The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche is the Founding President and CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a non-partisan collaborative think-and-do tank focused on interdisciplinary research and programs related to the development of human and global ethics.

Venerable Tenzin was born into a Hindu family in Vaishali, India. At the age of ten, under his own volition, he entered a Buddhist monastery in Rajgir, near the ancient Nalanda University. His interest in photography began at the age of eleven, when he received his first “point and shoot” camera as a gift. Beginning in 2000, he embarked on a series of photographic essays (that continue to this day) using a Canon Rebel camera. Since 2005, he’s been using digital Canon 20D, 5D and iPhone cameras (or whatever is at his disposal) for his powerful and poignant images.

A monk and a scholar, Venerable Tenzin’s multilingual and multicultural education contribute to his photographic vision. He considers his end products to be projections of his imagination, as well as reflections of the world he experiences in his travels across the globe. He finds photography contemplative, serving as a vital development tool for a calm, clear, and decisive mind. It is also instrumental in gaining appreciation for the profound “illusory” displays of nature.