Osel
Hita Torres was soon to be officially recognized by the Dalai Lama himself
as the reincarnation of Lama Thubten Yeshe,
Part Two
Another year passed before I
saw Lama Osel again. He had spent the intervening months more quietly in
a Tibetan monastery in Switzerland called Tarpa Choeling, set up by the
late Geshe Rabten. The high mountain air, the healthy food, and the
peace and routine of monastic life had suited him well. But in August
1990 Lama Zopa was coming to Holland to teach at the Maitreya Institute,
founded by the Dutch students of Lama Yeshe in the beautiful woodlands
of Emst, and Lama Osel and Basili had travelled there to be with him.
Lama Osel had grown up considerably and
was taking charge more than ever. I arrived as a puja was about to
begin, and hurried to join in. This time Osel didn't wait for anybody's
cues. He launched right in, reciting Tibetan prayers one after the other
at an impressive rate. I looked at him afresh and noticed that, in some
way, he now seemed to be Lama Zopa's equal. Thankfully, the sense of
humour was still intact. At one point he got a fit of the giggles which
he successfully controlled. He grinned, made faces and struck a mock
meditation pose–which looked hilariously like Lama Zopa. He knew it, but
interestingly didn't laugh himself.
The discipline and the concentration which
had been visible a year earlier had developed. A glass of orange juice
was put in front of him, but it was an hour before he took a sip. At the
back of the large room a group of children had got bored with the
ceremony and were playing. He made no move to join them, nor did he cast
any envious glance towards them. Instead he blessed each of them as they
came up to him at the end to offer him the white scarf.
At the end of the puja Lama Zopa Rinpoche
made a speech.
As always, behind the quiet delivery was a
potent message: 'Today we have offered a long life puja to Lama, who
passed away in his old aspect and has returned as a guide in his new
aspect. Although I have a little dharma knowledge I travel from one
country to another around the world. But until Lama Tenzin Osel Rinpoche
is ready to teach sentient beings in the West and in other places, I
plan to continue like this,' he said.
'We invite highly qualified teachers to be
guest teachers at our centres, and when they come we receive them and we
accept their kindness in helping us. But we must never, never forget
that this is Lama's incarnation. Lama who has returned to us in his new
form. We must not forget the one who has created all these centres.
'There are so many sentient beings who
have come into contact with the dharma that we should not let Lama, who
has come back in a new form, be forgotten while we are so fortunate in
meeting other qualified lamas.
'I think it is my responsibility to say
these things because Lama brought me to the West so often in the past to
create this organization for his Western students.'
It was, it seemed to me, not only a
promise that Lama Osel would indeed be teaching one day, but a warning
that in the interim we must not lose sight of who our ultimate teacher
was. What Lama Zopa was doing was shoring up the edifice of the
worldwide structure of centres that Lama Yeshe had initiated, making
sure it stayed steady until Osel could take the helm. Looking at the
young boy sitting next to Lama Zopa, charmingly putting his hand up to
his ear as if sneaking to catch words he was not supposed to hear, it
sounded a dizzying plan. Osel was still five years old. So many things
could happen.
I received a potent reminder of the
Buddhist law that nothing stays the same when I met Maria again. Life
might have been running smoothly for Osel in the past year, but she had
been dealt a severe blow. Maria had discovered a large tumour in one of
her kidneys. She told me the precise measurements: 8cm x 7cm x 6cm. It
sounded enormous. The doctor advised her to have it out immediately.
But, with her typical dislike for medical interference already evidenced
by her attitude towards contraception, Maria had decided to wait before
making her decision. In the meantime, with her usual sublime ease, she
had produced another child, her seventh. She had also started up a
tourist business in her home town of Bubion, to cater for the growing
number of visitors who were beginning to discover the lovely little
town.
Lama Zopa had then visited Spain, and she
went to meet him to tell him of her sickness and seek his advice. 'If
the guru said I should have an operation then I would have, even though
I don't like doctors or hospitals. But Lama Zopa told me that this
sickness was full of blessings for me. "It will help you practise. Now
is the time to do a retreat–to control the illness," he said.' His words
struck home, and for the first time in her life Maria was planning to
plunge herself into serious meditation.
In fact the whole year had been difficult
for Maria. The previous Christmas Eve she had had a car accident. She
had been driving Lama Osel and Basili back to Bubion from Madrid when a
car veered out of a side street in Granada and hit them. The driver had
been celebrating for a good few hours. Maria had been jerked into the
steering wheel; Basili had lurched forward and hurt his knee; and Lama,
who had been sleeping in the back, fell to the floor, not hurt at all.
Nevertheless they decided to go to the hospital to be given a check-up.
What happened there was extraordinary. The
four-year-old Lama Osel took control. He had approached the doctor and
said: 'Please take care of my mother, who has a pain in her side, and
Basili, who has hurt his knee. I have nothing wrong, but you need to
check them.' The doctor was rather nonplussed about being given orders
by such a small patient and replied that he should be examined himself.
'No, there is no need. But please look after my mother and Basili,' he
insisted.
A little later the doctor heard a knock on
the door of the room where he was looking at X-rays of Maria and Basili.
Osel walked in. 'Please can I enter, because I am very interested in
this sort of thing,' he announced. The doctor took a second look, then
recognized the child whose face was well known all over Spain. Suddenly
this unusual behaviour became clear to him.
Lama Osel was also still capable of
surprising even those closest to him with sudden 'revelations'. One day
when he was in Switzerland his father Paco, an Italian monk and Basili
took him to lunch at a restaurant with a balcony overlooking a valley.
