Head of the Gelug tradition's Tibetan people, not of Buddhism. Turned 91 nineteen days before this build , in good health, still giving no written succession instruction — having already announced that his Gaden Phodrang Trust holds sole authority to recognise his reincarnation. ★ 91st birthday, 6 Jul 2026
Re-checked 2026-10-08 · holdsThe field file →★ The card that corrects the record. The Ganden Tripa — not the Dalai Lama — is the formal head of the Gelug school, an office held by merit and rotation rather than rebirth. The 103rd died in 2017 and the 104th has since died as well ; a memory-built deck would name a dead man. ★ Catch · new since 2024
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Recognised by the Dalai Lama and, remarkably, also by Beijing; fled Tibet in 2000. Head of the Karma Kagyu school — one of two men holding the same title , in a dispute that has run since the 1990s and has never been resolved.
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The rival claimant, recognised by the Shamarpa line. In 2018 the two Karmapas met for the first time and issued a joint statement urging their communities to heal the division — a schism handled with more grace than most in this hall.
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Head of the Sakya school, which broke its own pattern in 2017: his father Ngawang Kunga held the throne from 1952 until his retirement , and the office now passes between branches of the family rather than being held for life. ⚠︎ Re-checked 2026-10-11: He no longer holds the throne. Ratna Vajra Rinpoche was the 42nd Sakya Trizin from 2017 to 2022. His brother Gyana Vajra Rinpoche was enthroned as the 43rd on 16 March 2022 and is the current Sakya Trizin.
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · CHANGEDHead of the Thai sangha — the largest state-organised Theravada body on earth — and marked his 99th birthday in June 2026 with a government merit-making ceremony at Wat Ratchabophit. Note who held the ceremony: in Thailand the sangha and the state are not separable. ★ 99th birthday, Jun 2026
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · holdsBorn 1941; president since 2006 and now also acting head of Soka Gakkai International — because Daisaku Ikeda died on 15 November 2023, aged 95 . A lay movement of millions, with its own political party in Japan, and no monks at all. ★ Catch · Ikeda d. 2023
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The Buddhist nun who built one of the largest humanitarian organisations on earth from a hut in Hualien in 1966. At 88 she still leads the Tzu Chi Foundation — millions of volunteers, hospitals, a university, disaster relief on every continent. The most consequential living Buddhist woman, and it is not close. Verified 07-27
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Successor seat of Hsing Yun (†2023) — head abbot of the Taiwanese humanistic-Buddhism order with temples on five continents, and reappointed chairperson of its 11th board . The institution survived its founder; that is the test most guru movements fail. Verified 07-27
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · holdsElevated after Tep Vong died 26 February 2024 , ending a four-decade patriarchate that rebuilt the Cambodian sangha from the Khmer Rouge's near-extermination — when fewer than 3,000 of 65,000 monks survived . The King has also seated Om Lim Heng as Supreme Patriarch of the Maha Nikaya order. Verified 07-27 · will change
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · holdsChief prelate of the Malwatta chapter of the Siam Nikaya — one of the two seats in Kandy whose word carries constitutional weight in the one country where Buddhism holds the "foremost place" in the constitution itself. Verified 07-27
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The other Kandy seat — 22nd Mahanayaka of the Asgiriya chapter , appointed 7 April 2016, joint custodian of the Temple of the Tooth . Between Malwatta and Asgiriya runs the whole formal authority of Sri Lankan Theravada. Verified 07-27
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Installed by the Chinese state on 8 December 1995 , days after Beijing seized the six-year-old boy the Dalai Lama had recognised — who has not been seen since . Tours Tibet blessing monasteries, and told Xi Jinping he would make Tibetan Buddhism "more Chinese." Verified 07-25
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★ The strangest claim of authority in this entire hall. An officially atheist government insists that every reincarnation must comply with Chinese law and receive state approval , reviving the Qing golden-urn procedure. A regime that denies the soul, licensing the transmigration of souls.
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⚠︎︎ Myanmar's most influential monk — a renowned scholar, hospital-builder and philanthropist who has openly backed the junta since the 2021 coup, and travelled with Min Aung Hlaing on an arms-buying trip to Russia . Not a fringe extremist. The establishment itself. Verified 07-25
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · holdsPut on Time 's cover in 2013 as "the face of Buddhist terror" for the anti-Muslim campaign that preceded the Rohingya expulsion. In 2023 the ruling junta awarded him the honorific title "Thiri Pyanchi." The state did not merely tolerate him — it decorated him.
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★ Arguably the most influential Buddhist of the modern West — by removing the Buddhism. His Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction took vipassana technique, cut every metaphysical claim, and got it prescribed by doctors. A tradition entering a culture through the clinic, not the temple. Verified active 07-25
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A former Theravada monk trained in Thailand who has been teaching in America for over fifty years — one of the small group who brought vipassana west and built the retreat network that trained most of the teachers now working in it.
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Co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society and the teacher most responsible for putting metta — lovingkindness practice — into general Western use. Take it seriously as a rival to intercessory prayer: it asks something real of the one praying, and offers no one to pray to.
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An American woman ordained in the Tibetan tradition whose books on staying present in grief and fear sell into the millions — and reach far past Buddhism. Where our own literature of suffering is thin, hers is what people find instead.
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Thich Nhat Hanh's first and closest collaborator — she helped him build Plum Village in France and, since his death in 2022, stands as the elder of the international sangha . In 2026 the community marked 60 years of the Order of Interbeing and celebrated her Continuation Day. The living link to the founder. Verified 07-27
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★★ The world's leading researcher on the uncanny valley , whose lab built MINDAR , the 1.95-metre aluminium-and-silicone android Kannon at Kōdai-ji, Kyoto — around ¥100 million, unveiled March 2019, a 25-minute sermon on the Heart Sutra. Still preaching in 2026, seven years on — and its sermons are pre-programmed, not generated. ★ Verified still running, 2026
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An American monk and the foremost living translator of the Pali Canon into English — the Majjhima, Samyutta and Anguttara Nikayas are his. Published in Tricycle in June 2026 and taught at Upaya in July. If you quote the Buddha in English, you are probably quoting him. Verified 07-25
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Took a doctorate in cell genetics at the Institut Pasteur and then ordained in the Tibetan tradition — the movement's most credentialed bridge to neuroscience, and a large part of why brain-imaging labs study meditators at all. The scientist-monk is a real category here; we have almost no equivalent.
Re-checked 2026-10-11 · holdsKorea's most listened-to living teacher — plain-spoken public dharma talks reaching a global audience, paired with humanitarian and peace work on the peninsula. His Jungto Dharma School opened its 2026 intake in March ; the frontier here is not technology but scale without hierarchy . Verified 07-27
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