www.youtube.com/.../watch?v=LWhMjZgIoTw

[David] Those are usually protectors.

Yeah.

[Laura] Oh, yeah, yeah.

Mahakala.

Right.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, the story about his name,
about Ujjain, Ujjain Khyap

is interesting.

And this is the part that I don't
know can be public or not.

So you would have to ask somebody.

I guess it was when Tukula was about 10 months

that Rinpoche told us
he was a tulku.

And, this is the part that you have to ask permission if you're going to

make it public.

So he was about 10 months old

and Rinpoche told Tsering, he said: Your son is a tulku.

And then he wanted to collect some information from us.

One of the things he wanted to know was if we had any dreams.

And so I told him: Yeah, I had one really vivid dream that I remember

clearly.

I said that I was the Queen Mother.

And I was somewhere like in Buckingham Palace.

And my son was the Prince of Wales.

and then Tsering said, his dream was that his

son was born.

And he was huge.

He was like this huge baby.

You know, he was like a baby, but he was like this, like, and there might have

been some other details.

But, he said it, and it had something to do with the Buddha, like

the baby was maybe looked like the Buddha or something.

And so Rinpoche thought those dreams were significant.

And then, he just asked us for some family information and stuff.

Then he told us who Tukla was.

And he said that Tukla was a reincarnation of XXX Riku Kusho Rinpoche in Minyak.

Riku Kusho was a student of Dagchen Rinpoche.

He was the one that requested the Lamdre when Dachen Rinpoche went to East

Tibet,

but he was an old man at that time.

I can't remember if Dezhung Rinpoche

was his student or the other way around, but he had a connection with Dezhung

Rinpoche as well.

While Dagchen Rinpoche was giving the Lamdre, in Minyak,

Riku Kusho had 12 monasteries.

So he had requested it for all of his monks.

He himself, I think, was ill or knew he was on the way out or

something.

So he was in retreat.

I heard from Avikrita Rinpoche when he was talking about

Rinpoche's biography that one of the miracle things at that time was that

Rinpoche was in the middle of giving the Lamdre, and then he just stopped

and he said: Uh-oh, the old Lama has passed.

And sure enough, Riku Kusho had passed away in that moment.

It took him a while, but he managed to get back here in 2010.

I think that was 1956 or '57.

Then Rinpoche tasked Dagmola with contacting people in Minyak and,

figuring out how this is all going to go down

and Damala started talking to people, and everybody was like: Oh, but he's

already been recognized by the XXX Dromo Kodron, you know, by His

Holiness, Sakya Tritzen.

And then, people in Rinpoche's family were like: Oh, we can't do this,

Rinpoche, there's too many politics.

But Rinpoche, at first, he was

gonna do it. He was like: Well, we can get around it, because,

tulkus have five emanations, and, and your tulkus is the

activity emanation and this other tulku was the whatever emanation.

[David] Did he use the word 'whatever'?

No, no, I just, please don't quote me when I'm saying what Rinpoche said.

That was the gist of the conversation, I just can't remember what he said.

[David] He said something similar about Khamarpa, way back when they had like the

super, like the two sides were extremely polarized.

He said the same thing, he said it right in front of everyone and

everyone just had to shut up and the funny thing is that

they all work out.

I mean, the two Karmapa, right. That's the thing that I

found is so cool about Rinpoche, like, way back,

He saw things way ahead of everyone, and everyone was kind of, I'm sorry to

say that, like, a lot of people are just like stupid, you know, or whatever,

you know, and he just pointed out directly, and it was like,

way, way ahead of everyone, and you see now the two Karmapa there, they

reconcile, so to speak, they, they, you know, they kind of get along, and, you

know, there's no more, well, at least, at least officially or formally, there's

no more, there's no more, like, the rivalry, or what is, what real ones to

fake, theoretically, but still, I tell the truth, is a lot of the supporters of

both sides of Karmapa, they're still think otherwise, they're still, like, stubborn,

[Laura] but, yeah, yeah, because there's so much at stake, and they think there's only

one way forward, there can only be, only one Lama can oversee this empire,

right, you know, right, yeah, right,[David] but anyway, get back to the story, sorry,

[Laura] So getting back to the story, so the thing that also complicated, made it

political, is that the Rinpoche that was recognized by His Holiness, Sakya

Trichin Rinpoche, disrobed, so, and Rikku Kusho himself, I heard

he didn't leave clear instructions about his rebirth, some of the accounts say

that he would come back, and others said that he wouldn't come back, and

so, there were two other tulkus at this

monastery, Rikku Kusho was the head tulku, and then there were two other

tulkus, and they were sticking with the story that he was not going to come

back, but there was an account that said that that he would come back after

they had built a three times life-size statue of Guru Rinpoche, and when we

went to visit in 2013, we went to Rikku Monastery, and they were, they had just

finished building a three times life-size statue of Guru Rinpoche, and so, the

people at the monastery themselves were like, okay, this is it, this is the

real deal, this is him, and they took him, they took him for Rikku Kusho, and

he was just a baby, not a baby, he was like maybe two and a half years old,

three years old, no, he's three years old, and you know, one of the ways that I

knew that he was comfortable, or that he was okay with, that he was in a

comfortable, that he was in a familiar environment, was that they had invited

us into the Tara Shrine, and they served us lunch there and they

served us pork, which is very common in Minyak.

Pork?

Yeah, you see, like free-range pigs there, it's

hilarious, yeah, they eat a lot of pork there, and anyway, Tugla loved it.