Lama Osel sat watching some birds flying down to the balcony looking for
scraps to eat. Amid the general conversation Osel began to speak in a
tone that made them all stop and listen. 'Before,' he said, 'many, many
Buddhas came into my body, then I became tiny and entered into my
mother's womb. Then I came out.' He paused, then added, "Before, I was
Lama Yeshe. Now I am Lama Osel.' The others were speechless. The birds
flocking down to the balcony had obviously triggered off a memory of
something that had happened before he was born. Nobody could be sure
what exactly he was talking about, but all those present knew that when
he was dying Lama Yeshe had performed his profound meditation where he
would have visualized the Buddha Heruka, his personal practice,
dissolving into him several times. According to the esoteric guidelines
of tantric Buddhism, mastery of this highly complex meditation is
essential in order for the spiritual adept to dictate the precise
conditions of his next rebirth. Was this the many Buddhas dissolving
into his body Lama Osel was talking about?
His statement about being Lama Yeshe
before and Lama Osel now was one I had heard earlier in Kathmandu when
he was only three. He had been playing with his brother Kunkyen and I
had asked him outright if he was the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe. 'I am
Tenzin Osel, a monk,' he had replied with great solemnity. 'Before, I
was Lama Yeshe. Now I am Tenzin Osel.' I had marvelled then that at such
a young age he had managed to find the words to express the complicated
process of reincarnation. The continuity of the two beings was present,
but the identification of the two personalities was different. I
marvelled again now, when I heard the remarkable words that Osel had
uttered after looking at the birds.
A few months later I saw him when he
stopped over in London en route for the next stage of his
extraordinary life. He was on his way to southern India to Sera
monastery to begin his formal Tibetan education. He slipped his hand in
mine as I showed him some of the sights. The swarming pigeons at
Trafalgar Square did not impress him at all, but the creepy-crawly
exhibition at the Natural History Museum did. He was engrossed by the
minutiae of the insect kingdom, and would have stayed looking at the
exhibits for hours had we allowed him.
He had duties to perform as well. He
hosted a children's hot-chocolate party at the Jamyang Centre, in
Finsbury Park, where he sat rapt in front of a video of The Snowman,
twice. Although he had come down with a heavy cold he thanked the
photographers for 'taking the trouble to come' and he willingly presided
over a puja, although he must have been feeling awful. It was on this
occasion that I noticed for the first time how adults, especially
newcomers, often projected their own childhood experiences on to Osel.
One woman I spoke to said it was cruel to
subject a small child to such a lengthy 'ordeal' when he should be
tucked up in bed. She had been sent to boarding school at five and had
been traumatized in the process. Another man commented that he thought
Lama Osel looked bored by the whole procedure–and then added that he had
spent much of his childhood in a similar state. Yet another woman didn't
understand a word of what was going on but went away feeling
inexplicably happy. As it was impossible that Osel was incorporating all
these varying conditions I began to wonder if he was acting as a mirror,
reflecting back to the observer states of minds and emotions that they
possessed. If so, then he was truly fulfilling the role of the guru–for
the real guru, the worthy, honourable guru, functions to reveal the
disciple's own inner nature and thus to show what must be confronted,
worked on or acknowledged.
For several happy hours I watched him at
play: it was a fascinating spectacle. Someone had given him a model
aeroplane designed for a seven-year-old. He sat down by himself to
assemble the pieces, following the instructions and diagrams. When he
reached a certain point he got stuck. Much to my surprise, he did not
throw a tantrum or get frustrated as most children of five would have
done; instead he calmly undid all that he had done and started from the
beginning again. His concentration was immense and unusual. I recalled
that concentration comes from hours of meditation. The ability to focus
for hours at a time on a single task is the territory of the yogi. Could
what I was witnessing be the result of Lama Yeshe's past efforts? Osel
got to the same point in his plane-building, and again he could go no
further. Again he took the model apart. Twice he built the aeroplane,
and twice he disassembled it. On his third attempt he finally gave up,
defeated by the difficulty of completing the exercise. He thrust it into
Basili's hands. 'You do it!' he commanded.
Later I overheard someone talking to him.
'What do you want to do when you grow up?' they asked.
'Give teachings,' came the immediate
reply. Then he added, seriously, 'But not now. Later.'
Did he know the Dalai Lama, and if so what
did he think of him, they enquired.
'He is my guru,' said Osel almost
dismissively, as though this was so obvious that it was hardly worth
asking.
Later, he got up and led me by the hand
upstairs to show me a photograph of Lama Yeshe hanging on the wall.
'That's me, before,' he stated in a matter-of-fact way. 'Then I got
sick.' He did a mime of someone getting weaker and weaker and sagging.
'Then I died and they put me in a stupa and set fire to it,' he said,
tongue lolling out. 'And now I am here,' he added cheerily. It was
impressive. But at this age one could not be sure how much he had been
told and what he intuitively knew. From now on, I thought,
demonstrations of past-life recall would never be as thoroughly
convincing as those he had given when he was a baby.
I saw him again over Christmas at
Varanassi, also known as Benares, that ancient crumbling Indian city on
the banks of the Ganges. I was on my way to Australia, Lama Osel was on
his way to Sera monastery, and a vast crowd of 150,000 Tibetans were on
their way to attend the Kalachakra Initiation to be given by the Dalai
Lama at Sarnath, the place where the Buddha delivered his first teaching
after reaching Enlightenment. The Kalachakra Initiation was one of
Tibet's most esoteric and difficult practices, in which the Initiator
would harmonize the inner elements of the body and mind to bring about
harmony and peace in the outer world. The Dalai Lama had been performing
this ceremony across the world in an attempt to stop humankind's
destructive tendencies. Now it was Lama Osel's little figure which
strode confidently on to the stage in front of that vast throng to
present the representative offering to the great man.
