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[David] Those are usually protectors.
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Yeah.
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[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.
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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,