Thubten Jigme Norbu (
Tibetan: ཐུབ་བསྟན་འཇིགས་མེད་ནོར་བུ་,
Wylie: Thub-stan 'Jigs-med Nor-bu) (August 16, 1922 – September 5, 2008),[3] recognised as the
Taktser Rinpoche,[4] was a
Tibetanlama, writer,
civil rights activist and professor of Tibetan studies and was the eldest brother of the
14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. He was one of the first high-profile Tibetans to go into exile and was the first to
settle in the United States.
Early life
Thubten Jigme Norbu was born in 1922 in the small, mountain village of
Taktser in the
Amdo County of Eastern
Tibet.
Independence walks
In 1995, Norbu cofounded the
International Tibet Independence Movement (ITIM). He led three walks for Tibet's independence, starting in 1995 with a week-long walk 80 miles from Bloomington, Indiana to
Indianapolis, Indiana. In 1996 he led a 300-mile, 45-day walk from the PRC embassy in Washington, DC to the
Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. The following year, joined by
Dadon with her 3-year-old son, he led a 600-mile walk from
Toronto to New York City, beginning on March 10 (
Tibetan Uprising Day) and ending June 14 (
Flag Day).
Life in the US
Norbu lived at the Tibetan-Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center with his wife Kunyang. They have three sons, Lhundrup, Kunga and Jigme Norbu, all born in New York. In late 2002, Norbu suffered a series of strokes and became an invalid.
Norbu died at the age of 86 on September 5, 2008, at his home in Indiana in the United States having been ill for several years. His body was
cremated in a traditional Buddhist ceremony.[5] His youngest son, Jigme, died at the age of 45 on February 14, 2011, while carrying on his father's work. He was hit by a car in Florida during a walk to promote Tibetan independence and raise awareness of Tibet.
Writings
Tibet Is My Country is his autobiography dictated to Heinrich Harrer in 1959, and updated with a new essay in 1987 (
ISBN0861710452) and 2006 (
ISBN1425488587)
Tibet: The Issue Is Independence – Tibetans-in-Exile Address the Key Tibetan Issue the World Avoids is an essay collection from 1994 by Tibetans in the diaspora (mainly
Tibetan Americans) and features an introduction by Norbu (
ISBN0938077759)
Norbu and
Robert B. Ekvall provided the first English translation of the Tibetan play originally authored by the fifth
Panchen LamaLobsang YesheYounger Brother Don Yod in 1969.
^Thubten Jigme Norbu; Harrer, Heinrich (1961). Tibet is my country: the autobiography of Thubten Jigme Norbu, brother of the Dalai Lama, as told to Heinrich Harrer Thubten Jigme Norbu ; translated from the German by Edward Fitzgerald. Thubten Jigme Norbu ; translated from the German by Edward Fitzgerald. New York: Dutton.
OCLC1084817875.