Later he dressed up as Father Christmas to
give presents to people in his hotel, and he ordered hot milk from a
stall to be sent to the stray dogs milling around outside. On a more
official note, he hosted a lunch party for all the young reincarnated
high lamas who had come to the Kalachakra. It was an impressive
gathering. They were ail there; Ling Rinpoche (previous senior tutor to
the Dalai Lama); Trijang Rinpoche (previous junior tutor); Song
Rinpoche, who had been very close to Lama Yeshe and presided at his
funeral; Serkong Dorje Change; and Serkong Rinpoche, the marvellous lama
whose furrowed face and large, pointy ears had supposedly been the model
for Yoda in the film Star Wars.
Curiously, their 'predecessors' had all
passed away around the same time. It was said that they had chosen 'to
die' in order to remove serious obstacles that were threatening the
Dalai Lama's life. They had been the cream of the Gelugpa hierarchy, the
lineage holders, all of them towering masters of meditation and
scholarship. They had all been reborn around the same time as well. Now
their reincarnations were assembled on the lawn of this smart Indian
hotel.
'That's the entire future of the dharma,'
remarked one perceptive onlooker. Lama Osel was among them, only his
white skin and Western features setting him apart. Would they accept
him, and vice versa, so easily when they were all old enough to realize
the difference?
Maria too had arrived–to do her retreat in
Bodhgaya. She looked well, but told me that apart from the tumour on her
kidney she now had a secondary tumour on her brain. As she had refused
surgery and medication the doctors had given her only six months to
live, but this had not upset her at all. She was putting all her faith
in the spiritual practices on which she was about to embark. Lama Zopa
had told her to offer up her sickness, to use her tumours as a vehicle
for taking on the sufferings of others.
This advice immediately took my mind back
to Medjugorye, the small town in former Yugoslavia where the Virgin Mary
has been appearing to six young people daily for a number of years.
Fascinated by this phenomenon, I had gone there in my capacity as a
tourist to see the site for myself. I had interviewed the visionaries,
one of whom, Vicka, a vivacious girl of twenty-four, told me about the
brain tumour she had developed. For months on end she felt sick and was
continually fainting, but she kept up her cheerful disposition,
insisting on talking to the pilgrims who came to hear her message.
She had told me that the Virgin Mary, or
Gospa as she was called in Medjugorye, had asked her to offer up her
brain tumour for the sickness of the world, and that it would be cured
on a specific date. Vicka had duly written down the date of her promised
cure, sealed it in an envelope and given it to the local priest for safe
keeping. In the meantime she had refused offers of free treatment from a
Harley Street specialist in London.
Her faith was rewarded. On the exact date
that she had written down, the tumour suddenly vanished. Today Vicka
radiates good health, and that inner joy which is invariably the
signature of true spiritual experience. I wondered how Maria, the mother
of Osel and six other children, would fare.
During the time we were at Varanassi we
had our own teaching on death and impermanence. Lama Zopa's mother
passed away literally in our midst. It affected us all deeply especially
Maria, the mother of the other famous lama.
We had all come to respect the tiny,
frail, almost blind old lady known as Amala, who had insisted on making
the long, arduous journey from her home near Mount Everest to the hot,
dusty plains of India to see the Dalai Lama and receive the Kalachakra
Initiation. 'She is sleeping in a corner of a roof–crowded in with all
the Kopan boys. Although she is the mother of Lama Zopa, she refuses to
have a separate room. She says she is no one special. It made me very
humble,' commented Maria.
On the last day of the Initiation, Amala
had received personal blessings from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. At 10
p.m. that evening, at the conclusion of the Kalachakra, she passed away,
her face illuminated by serenity and peace. She had received what she
had come all this way for and had died saying the mantra that she had
uttered millions of times throughout her life: 'Om Mani Padme Hum', the
sacred words of Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion.
It was a mark of Lama Zopa's love for his
students that he turned what could have been an occasion of private
grief and recollection into a public event: he allowed us into the small
room where his mother's body lay in the sleeping bag in which she had
died, buried under piles of white scarves given in respect by the
visitors. In spite of my apprehension at seeing a dead body, I was
surprised to find the room filled with a sweetness, a delicacy and a
tangible aura of something very vital, yet at the same time peaceful,
going on. It remained like that for three days, when suddenly the
expression on her face changed and with it the atmosphere in the room.
At this point Lama Zopa Rinpoche announced that Amala had finished her
meditation and had 'succeeded' in her death. It seemed a curious choice
of words. In that singular phrase Lama Zopa had succinctly summed up the
Tibetan Buddhist view that the death process was very much an individual
challenge which could be controlled if we had the mind to do it.
The next day we were all invited to
witness Amala's cremation at the ghats on the banks of the holy river
Ganges. It was a rare opportunity to contemplate the meaning of Death
and Impermanence. The body, placed upright and covered with piles of
wood scented with incense and adorned with flowers, took two hours to
burn. A friend asked a nearby monk if she could take a photograph.
'Yes–and use it as a meditation every time you feel depressed. It will
put everything into perspective,' he replied.
Silently I thanked Amala for giving us
Lama Zopa Rinpoche, the small, saintly man who had worked so hard and
given so much to us Westerners. As I looked at the smoke swirling over
the sacred river and the queue of corpses lined up along its banks
waiting to be burnt, I thought how short and ephemeral this life was.
There was, however, no end to mind. It
continues in an ever-flowing, ever-changing stream, like the great
Ganges itself. To press home this most fundamental of Buddhist teachings
even further, in case we had not got the point, a few years later we
were to be presented with a young boy with an exceptionally intelligent
face. He was sitting at Lama Zopa's feet in monk's clothes. He was, we
were told, the reincarnation of Amala.
Part Three
On 15 July 1991 Lama Osel
Rinpoche, the reincarnation of Lama Thubten Yeshe, formally entered Sera
monastery. He was six years old. As his small motorcade approached its
destination, a red line could be seen in the distance. As the cars drew
closer their occupants saw that it was the entire assembly of monks, who
had turned out to line the road to welcome their newest incumbent. It
was an honour accorded only to the highest lamas–but, it was agreed,
Lama Yeshe certainly qualified due to his immense work in spreading the
holy Buddha dharma across the world, and because of the prestige he
brought to his monastery. To the monks of Sera, the small Western boy
clasping his hands together and bowing in greeting had simply 'come
home'.
