Twenty years ago a Seattle boy moved to Nepal after being recognized as the reincarnation of a revered Tibetan lama. The public’s reaction to his mother’s decision to let him go says as much about our understanding of parenting as it does about Buddhism.
In the final years of his third life, Dezhung Rinpoche enjoyed short walks around the block near his home in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood. Dressed in the traditional maroon robes of a Tibetan Buddhist lama, he would shuffle along with the help of an attendant and the crutch that had been his constant companion since a botched knee surgery had hobbled him several years earlier. This was the mid-’80s, nearly a decade before Tibetan Buddhism would become a cultural phenomenon in the United States, so the sight of a robed holy man circumambulating the block would have inspired more than a few double-takes in this relatively enlightened enclave that borders the University of Washington.
Born Könchok Lhündrup in 1906, the Buddhist teacher grew up in the cold, arid foothills of east Tibet, with little in the way of scenery to distract him from his religious studies. But here in his adopted home—where he’d lived since 1960, originally as a guest of the UW—he was surrounded by greenery. And he cherished his afternoon sidewalk amblings for the opportunity they provided to soak up the flora he’d missed out on as a young man.
That bum knee made for tough sledding, though, so Dezhung Rinpoche made frequent stops, often hunkering down in a neighbor’s front yard. (A former neighbor found it so disconcerting to watch the lama regularly sully his robes in their wet grass that they began leaving out a lawn chair for his use.) It was during one of these pit stops that the aged man pulled close Adrienne Chan, his attendant and student for nearly a decade. He had decided where he would be reborn, and he wanted to share the news.
In the quarter century since fleeing his homeland, where the Chinese had set about burning Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in 1959, Dezhung Rinpoche had traveled extensively. He’d taught and studied throughout India and the United States, so according to tradition he could have honored any of those locations with his next reincarnation. But as Chan leaned in, Dezhung Rinpoche said simply, “I will be reborn in Seattle. It is nice and clean and fresh.”
Not long after, in May 1987, the lama died in Nepal. And then the wait for his return began.
Dezhung Rinpoche was four years into his fourth life when the country learned his name. You may remember him if you were a regular reader of The Seattle Times. Or The New York Times. Or USA Today. For six weeks 20 years ago, he was the most famous toddler in America.
Yet his rebirth in November 1991 went largely unheralded. There were no reporters, no cameras to document the occasion; at that point no one knew for sure who he really was. But even if they had, it’s possible he still would have been regarded as little more than a curiosity by anyone outside of the Sakya Monastery, the Tibetan Buddhist center in Greenwood where his parents practiced. The Dalai Lama was only two years removed from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, and the faith had yet to break through into the American mainstream.
Two years later, the boy born Sonam Wangdu was formally recognized as Dezhung Rinpoche’s reincarnation, due in large part to a series of visions and dreams shared by his mother and the Sakya Monastery’s head lama. More than 4,000 people attended Dezhung Rinpoche IV’s enthronement in Nepal—his mother would later note that he behaved himself and even sat still for most of the ceremony—but still the media didn’t pounce.
It wasn’t until December 1995, shortly after Christmas, that Seattleites and the rest of the country took notice of the boy lama. His story had become newsworthy for two reasons. For starters, he was preparing to move to Kathmandu, Nepal—almost completely cut off from his family—where he would study the dharma for 20 years to continue on the path to enlightenment he’d presumably started three lives ago.
Then there was the matter of his family. His father, who died before Sonam’s second birthday when his car ran a red light and was struck by a Gray Lines tour bus downtown, was a Tibetan man named Tenzin Lama. His mother was white and grew up Catholic in small-town Indiana. And tucked into each story about Dezhung Rinpoche’s rebirth was the suggestion—sometimes overt, sometimes not so overt—that this American woman was shirking her biological duties by shipping off her young, innocent son to live out his childhood in the windswept tundra of eastern Asia. “Sonam will stay in the monastery, home to 38 monks, and live behind its eight-foot wall for five to eight years,” wrote USA Today’s Andrea Stone. “He will see his mother just twice a year, or whenever she can scrape together the $1,200 airfare.” The media had come for the mysticism and stayed for the moral outrage.
Save for a handful of television interviews over the next few years, the little lama’s mother retreated from the limelight and back to the relative safety of the monastery after he departed for Nepal. She’d said goodbye to her son willingly, but she lost a good deal of her dignity by force.
