Nicholas Vreeland

Nicholas Vreeland
Geshe Nicholas Vreeland listening to a question
Religion	Tibetan Buddhism
School	Gelug
Education	American University of Paris, New York University, Rato Dratsang
Personal
Nationality	American
Born	Switzerland
Senior posting
Based in	Rato Dratsang
Title	Khen Rinpoche
Religious career
Teacher	Khyongla Rato Rinpoche

Nicholas Vreeland, also known as Rato Khen Rinpoche, Geshe Thupten Lhundup, is a fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk who is the abbot of Rato Dratsang Monastery, a 10th century Tibetan Buddhist monastery reestablished in India. Vreeland is also a photographer. He is the son of Ambassador Frederick Vreeland and grandson of Diana Vreeland, the renowned fashion editor.

Vreeland spends half of his time in Rato Monastery in India, and the other half in the United States, where he is the Director of Kunkhyab Thardo Ling—The Tibet Center, New York City's oldest Tibetan Buddhist center.

In 2014, a documentary film was released about Vreeland, entitled Monk With A Camera.

Vreeland was born in Geneva, Switzerland in 1954. He also lived in Germany, and Morocco before coming to live in the United States at the age of 13 when his father Frederick Vreeland was assigned to the United States Mission to the United Nations.

Vreeland was sent to Groton School in Massachusetts, where he became interested in photography; he became an apprentice to photographers Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, who both worked for Diana Vreeland, Vogue magazine's editor-in-chief.

in the early 1970s, Vreeland attended The American University of Paris, subsequently receiving his BA in 1975 from New York University Film School, where he studied film.

In 1977, Vreeland began his studies of Buddhism with Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, a Tibetan lama sent to the West in the early 1960s by the 14th Dalai Lama to help introduce Tibetan culture and religion. On a photographic assignment in India in 1979, Vreeland met the Dalai Lama, and was asked to photograph the Dalai Lama's first trip to North America.