Sera was awesome place and as far away as
you could get from the archetypal image of a mysterious building
clinging to a mountain peak. It was as big as a town, with streets,
houses, dormitories, temples, kitchens, shops and dogs: a bustling,
throbbing place pulsating with the vibrant, all-male energy of vast
numbers of Tibetan monks. By the time Lama Osel arrived there were over
two thousand of them, and their numbers were growing yearly as more and
more fled from Tibet to seek the spiritual training that was denied them
in their homeland. Lama Osel had entered the largest monastery in the
world.
Sera was one of the three great monastic
universities that the Tibetan refugees had painstakingly rebuilt in
exile. It was of vital importance. Their monastic universities were not
only the womb of their greatest spiritual, philosophical and
meditational masters, they were also the bedrock of Tibetan culture.
Back in Tibet it was to the original Sera
monastery, on the outskirts of Lhasa, that the young Thubten Yeshe had
gone when he was just seven years old. There he began his austere,
highly disciplined training which would lead eventually to a worldwide
mission. It was a mighty place, founded in 1419 by Jamchen Choje Sakya
Yeshe, a disciple of the famous Lama Tsong Khapa, the great reformer of
Tibetan Buddhism and founder of the Yellow Hat sect. Ironically, in the
light of the Chinese destruction that was to follow centuries later,
Jamchen Choje Sakya Yeshe was twice sent to China to teach the Buddhist
doctrine to the Emperor. By 1959, when the Chinese invaded, Sera
monastery held a huge population of ten thousand monks. Although a
quarter of these managed to escape to northern India, among them Lama
Yeshe, many died from the unaccustomed heat and diet in the refugee
camps.
Those who remained were eventually given a
heavily wooded area in Karnataka state in southern India, about a
two-hour drive west of Mysore. They set about clearing the space and
building again the seat of learning that was to preserve their spiritual
heritage and maintain the strength of their spiritual lineages.
Now, after Lama Osel's arrival, the
ceremonies and welcoming parties went on for three days as the monastery
officially offered him a place in their august place of learning, and in
return Lama Osel offered them the traditional gifts of ceremonial pujas,
food, money and tea, as well as a new well and substantial contributions
to the Sera Health Project. It did not come cheap. The estimated cost of
Lama Osel starting his new education was around US$50,000.
Lama Osel appeared happy in his new house,
built specially for him in a quiet place on the outskirts of the
monastery. It had a garden and a dog called Om Mani. On the morning
after his arrival the abbot arrived at Lama's new house to greet him
personally. Lama commented that he thought everything had gone extremely
well. 'I dreamed before coming that first there was a lot of light
coming up and I was down, then much light came down and I was up high,'
he said. It was an auspicious dream.
Many Western students had arrived at Sera
to witness this turning-point in Lama Osel's life. Among them were his
parents, Maria and Paco. At one point during the investiture Maria and
Paco stood up and walked out of the temple together–a symbolic gesture
which formalized their willingness to give their child to the religious
life. Although Osel had in fact been happily leading an independent life
for four years now, as his parents physically turned their backs on him
and walked away he looked a little wistful.
Now the serious work–the hours of study
and the tough discipline–was about to begin in earnest. Lama Osel was
being plunged into an extraordinary system–rich, wonderful and unique.
Only Sera had the means to lay the foundation of the work that Lama Osel
was destined to carry out. For only the Tibetan teaching system had the
'technology' for understanding the mind in all its manifold and subtle
details. The expectation was that Osel would become a holder of the
lineage of teachings and initiations, which was possible only by passing
through the special education of a Tibetan monastery and specifically
the tulku training system. More significantly, it was felt that only an
education in Sera could furnish Lama Osel with the credibility regarded
as absolutely necessary for his future life as a teacher. No matter how
inherently gifted as a spiritual master he might be, without the
thorough training and qualifications available from Sera his work would
be undermined.
For all this I, and many others, quaked a
little at this next phase in Osel's life. He was after all, a Western
child with a Western mind, and Sera was–well, so Tibetan. It was
also steeped in the framework of a six hundred-year-old tradition which
had not changed much over the years. Many of us wondered how Lama Osel,
with his love of computers and Michael Jackson music, would fare within
the rules and rigid protocol of this strong Tibetan experience.
Maria voiced the concerns that a few of us
were feeling: 'Lama's temperament is free, creative and spontaneous. He
learns by reason. If you explain things to him he grasps It very
quickly. In the traditional Tibetan system, however, learning is done by
rote. They learn all the prayers, all the scriptures, by heart– and then
when that is accomplished they debate on the meaning. This is not the
Western approach to education and in my view is rather archaic.'
Osel's day was now broken into strict
periods of learning: 7 a.m. get up; prayers before breakfast at 8 a.m.;
Tibetan language class from 9 a.m. for two hours; then Spanish class for
one hour; lunch at noon; 1 p.m.- 3 p.m. English reading, writing and
maths; 5.30 p.m. lessons with his Tibetan teacher; dinner; bed at 9 p.m.
It was indeed a tough regime, with the
emphasis for the first few years on memorization and getting used to the
monastic discipline. He was aiming eventually for a geshe degree,
equivalent to a doctor of divinity, which back in Tibet took some thirty
years to achieve. Here in Sera the process had been speeded up, but
still there would be years of rigorous learning and debating before Osel
was through. I wondered if he would stick it out.
