A Destiny From Birth -- 4-Year-Old Lama Prepares To Claim Spiritual Legacy In Nepal

The 4-year-old boy bounds about the room in maroon-colored sweat pants and pullover shirt, a smile on his face that could chase away the gloom of the grumpiest curmudgeon. He frolics on a bed watching TV, or grabs a toy Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, playfully poking visitors with its stuffed antlers.

"I'm thirsty!" he informs his mother. As she recounts some of her son's favorite action heroes, like Batman and Spiderman, he pipes up, "Power Rangers, too!"

If he strikes you as the typical Seattle child, with a bundle of energy during the holidays, well, not quite.

The boy, whose birth name is Sonam Wangdu but who answers to Trulku-la (pronounced Tu'-ka-la), is recognized in the Tibetan Buddhist community from here to Nepal as a reincarnated lama. He'll be journeying to Katmandu next month to receive his formal education and to head a monastery there with 38 monks.

Trulku-la, which in Tibetan means reincarnation, is said to be the reincarnation of a beloved and revered high lama, Deshung Rinpoche III, who moved to Seattle in 1960 following the Chinese Communist takeover of Tibet. He taught at the University of Washington, co-founded the Sakya Monastery in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle and from the early to mid-1980s re-established the Tharlam Monastery in Katmandu. The monastery had been in Tibet.

Deshung Rinpoche, who died in 1987 at 81, was himself said to be the third reincarnation of the original lama, or teacher, Deshung Rinpoche I, whose birth name was Changchub Nyima and who lived in Tibet the previous century.

It is to this line of spiritual leaders that little Trulku-la has been added as Deshung Rinpoche IV. Rinpoche means "precious one."

What awaits Trulku-la at the Tharlam Monastery in Nepal is a rigorous education in subjects ranging from history to medicine and metaphysics. As head of the monastery, he'll have his own throne. At his enthronement ceremony two years ago in Nepal, some 4,000 people turned out, according to his mother, Carolyn Lama, a former Olympic-class rower who works as a caregiver at an adult assisted-living home in North Seattle.

Carolyn Lama acknowledged non-Buddhists might have difficulty understanding reincarnation, but for the monks at Tharlam Monastery, she says, "there is absolutely no doubt in their minds that this is the same teacher that they loved and who ordained them and took care of the monastery the last time. The monks treat her son "like gold," she said.

Mother and son will be separated, except for periodic visits, during the first five to eight years of his education. Then Trulku-la may come back to the Seattle area to visit Buddhist centers and do some teaching, but then he will return to Nepal.

Lama expressed no hesitation in letting her son study among the monks in Katmandu.

"If you really love someone, you want what's best for them, not, `Oh, I want him with me,' " she said. And since Deshung Rinpoche "directed" his reincarnation into Trulku-la to help all beings through the teaching of Buddhism it is best for everyone that the boy be allowed to go and study in Nepal, she said.

Even before Trulku-la was born in 1991, there were signs he would be special, said Lama.

Buddhism is a religion where dreams carry much weight. Before she was pregnant, Lama said, she dreamed one night of rising in the air to the top of a sacred stupa, or religious monument, in the Katmandu area and being able to see a line of shining stupas stretching to infinity.

Later, when she was pregnant, she dreamed of flying in a specially reserved airplane compartment with her son. The plane landed at an auditorium where the son would be giving Buddhist teachings. As he was about to begin, the Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, entered the huge hall.

There were other indications as well, she said. When she had first become pregnant, she asked her own lama, Dagchen Rinpoche, who founded the Sakya Monastery here with Deshung Rinpoche, to name the baby. Without hesitation, or knowing its sex, he said, "Sonam Wangdu." Sonam, pronounced Sue'-nam, means "with merit," and Wangdu means "spiritual power." It was a boy's name.

Deshung Rinpoche, before he died, also told two of his closest students he would be reborn in the Seattle area.

It was shortly after Trulku-la was born that Dagchen Rinpoche and another leader of the Sakya sect of Tibetan Buddhism, Sakya Trizin in India, recognized the infant as the reincarnation of Deshung Rinpoche, partly through signs during meditation, their own dreams, and divination, said Lama, 38.

"The two highest lamas that had anything to do with him (Deshung Rinpoche) in his last life agreed, they chose him," said Lama, whose husband and Trulku-la's father, Tenzin Chopel Lama, was killed in a car-bus accident in downtown Seattle in 1993.

"If somebody doesn't want to be convinced," she said, "you're not going to be able to convince them. These are things you can't put on the scale and measure."

What is important is that all the Tibetan Buddhists have accepted Trulku-la as the reincarnated Deshung Rinpoche, she said.

As he prepares for his trip to Nepal Jan. 25 - he has visited the monastery twice before - Trulku-la appears to be taking it all in stride. He says he is looking forward to seeing Achung, a 12-year-old monk who befriended him in Nepal.

Meanwhile, at the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple Day Care Center, which he now attends, Trulku-la can be found marching in a circle with his playmates, pounding on bells and singing "Jingle Bells" or smothering hot pink glue on construction paper during art time.

Asked if he is excited about going to Nepal, he leans over and sprawls himself on a table, flashes a big grin and says, "YESSS!" But does he know why? "NO!" he quickly replies.

He says he'll miss day-care director Jane Yamamoto and the center, which is part of the Seattle Betsuin Buddhist Temple in the International District.

Ironically, on this recent morning, he is wearing a Lion King sweat shirt that exclaims, "I just can't wait to be king."

To his playmates, Trulku-la is their buddy who runs around playing Power Rangers and pretending to know karate. Not many know why Sonam, as they call him, is going away.

"He's going to be something in the church and going to be `the third,' " said Amber Mines, 7, taking a guess.

But she said the little boy did tell her once what he dreamed of being when he grew up.

"A lama," she said.