There were people crowded all around, because word got out, and so, you

know, people are just flocking to the monastery, and they're all like peering

their heads in the door, and everything, and Tulkula was so calm, and he was just

sitting there on my lap, and I was feeding him pork with chopsticks, and he was

so chill, and he was eating it, and this is the other really unusual thing,

because up until that point, my kids were not eating anything, they were like,

they were not having it, you know, like Tulkula, I think the only thing he ate

was tsampa, and Sonam, the only thing she ate was rice. I had been

so distressed that they weren't eating anything, and so, here we arrive at Riku

Monastery, they serve us pork and rice and vegetables, and stuff,

and Tulkula just gobbles it up. So, again, it's not a

very, like, sexy story, but for me, as his mother, I was like, wow, this is

significant, he's totally comfortable with these people, and this place, and

even though there were so many of them, and they were all gawking at him, and

he was just totally cool, and then, and then what they did was they, they went

and got a retreat Lama out of his retreat, and I think he was the only one left

who knew Riku Kusho personally, and he had been in retreat for, like, the

latter half of his life, and he came out of retreat to see Tulkula, and I have a

diary somewhere where I wrote down the notes about that interaction, yeah, and

then everywhere we went when we were in Tibet, there were,

auspicious signs, there were rainbows,

I have all the signs written down, there was hailstorms. On the

day before we were supposed to go, there was this hailstorm, it was really, I

don't know, it was kind of like the local deities were saying, don't go, don't

go, and there were auspicious clouds, oh, and the one I like the best is when

we went to Khajur Monastery, and we had to go over this 13,000 foot pass to get

there, it was a very isolated monastery, but it was just so magical, and on the

way there, we saw all these groundhogs, groundhogs just started popping their

heads out of the ground, and Tsering's brother, who was driving us, said, you

know, well, I didn't, we couldn't really communicate other than with sign

language, because I didn't know Tibetan, they didn't know English, so, but all

of a sudden, I noticed everybody was getting really excited, and so I asked

them what was going on, and they were like, oh, the groundhogs are coming out,

the groundhogs are coming out, this is a really good sign.

Yeah, so, yeah, so that was our trip to Tibet, and we only went to the village

where Tsering's family was, because at that time, we knew that he was Riku

Kusho, but we also knew that couldn't keep that title, so we had to be, we

couldn't make it public, they couldn't, there couldn't be a public welcoming or

anything like that, and then, so, so after all of the debate and, you know,

political, you know, turmoil and everything, Rinpoche just finally said, you

know, because his family was giving him a hard time, so he finally, he was just

like, you know what, we don't need these politics, and so he called it off with

Riku Kusho recognition, and then he, again, he sent Damala to work looking

around for other lamas that may have been born about the same time, and so

Damala got in touch with, is it Beya Rinpoche?

Beya Rinpoche.

How do you say it?

Beya.

Beya?

B-E-Y-A, maybe.

Beya.

Okay.

Peya Rinpoche.

Anyway, you know who I'm talking about, right?

{David] Peya Tulku Rinpoche, yeah.

I know of him, I kind of met him from afar, but never, like, have a personal

interaction.

Laura] So Damala talked to him and told him what was going on, and she

said, you know, Rinpoche wants to know were there any other

monasteries that are looking for their Tuku in the Minyak area?

He said, yeah, the Draya Den Gompa, their

Tuku passed away, and they had gone to Rinpoche to ask for the recognition

several years earlier, and Rinpoche had told them exactly how to find him.

He was like, here's the name of the parents, here's the village, here's what to

look for, here's where to go, here's the birth date, and the year, and the

elements, and he told them everything, and they found the kid, but then they

said that there was an obstacle.

So, I'm not quite sure what that means, but I think maybe the child died.

So, they never did get their tulku, and then Rinpoche was like, oh,

he was like, okay, this makes sense, and so he did a mo, and I'm sure he

meditated, and had dreams, and stuff, whatever, you know, whatever, however he

does his magic. Tulkula already had his

his Lama name.

Rinpoche had already given him his name.

So, his Lama name is Nawang Jigme Wangdu Tsering.

[David] So, that's, wait, so that's a Lama name.

Wow.

Okay.

[Laura] So, when he was around two is when Rinpoche gave him the Lama name, and

officially recognized him.

Wait, did that come after this?

Maybe that, sorry, I can't quite remember the sequence of events, but anyway,

he said because, when he did the mo, he said because, you know, Rikku Kusho's

name contained the name Jigme, and because Norbu Chense's name contained the

word Jigme, he said somehow that made it legit.

So, so then he, he pronounced Tulkula the reincarnation of Chense Norbu, or

sorry, I can't, I can't remember if it's Norbu Chense or Chense Norbu, but of

Draya Den Monastery in Minyak.

So, when we were in Tibet in 2013, after all of this had already happened, the,

I guess, Draya Den was just too far away, and we didn't know

anybody there, and so we never got to, to that monastery.

So, he's never been to that monastery, but that's who he is.

[David] Wow, wow, yeah, that's very interesting.

Yeah, I think, I think that's a very good story.

Yeah, I'm sure I can, we can edit it so that it is appropriate, so to speak.

I'm gonna have a, yeah, yeah, but this is great, this is great, this is great.

Yeah, so, I mean, I'm curious right now, actually, so Tulkula for Ujintulku, which

monastery is associated with, like the Draya Den, or the... So have you guys

met with the Draya Den people?

[Laura] No, I don't even know the name of anybody there.

[David] Oh, even now?

[Laura] Because they keep me out of the loop. All the Tibetan men who

are in charge of Tulkula's education, I, they, they,