I thought back to Lama Yeshe, and the way
he had broken with the traditional methods of teaching to reach us
Westerners. He had once told me he didn't care, that he was prepared to
use any technique to get his audience to understand the Buddha
dharma. That was his great appeal his ability to communicate the way of
the Buddha with his whole body, with gestures, with antics, with his
marvellous sense of humour and with his spontaneous acts of kindness and
love. He was not a conventional lama at all, on the outside at least. He
knew that Westerners were not interested in the strict Tibetan
presentation of the dharma and so had found his own highly
individualistic way of teaching it. Part of me baulked at the idea of
Lama Osel returning to the system which Lama Yeshe had, in the outer
form, moved away from.
Still, Lama Zopa had decreed quite
unequivocally that it was best for Lama Osel to go to Sera. And who were
we to dispute that great man, who cherished Lama Osel more than his own
life? He had taken enormous care in choosing Lama Osel's gen-la, the
Tibetan geshe who was to teach the boy the Tibetan language, the
memorization of texts and Lam Rim (the step-by-step guide to
Enlightenment) subjects. He was a gentle, kind man and one of the best
teachers in Sera. As Lama Zopa pointed out, the conditions provided for
Lama Osel were all-important. So, for all its possible drawbacks, Sera
had incomparable benefits to offer. We could only wait and see the
outcome.
Not that Lama Osel's Western roots were
being totally forgotten. In order to help build a bridge between the two
ways of life Lama Zopa, with his infinite care, had arranged for a
Western tutor to be brought into Sera to furnish Lama Osel with the
beginnings of a Western education alongside the traditional Tibetan
Buddhist one. The advertisement placed in the top newspapers in London,
New York and Australia revealed the enormity and extraordinary nature of
the task:
PRIVATE TUTOR–to provide
full primary education to highest international standards for six-
year-old Spanish reincarnation of former Tibetan Lama Thubten Yeshe.
Tuition to run in parallel with a traditional Tibetan monastic education
to be provided by others. Tuition to assist the young Lama to integrate
Western and Eastern curricula in preparation for a life of teaching.
Primary instruction medium English,
secondary Spanish. Location South India eight months, Europe one month
per year. This unusual and challenging assignment requires a person of
highest integrity, five to ten years' tutoring experience and impeccable
references.
The person who won the job from hundreds
of applicants was Norma Quesada-Wolf, a classicist in her early thirties
from Yale University. Born in Venezuela of an American mother and
Spanish father, and with ten years of Zen Buddhist meditation behind
her, Norma seemed tailor-made for the job. With her husband John she
moved into Sera armed with an independent study programme from the
Calvert School in America, which not only set out a tutoring schedule
for Lama Osel but provided means for independently assessing his
progress as well.
Peter Kedge, a board member of the FPMT
(Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition) and
long-time student of Lama Yeshe, had conducted the search for the right
tutor. He explained the hopes for Lama Osel's education: 'Great emphasis
is being placed on providing Lama Osel with a strong basic Western
contemporary education so that, in his later years, the "language" he
uses to explain molecular physics will be the same as when explaining
emptiness–the aim being to cross the boundaries of the Eastern mind and
the Western mind, exposing their similarities.' It was a mighty plan
indeed, but one could not help but be a little apprehensive at the load
of expectations and aspirations that was being put on a pair of small,
six-year-old shoulders.
The observations of Norma Quesada-Wolf, as
a newcomer to this extraordinary scene of Western reincarnate lamas,
were particularly interesting. Her first impression was of a child who
played hide-and- seek, then showed her and her husband the Buddhas in
his room, the watercolours and drawings he had done, and where a certain
lizard lived. He then asked if they were tired from their journey,
turned to someone and asked, with natural dignity, if they had been
offered tea.
'I suppose I was expecting to find a wise,
very serious little figure, someone like Teddy in the J. D. Salinger
story of the same name. But while Lama certainly does have this aspect,
I had not anticipated how light-hearted and charming he would be,' she
said.
With professional interest she also noted
what many amateur observers had seen on many occasions– Lama Osel's
unusual powers of concentration and his ability to be totally absorbed
in what he was doing.
'There's something special about him. He
has a capacity for concentration, for remembering, and for invention and
imagination that seems to me to be beyond the capacities of an average
child. When something holds his interest, whether it be playing with
Lego blocks or doing a lesson, he just disappears into it and remains in
that thing for long stretches of time, constantly thinking about it,
imagining it, playing with it, and seeing it from all different
perspectives.' Her words immediately flashed me back to another time
when Lama Yeshe was talking about how we perceived things. He took as
his example a flower. Never has a flower been looked at in the depth in
which Lama Yeshe saw it. He examined all its parts, he considered its
perfume and its effect on our sense of smell and an insect's, he talked
about its aesthetic properties and how the flower had been an object of
poetry, intuition, love and admiration, and how this differed from
culture to culture. Through this intense and detailed scrutiny Lama
Yeshe was trying to get us to see the totality of things through varied
levels of meaning.
In fact Lama Yeshe had very clear views
about how children should be educated. Using his graphic, idiosyncratic
style of English he delineated his beliefs in a system which he called
'Universal Education':
A narrow presentation of
the world in education suffocates children. It brings frustration and
blockage that interrupts the child's openness to learning. Children do
not want to be trapped by limitations. If one shows them the reality of
things which is beyond all limitations, their enthusiasm for learning
will never cease and the individual will become a totally integrated
person.
Any explanation is incomplete if there is
no logical reference, no intellectual basis for it. Behind this base
there must be a psychological explanation and a philosophical framework.
Then the totality in all its aspects becomes so profound, so profound.
In other words, contained in an entire subject are the essence of
religion, philosophy and psychology without any separation, existing
simultaneously. In this way the person becomes integrated. In the world
today these have become separated. Really, you cannot separate them.
We cannot make divisions such as: you are
the spiritual person, you are the philosopher and you are the
psychologist. All of reality is contained, potentially and now existent,
in everybody. Education should be everything to come together, not
separating, not partial.
