Buddharakkhita Humanitarian Award for service to marginalised communities. A biography by Vandana Shukla, A Monk Postpones Nirvana, and a documentary film, Sanghasena: A Silent Reformer, both appeared in 2017.

In 2000 the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment gave Sanghasena the National Award for the Welfare of People with Disabilities. The Gandhi Peace Foundation honoured him with its World Peace Award for 2004, and in 2005 he received a Peace Environment Award at the Third World Congress held on United Nations World Environment Day in Verbania, Italy. The Ladakh Buddhist Association presented him with its Bharat Ratna Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar Award in 2009. In August 2025 he was given the Ladakh dPal-rNgam award, described as the territory's highest civilian honour, at the ninth Ladakh dPal rNgam Dus-sTon festival in Leh.[2][3][4][5][6]