In the final years of his third life, Dezhung Rinpoche enjoyed short walks around the block near his home in Seattle’s Ravenna neighborhood. Dressed in the traditional maroon robes of a Tibetan Buddhist lama, he would shuffle along with the help of an attendant and the crutch that had been his constant companion since a botched knee surgery had hobbled him several years earlier. This was the mid-’80s, nearly a decade before Tibetan Buddhism would become a cultural phenomenon in the United States, so the sight of a robed holy man circumambulating the block would have inspired more than a few double-takes in this relatively enlightened enclave that borders the University of Washington.
Born Könchok Lhündrup in 1906, the Buddhist teacher grew up in the cold, arid foothills of east Tibet, with little in the way of scenery to distract him from his religious studies. But here in his adopted home—where he’d lived since 1960, originally as a guest of the UW—he was surrounded by greenery. And he cherished his afternoon sidewalk amblings for the opportunity they provided to soak up the flora he’d missed out on as a young man. That bum knee made for tough sledding, though, so Dezhung Rinpoche made frequent stops, often hunkering down in a neighbor’s front yard. (A former neighbor found it so disconcerting to watch the lama regularly sully his robes in their wet grass that they began leaving out a lawn chair for his use.) It was during one of these pit stops that the aged man pulled close Adrienne Chan, his attendant and student for nearly a decade. He had decided where he would be reborn, and he wanted to share the news.
In the quarter century since fleeing his homeland, where the Chinese had set about burning Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in 1959, Dezhung Rinpoche had traveled extensively. He’d taught and studied throughout India and the United States, so according to tradition he could have honored any of those locations with his next reincarnation. But as Chan leaned in, Dezhung Rinpoche said simply, “I will be reborn in Seattle. It is nice and clean and fresh.”
Not long after, in May 1987, the lama died in Nepal. And then the wait for his return began.
Dezhung Rinpoche was four years into his fourth life when the country learned his name. You may remember him if you were a regular reader of The Seattle Times. Or The New York Times. Or USA Today. For six weeks 20 years ago, he was the most famous toddler in America.
Yet his rebirth in November 1991 went largely unheralded. There were no reporters, no cameras to document the occasion; at that point no one knew for sure who he really was. But even if they had, it’s possible he still would have been regarded as little more than a curiosity by anyone outside of the Sakya Monastery, the Tibetan Buddhist center in Greenwood where his parents practiced. The Dalai Lama was only two years removed from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, and the faith had yet to break through into the American mainstream.
Two years later, the boy born Sonam Wangdu was formally recognized as Dezhung Rinpoche’s reincarnation, due in large part to a series of visions and dreams shared by his mother and the Sakya Monastery’s head lama. More than 4,000 people attended Dezhung Rinpoche IV’s enthronement in Nepal—his mother would later note that he behaved himself and even sat still for most of the ceremony—but still the media didn’t pounce.
It wasn’t until December 1995, shortly after Christmas, that Seattleites and the rest of the country took notice of the boy lama. His story had become newsworthy for two reasons. For starters, he was preparing to move to Kathmandu, Nepal—almost completely cut off from his family—where he would study the dharma for 20 years to continue on the path to enlightenment he’d presumably started three lives ago.
Then there was the matter of his family. His father, who died before Sonam’s second birthday when his car ran a red light and was struck by a Gray Lines tour bus downtown, was a Tibetan man named Tenzin Lama. His mother was white and grew up Catholic in small-town Indiana. And tucked into each story about Dezhung Rinpoche’s rebirth was the suggestion—sometimes overt, sometimes not so overt—that this American woman was shirking her biological duties by shipping off her young, innocent son to live out his childhood in the windswept tundra of eastern Asia. “Sonam will stay in the monastery, home to 38 monks, and live behind its eight-foot wall for five to eight years,” wrote USA Today’s Andrea Stone. “He will see his mother just twice a year, or whenever she can scrape together the $1,200 airfare.” The media had come for the mysticism and stayed for the moral outrage.
Save for a handful of television interviews over the next few years, the little lama’s mother retreated from the limelight and back to the relative safety of the monastery after he departed for Nepal. She’d said goodbye to her son willingly, but she lost a good deal of her dignity by force.
by Matthew Halverson, Seattle Met | Read more:
Image: Kin Lok