The bad in the world, in my opinion, is
religion separated from life, from science, and science separated from
religion. These should go together...
It was a system that was now tallying with
Lama Osel's own approach to learning.
Certainly Osel was enraptured by science
in the form of anything to do with outer space, and had numerous books
on space and space travel which he discussed in detail with Norma. She
noted, however, that he would often put his comic book stories of
Superman and Batman into a dharma context, working out the morals of the
'goodies' and 'baddies' according to Buddhist belief.
He also showed an aptitude for mathematics
and was fascinated by large numbers, vast distances, huge sizes and
great weights–in fact, anything big. In the past few years he had also
become fascinated by illusion and magic, and would often play games
where he pretended to make things appear and disappear. He was also
genuinely enthralled by the minutiae of the insect kingdom, as I had
seen in London's Natural History Museum, and in the evolution of
species. Osel's was a broad mind–just like Lama Yeshe's.
Norma noted other character traits,
too–Lama's equally famous strong-mindedness, and the fact that he often
wasn't a 'model' child. 'When something doesn't interest him, it is
impressive how he can invent one way after another, non-stop, to divert
his and your attention from the thing at hand. He has a strong will and
high spirits, and is very independent-minded. '
This again was reassuring. Norma was
verifying what many of us had witnessed–that Lama Osel was not in any
way a malleable person. He was very much his own person. It was
gratifying, for one of my greatest concerns was that Lama Osel would be
'conditioned' into his present role, thereby detracting from the
authenticity of his identity. How much more satisfactory to have a lama
who was full of life and mischief and who could think for himself.
As she looked at the child who was now
under her care, Norma saw further signs that Osel was out of the
ordinary. On one occasion during an English lesson she was asking him
for the opposite meaning of words. She would say 'up' and he would reply
'down', for instance. When she asked him for the opposite of 'asleep',
however, he replied 'Buddha!' It was an astute and subtle answer, and a
remarkable one for a child of his age. Not many adults are aware that
the definition of a Buddha is a fully awakened being. Later she was to
describe Lama Osel as a 'brilliantly gifted child'.
As she looked at the child who was now
under her care, Norma saw further signs that Osel was out of the
ordinary. On one occasion during an English lesson she was asking him
for the opposite meaning of words. She would say 'up' and he would reply
'down', for instance. When she asked him for the opposite of 'asleep',
however, he replied 'Buddha!' It was an astute and subtle answer, and a
remarkable one for a child of his age. Not many adults are aware that
the definition of a Buddha is a fully awakened being. Later she was to
describe Lama Osel as a 'brilliantly gifted child'.
Educationally, in fact, Lama Osel was
doing well across the board. His gen-la, Geshe Gendun Chopel, announced
that his charge was exceptionally intelligent and, even though he too
noticed the boy's fondness for play, he felt that it would abate
naturally as he grew older and understood the importance of studying. He
also remarked that, although at first he had regarded Lama Osel as an
ordinary child with the status of a tulku, since getting to know him he
now considered him to be extraordinary, with an exceptionally clear
memory.
But in spite of his excellent schoo1
reports, like many a small boy Osel often complained at having to study
and told visitors he was 'too busy'. Once he was overheard saying:
'Don't you know I learn when I am playing?' He was, of course,
absolutely right.
Part Four
For a while, in the
change-over period between Kopan and Sera, a warm and funny Australian
monk called Namgyal was co-attendant of Lama Osel along with Basili
Lorca. Namgyal's more artistic, less conventional personality found a
link with those same aspects in Lama Osel's nature, and the two soon
formed a strong bond.
'We used to sneak out together to eat
pizzas, and we used to cook together,' he reminisced to me one day in
Dharamsala, where I had gone to interview the Dalai Lama. 'Lama Osel,
like Lama Yeshe, adores cooking. I gave him an apron which read "Never
Trust a Skinny Cook", which he loved. We used to roll out dough together
to make these pizzas and he would say things like, "The cheese isn't
correct." He is such a perfectionist! Everything has to be just so. He
always wanted everything to be clean and proper. I remember him telling
off the Tibetan lamas for slurping their soup, and they would laugh and
laugh!'
Namgyal's encouragement of self-expression
showed results in Osel's spiritual practices too. 'Every day we'd fill
the water bowls with water, representing the offerings of flowers,
light, music, incense and so forth to the Buddhas. Lama Osel loved it.
He'd invent different ways to make these offerings. He'd put the little
crystal bowls in various different patterns and add colouring to the
water. It took much longer, but he showed me what creativity could do to
transform a fairly mechanistic daily rite.'
This was so like Lama Yeshe, who would
transgress the conventional monastic rule by creating his own
altars–full of diverse, imaginative objects like shells and clay animals
that represented things that were precious to him. Once he put a toy
aeroplane on his altar, as that was the hallowed means by which he could
reach sentient beings around the globe. And, having come out of Tibet
and discovered such luxurious aromas as Patou's 'Joy' perfume, he
quickly discarded the usual sticks of incense for the most expensive
scent that money could buy. Only the best was good enough for the
Buddha.
Lama Osel was following suit. His prayers
and meditations under Namgyal's guidance were also taking a more
individualistic and creative turn. One day, after offering up the
mandala to all the Buddhas, Lama Osel turned to him and said: 'Do you
know what I visualized?' 'No,' replied Namgyal.
'I visualized Buddha in the sky and this
mountain of ice cream and sweets and all different-coloured beautiful
flowers all coming to the Buddha and entering into him.' It was a
perfect offering from a small boy.
