Yeshi Dorjee

Yeshi Dorjee, a Buddhist monk, lives in Westbrook. He provides spiritual support and teachings for the Tibetan community throughout southern Connecticut and beyond. A multi-talented artist, Yeshi creates sand mandalas, butter sculptures, religious paintings, book illustrations, and is a storyteller. He learned drawing at home from his uncle, from the age of 6, doing basic drawings of yak and scenes. He went to Gyumed Tantric Monastery in South India at age 9 to be a monk. There Yeshi learned butter sculptures from a monk artist who came from Tibet, for five years under this teacher named Ngarampa Lobsang Geleg. He started with drawing of Buddhist figures for six months. Then color mixing with butter and getting fingers trained for picking up the right amount of mixed colored butter for the flowers and figures, for three months. Then he made many butter sculptures assisting the older monks. Started at 14 years old; graduated from the University when he was 21 years. Yeshi took responsibility of butter sculpture art department at the monastery from 1983 to 1997. He taught many new students and they are still teaching other monastery and demonstrating in a different museum. He made one big butter sculpture in the museum in France. They kept that from 1996 to 2011. He made a new one there in July 2011. Yeshi and nine monks also made a huge butter sculpture in 2012 of the Buddha’s life story, for the annual butter sculpture festival in Bodh Gaya which is January 8-15. Now several of these monks have passed away. Yeshi came to the United States in March 1997.