Young high lama visits Kiwi homeland

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – It’s not just his name and title that separate Pong Re Sung Rap Tulku Rinpoche from other 10-year-old boys in New Zealand.

While his peers in the tiny North Island settlement where he grew up are playing cricket or rugby and attending primary school, Rinpoche – the first high lama born in the Southern Hemisphere – spends most of his time in an Indian monastery poring over Buddhist texts.

Known here as the “kiwi Buddha,” Rinpoche is visiting the land where he was born this week for the first time since being whisked away three years ago after religious leaders identified him as the reincarnation of a high lama teacher who died in the 1950s.

He lives a cloistered existence on the outskirts of Dharmsala in northern India. Even so, he knows something about the commercial world beyond the Sherab Ling Monastery’s walls.

In an interview this week, he said his personal tutors sometimes give him a swoosh for his work on grammar, reading, writing and religious studies.

“You know, that Nike thing, when you do good,” he said.

Rinpoche is “not in the political line of Tibetan high lamas,” his said father, Lama Karma Shedrup.

Dressed in flowing red and gold robes, his hair closely shaved under an ornately embroidered headdress, Rinpoche conducted a series of complex ceremonies.

In the capital, Wellington, he sat on a throne of silk cushions, intoning mantras and dispensing blessings at a special “Red Chenrezig Empowerment” ceremony.

The faithful, many with hands clasped in prayer, watched silently as Rinpoche led a group of other lamas, including his father, through a ceremony nearly 90 minutes long.

The boy chanted mantras, beat a small drum and rang a bell – guided by written notes throughout.

He sprinkled purifying water over participants from a peacock feather quill as he chanted. At the end of the ceremony, most of the 120 participants passed the youthful lama in single file with heads bowed as he touched each of them in blessing.

The ceremony was open to the public and was one of four conducted by Rinpoche as a “gift to the country of his birth,” said Lama Karma Samten, who accompanied Rinpoche on his trip to New Zealand.

The empowerment ceremony “helps clear the mind, helps manifest wisdom and compassion, and provides understanding, peace and harmony in society,” Samten said.

Along with the other interns at the Sherab Ling Monastery, Rinpoche said he has some free time during his long days of learning.

He uses that time to watch and play cricket – a sport that is revered in India. He played it again when he visited his old friends this week at a school in Kaukapakapa, a tiny farming community north of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city.

Rinpoche will probably return to live in New Zealand in about 20 years, his father said.