'I asked him once if he missed his
family,' Namgyal told me. 'He replied, quite seriously: "Lamas don't
have families."' For all the fun they had together, Osel also showed his
Australian friend some of his special qualities. 'He has psychic
abilities. One night he woke up and said that some spirits were trying
to push over his altar. I felt he was quite in tune with spirits, and so
I accepted what he said. The next day he did a puja for them because he
said they were suffering. He also told me that in my last life I was a
lama in Kham, a province of Tibet. That was interesting, because it
verified what I'd been told by a Tibetan oracle some time previously,'
reported Namgyal.
Other monks confirmed that Lama Osel would
from time to time see into not just their past but their future as well.
One said that Lama Osel had looked him straight in the eye and told him,
'Again you are going to be a lama, and I will hold you in my arms.' At
other times he would scare them witless by declaring they were going to
the hell realms–whether these were true prophecies or false no one was
in a position to judge.
As time went on Namgyal saw other unusual
behaviour which made him feel that Lama Osel was different. 'Once, when
we were in Kathmandu, Lama Osel saw a woman light up a cigarette. He
turned to me and said, "Should I tell her that she is killing herself?"
I stopped him, but when I reported the incident to Lama Zopa he said I
should have let him because later, when Lama Osel is grown up and well
known, she might think about what he told her and change.'
At another time he accompanied Lama Osel
to Bodhgaya, the place where the Buddha achieved Enlightenment. Here
they met Kunnu Lama Rinpoche, a famous spiritual master so revered that
even the Dalai Lama has been seen to prostrate to him. Namgyal told me
what happened: 'When they met, Lama was completely overwhelmed with
devotion towards Kunnu Lama and wanted to offer him all his toys, his
watch, his torch, in fact anything that he could put his hands on!
Afterwards Lama Osel said that Kunnu Lama Rinpoche was a Buddha and that
he would never lose the photograph that Kunnu Lama had given him.'
After his post as co-attendant came to an
end, Namgyal missed the company of his unusual charge. The intimacy that
Lama Osel was able to evoke was powerful and precious. 'For a while I
became Lama Osel's best friend. He used to tell me everything. Every
night he'd confess to me all the things he'd done wrong, and his secrets
like how he wanted to see girls without clothes on. I just treated these
things as completely normal. He was so loving, so spontaneously
affectionate. He loves being close to people. He'd lean across the table
in front of others and say, "Namgyal, I love you." I will never forget
Lama's love–never,' he said.
Life was beginning to change at Sera, and
so was Lama Osel. After Namgyal left, Basili did too on 'advice' from
Lama Zopa. No one was sure why. Perhaps, I thought, it was to prevent
any single person getting too attached to Lama Osel. Or maybe it was
because a monk's ultimate task is to lead a life of prayer and
meditation, rather than to be a child-minder. There followed a series of
Western monks assigned to look after the daily needs of the young
Spanish tulku.
Now Lama Osel was beginning to grow up and
increasingly to develop his own personality. In one way it was as if the
mantle of the Lama Yeshe persona was slipping away, receding into the
past, to allow the new being, Lama Osel, to emerge. We all had to see
that Lama Osel was a different entity from Lama Yeshe, albeit connected
in essence. Not only was he now looking very different from his
'predecessor', with his fine face, slim body and long, thin fingers, but
he was also dropping his amenable, instantly lovable, infinitely
charming presentation to the world. He was becoming a powerful force to
be reckoned with.
I thought it could not be an easy process
sloughing off such a strong, magnetic character as Lama Yeshe's and the
heavy cloak of projections that so many former students put on him.
About this time I had a dream which might have been an indication of how
Lama Osel was feeling. In it he was dressed in robes and walking along a
path, his head bowed and with an air of consternation about him. He
looked up and said: 'When I was younger I knew I was Buddha, but now I
am not so sure.'
The lines of William Wordsworth's famous
poem 'Intimations of Immortality', learnt at school, came to mind:
But trailing clouds of
glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy...
The sentiments weren't entirely Buddhist,
but the message was remarkably similar.
Osel was now challenging nearly everyone
with whom he came into contact–by a word, a look, a rebuke, a refusal to
cooperate. No longer Mr. Nice Guy, he was throwing people back on
themselves. No one found it very comfortable. Everyone had to admit,
however, that his mind was becoming increasingly sharp, his perceptions
uncomfortably accurate and his power undeniably great. The stories that
emerged from those who saw him at this time illustrate the point.
'Over the past year or so he has been
incredibly wicked to me,' reported Robina Courtin, a much-loved and
respected nun, instrumental in setting up the FPMT's publishing company
Wisdom, who had known Lama Yeshe for ten years. 'Every time I've seen
Lama Osel recently he's said something awful to me. And he's absolutely
spot on, every time. I'm not trying to be romantic, but it's as though
he is Lama Yeshe and he is teaching me. It started when he was about
four and we were out to lunch and he said in front of everyone, 'You
talk too fast, you eat too fast; you walk too fast, you do everything
too fast.' He said it with complete clarity. He knew exactly what he was
saying. In the past eighteen months I have learnt more about my own
speedy, berserk nature and the harm it does to others from Lama Osel
than I have in my whole life.
'I have always known it, but until now I
have never paid deep attention to it. I walk into his room and already
I'm nervous because I know that, like Lama Yeshe, he's always catching
me out. He says, "Why are you nervous?" It sounds so silly, but I know
that I listen to what he says, not like [I would to words from] an
ordinary child. He calls me Ani Nervous. All I can tell you is that it
doesn't make me angry, like it would with any other child. He has helped
me see myself more clearly than any other person. It can be very painful
at times,' she admitted.
