Lama Tsultrim Yeshe (John Samuelson) has been a student of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche since 1989. He completed the first three-year retreat at Karme Ling Under the direction of Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche earning the title Retreat Lama. He took novice monk vows in 1994 from Tai Situ Rinpoche and fully ordained monastic vows in 2008 from Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche.
Lama Yeshe is the resident Lama at the Hay River Karma Thegsum Choling located in Western Wisconsin. The travels through out the country to other Buddhist centers to teach and lead retreats.
He worked for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for 8 years as a prison Chaplain. He continues to do volunteer work in the prison teaching meditation, Buddhism and giving guidance. He has gained valuable experience working with inmates in a medium security prison. Many of them having difficult and abusive childhoods, anger management problems, and high levels of anxiety and stress.
He has a BS degree in Sociology from the University of Oklahoma and did graduate work in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. He taught Sociology 4 years at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
Lama Yeshe took part in a program in Newtown, Connecticut in March of 2013: Sandy Hook Promise: Violence, Loss and Emotional Healing: A Buddhist Perspective at Congregation Adath Israel. Video
The panel consisted of Lama Yeshe, David Kaczynski (brother of the Unabomber), James Knoll IV (forensic psychiatrist) and Lama Kathy Wesley (3-year retreatant).
He has also worked doing construction, building new houses and remodeling, and before that, furniture reupholstery. He likes woodworking, building and working with his hands. The Hay River KTC is in a stone building he built, with some help from friends, in 1977 as a shop. It was later remodeled, with the help of volunteers from the center, and converted into its present form.
He has lived at his present location, a farmstead built in the 1890s, near Ridgeland Wisconsin since 1971.
