• Psychological Attitude Of Early Buddhist Philosophy

• Psycho-Cosmic Symbolism Of The Buddhist Stupa

• Insights Of A Himalayan Pilgrim

• Foundations Of Tibetan Mysticism

• Creative Meditation and Multi-Dimensional Consciousness

• Insights of a Himalayan Pilgrim

• Buddhist Reflections

• A Living Buddhism for the West (with Maurice Walshe)

Expositor and pioneer of Tibetan Buddhism in the west, teacher, artist.

Born Ernst Lothar Hoffman in Waldheim, Germany (old kingdom of Saxony) in 1898.

After two years in the German army during World War I he was invalided out because of tuberculosis. Studied philosophy and architecture at University of Freiburg, later archeology and research in Mediterranean area and North America. From 1920-1928, possibly for health reasons, but most likely for the art colony, he lived on the island of Capri in Italy and became increasingly interested in Buddhism, including the practice of meditation.
 
In 1928 he moved to Sri Lanka where he studied under the German monk, Nyanatiloka Thera. He took vows and found time in his monastic schedule, after mastering Pali, to make a close study of the Abhidharma, leading to the publication of another work under the name Brahmachari Govinda.

In 1931 Govinda attended a Buddhist conference in Darjeeling, intending to affirm the purity of the Theravadin tradition against the Mahayana, which in his view, had degenerated into "a system of demon-worship and weird beliefs." He little realized that the trip was to alter his life. There he met his Tibetan guru, Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, under whose influence he "converted" and by whom he was initiated into the Gelug-pa sect under the name of Anagarika Khamsum-Wangchuk. He spent the next thirty years in northern India primarily and around the hill station town of Almora. W.Y. Evans-Wentz had a house there that he let Govinda live in when he was away, which was often. He made several visits to Tibet, most notably in the very early 1930s, followed again after the war in 1948-49, and was initiated into the Kargyu and Nyingma lineages. He was interned as a German national by the British during World War II, and following his release, in 1947 married British-educated Farsi photographer Li Gotami. Among others within the milieu of his early Tibetan travels, especially in the area around Rishikesh, was the Sanskrit scholar Mircea Eliade, who later gained some renown in his studies in Shamanism and the Occult.
 
Founded the Order of the Arya Maitreya Mandala (1933), in memory of his teacher Tomo Geshe Rinpoche, and is dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of the Tibetan religious heritage, and had accumulated a small circle of Western "disciples". His works have both staunch supporters and distracters. The German branch of the Order enjoys the distinction of opening the first centre in the West devoted entirely to the study and propagation of Tibetan Buddhism. In recent decades the Tibetans have been amongst the most influential.

In 1960 he began the first of his large lecture journeys: 1960 and 1965 Europe, 1968-69 the United States and Japan, 1971-72 Malaysia, the Philippines, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Europe, South Africa, 1974/75 Southeast Asia, the United States including Hawaii, 1977 Germany and the United States.
 
In 1980-81 he went to US for medical treatment. His final years were spent in California living in the San Francisco Bay area on Alan Watts' houseboat, then in Mill Valley. In San Francisco he established an American branch of the Arya Maitreya Mandala, called "Home of Dhyan", under the directorship of Neville Pemchekov-Warwick, aka Vajrabodhi. In Mill Valley the Lama founded "Garden of Dhyan", a contemplative community. In doing so, with both branches, he established the first school of Buddhist Yogacara in the western world.

He is considered to be the prime influence in introducing Tibetan Buddhism to the west. The other is Freda Houlston Bedi (1911-1977), wife of Baba Bedi, and known as Sister Palmo (Karma Tsultrim Khechog Palmo), the first Western woman ever to formally enter the Tibetan sangha. He died in 1985.