As Robina talked, I could hear Lama
Yeshe's voice saying quite clearly, 'Buddhism should shake you. It is
not meant to be comfortable. It must shake you out of your deluded way
of seeing things! Then it is good.' 'Holiness, it seemed, was not always
sweet and comforting. No one who had ever seen Lama Yeshe shaking
thieving porters by the neck, or delivering a crushing reprimand to a
student, or even wielding a stick to a misbehaving monk at Kopan, could
forget that terrifying sight. Lama Yeshe might well have been infused
with an exquisite capacity for love, compassion, humour and kindness,
but he could bare his teeth and brandish his spiritual sword in the air
if he felt the occasion demanded it. And Robina remembered, too, that at
times Lama Yeshe was very tough with her. 'When I see Lama Osel it's
very clear to me that his behaviour is specific. I see him with other
people and he's gentle, sweet, kind. It's a super-personal thing.'
And then there was the time at Sera when
an Indian girl came to have lunch with Osel. She was lovely, with a long
plait of beautiful hair and an expensive sari. Lama Osel just sat there,
like Lama Yeshe, listening to everyone talk. Then he asked the woman her
name and she replied it was Goddess from the Ocean. Osel remarked that
she shouldn't have pride because she had such a name. The way he said it
stopped everyone, including the woman, in their tracks. It wasn't said
rudely, just straight. The truly remarkable fact about this episode was
that the pride he had picked up was extremely subtle. It wasn't obvious
in her at all–she appeared to be a very humble person.
Similarly, he had been outraged when he
learned that a wealthy nun had lent money to build a stupa. 'What do you
mean "lend"?' he had shouted at her. 'Why didn't you give? You are very
naughty. I am going to spank you.'
There was another occasion when he
reprimanded a woman for being rude. 'It was devastating, but true,' she
said. 'I do come straight out with things. We had gone to dinner in
Bangalore and the waiters were fussing around and I spoke sharply to
them. Lama Osel observed this and was very nice to them. Later he told
me off. The extraordinary thing was that he didn't say so at the time,
but waited till we were alone. That was what was so unusual.' She added:
'On another occasion I had been sharp with some little monks who I could
see had only come to play with Lama because he had Western toys. Osel
turned to me and said, "You are not very kind, are you',"'
There was no malice, no vindictiveness in
these statements, just the need to point out people's faults and to
guide them on to more constructive paths. This was illustrated well in
Taiwan, where Lama Osel met a man with clairvoyant abilities who told
him about the third eye. Lama paused and then asked, 'Do you use your
third eye just to see things or to help people?' His remark went
straight to the heart of the matter– for what else is spiritual prowess
for if not to benefit other sentient beings?
In this rather fearsome way Lama Osel was
demonstrating that he was becoming a teacher in the true Buddhist style:
reading people's minds and pointing out their negative tendencies in
order that they might transform them. Hadn't the Buddha's way been one
of confronting reality and then doing something about it? In particular
Osel was now wanting people to 'check up', to examine their motivation,
their mindfulness. Even when he was being spanked he would look at the
person and say, 'Are you angry, are you angry?', with no tone of
personal fear but only to discover if the cardinal error of anger was
present in the act. He was also constantly challenging people's beliefs,
especially about reincarnation. It was unnerving, said Michael Lobsang
Yeshe, a Western boy who had been brought up in Kopan under Lama Yeshe's
strict eye and who found himself looking after Lama Osel. 'He managed to
bring out everything within me, and when I was at the highest point of
my rage he would make comments such as: "Do you really believe that I am
Lama Yeshe's reincarnation?" What puzzles me is how he can be a very
intelligent, wise and strong lama one moment, and just when I am about
to feel "Oh, he's really great", the next moment he is a very clever,
naughty child.' But there was more than the emergence of a teacher–for
the first time in his life Lama Osel was beginning to rebel. He started
to play up at lessons, finding brilliant strategies to get out of
working, and, perhaps more seriously, showing signs that he found
religious ritual and practice less than interesting. He would go into
fierce tantrums if he felt he was being 'forced', putting those in
charge of him on the spot. Some put it down to having to obey too many
rules and having too many expectations put upon him.
'It's hard for both of us when he has to
be the perfect lama,' said Michael. 'I have to see him without any
faults and behaving very well. And from his side, he has to put on this
act of being a perfect, well-behaved lama. After all, he is a human
being like every one of us, and I think we ought to give him his space
and time. But also, because he is a human being we should be very
careful not to spoil him with too much admiration. We all have the
responsibility of bringing him to what we all want him to be: a world
teacher,' he said.
Lama Osel's new outbursts of willful
behaviour put us into a dilemma. How should we respond? Should we
reprimand, ignore or take notice? Was it a spoilt child who was saying
these harsh, rude things? Or was it a wise guru? For the Tibetans this
was not even an issue. Tulkus are renowned for their great energy, their
mischief, their strong will and their utter determination to take the
lead. They are notoriously naughty and wild, and so for their own good
must be dealt with by a strong hand. The Tibetans had no qualms about
disciplining their spiritual adepts, on the grounds that their
extraordinary power must be channeled into useful directions.
We Westerners, however, were new to the
job. This was the first Tibetan tulku to be born as one of us, and we
were having to learn the hard way how to deal with such an extraordinary
situation and with the enormous responsibility that it entailed.
.
Part Five
In the summer of
1993 the crisis stuck. For the first time in his short, incredibly
rich life Lama Osel rebelled outright. Something was definitely
wrong, but who knew precisely what? Certainly there had been some
great upheavals in his life since he had entered Sera monastery. The
problem could have been the departure of Basili, his close attendant
for so many years, leaving Osel with a series of other monks, kindly
but not nearly as expert in handling a Spanish tulku with high
spirits and a demanding lifestyle. It could have been the harsh
discipline of Sera monastery which went against his free spirit and
his passion for play. It could have been that he was worried about
his mother, who he knew had cancer. It could have been the sudden
and sad break-up of his parents' relationship. Or it could have been
that, as he matured, he could see the awesome task that lay ahead of
him, the lifetime of service and devotion, and wanted out. Whatever
the reason, he sent plaintive messages both to Lama Zopa and to his
mother, saying that he wanted to leave.