The Venerable Lama Losang Samten, a renowned Tibetan scholar, spiritual teacher and artist, was born in Chungpa, near Lhasa, in Central Tibet. He and his family fled to Nepal in 1959 and later moved to Dharamsala, India. At the age of 11 Losang became a Buddhist monk and studied with the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts. He later joined the Namgyal Monastery, the personal monastery of the 14th Dalai Lama. In 1985 he earned the highest degree at the monastery, a Master's Degree in Sutra and Tantra, equivalent to a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Debate. From 1984 – 1988 Losang served as a personal attendant to His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama.

In 1988 Losang came to the U.S. and in 1989 he founded the Tibetan Buddhist Center of Philadelphia, and later established others centers in Hartford, Connecticut, and El Paso, Texas. In 1995 Samten gave back his monastic vows and entered a lay practitioner’s life. In 1994, Losang received an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut and in 1995 an Honorary Doctorate of Art from the Maine College of Art. He was invited as a visiting scholar to teach Tibetan Language at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia from 1994 – 1997.

• Losang came to the US in 1988 to demonstrate Sand Mandalas, an ancient Buddhist meditative practice of sand art. This was the first time this form of ancient Tibetan sand art was displayed to the general public. Since then, he has been commissioned to create Sand Mandalas at numerous universities, museums, schools and churches in the USA, including:
  
  

 
Losang has also created sand Mandalas at various locations in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. In addition, Losang provided religious technical advice, and supervised the creation of a sand mandala for Martin Scorsese's film Kundun, where he also played the role of the attendant for the young Dalai Lama. In 2002, Samten received a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the PEW Fellowship in 2006.