March-April 1997

By Merry Colony

“Ngawang Ridzin Gyatso Rinpoche,” he says, trying to conceal the infectious grin spreading across his face as Kopan’s littlest lama tells his proper name to Lama Zopa Rinpoche over lunch. To just about everyone else who knows him, however, he is Cherok Lama, the boy whose affection and laughter make even the sternest of hearts to open and wonder just who is inside the four-year-old body.

Who is he and where has he come from? In truth, I can say very little about who Cherok Lama really is, but being one of the few Westerners who had very close contact with him from his previous life until now, I will try to convey what I know, leaving the profound facts of his being to be revealed by the lama himself in time.

Kushog Mangden, as he was known in his previous life, was a great Nyingma yogi and terton. Sherpa by birth, he spent his early life in the Solo valley of Nepal and in the Shigatse region of Tibet. By middle-age he had established a monastery in Solo, married and had two children, a daughter and a son. Although he had spent time as a monk in his younger years, the tradition of his lineage was to pass his teachings and empowerments to his offspring. Keeping perfectly to his tradition, the family of Kushog Mangden were given a full Dharma training by their father, starting their first set of four nyun-dros when they were only twelve years old!

Besides their residence in Solo, Kushog Mangden’s family also had a house and land at a place called Cherok, very close to the Lawudo Gompa in the Khumbu valley. Thus in his later life, when the Kushog Mangden lived out his years at Cherok, he came to be called simply the Cherok Lama. How much Cherok Lama and the Lawudo Lama (Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s previous incarnation) spent time together is not entirely clear to me. However, when eleven years ago I asked Cherok Lama this question, I will never forget his reply. With a look of adoration he described how when he was young he would lie in the meditation box of the elder Lawudo Lama, his head neatly tucked into his knee while the latter did his prayers. From that time on it was evident even to my obscured mind that when the time of passing from this life would come for Cherok Lama he would most certainly take rebirth in a form that would serve Lama Zopa in some way. In the six years that followed I had a great deal of contact with Cherok Lama, and from the questions he would ask of Lama Zopa’s activities, the West, Western people, climate and so on, this certainty was strengthened.

January 22, 1992, at eighty-seven years of age, Cherok Lama passed away. His holy mind remained in meditation for many days after the last breath, and once the consciousness had exited the holy body was cremated in a stupa overlooking the meditation hut and stupa of his grandfather as well as his own family home and gompa at Cherok. Though I had left Cherok three weeks earlier, I was told that the holy body had been place upon a large tripod structure within the stupa, holding dorje and bell. When the stupa was opened three days later the three legs of the tripod had fused together with the upright dorje in the center. A portion of the heart also remained, which was put along with other relics into a metal stupa in the family gompa. Cherok Lama’s son and one grandson had passed away two years earlier, and so at his passing he left his elder daughter, Ven. Anila Pema Choden and grandson Tenzin Trinley as his ancestral lineage holders.

The following year I asked a few lamas questions about Cherok Lama’s incarnation, but because it was not within the family tradition to look for incarnates and because not a great deal of time had passed I was lazy about making an initial search (I had been advised to gather all the names of young boys in the Khumbu valley as potential candidates.)

Without anyone looking, however, the boy was found. In the spring of 1995 Ven. Anila Ngawang Samden, Lama Zopa’s sister who manages Lawudo Retreat Center, was taking a walk to the nearby water source to fix her pipe. There she ran into a woman she didn’t know who was from a nearby village and was clearly distraught. With very little prompting the woman began crying to Ngawang Samden about the child she was carrying on her back, how he made life very difficult for her by always carrying on about his home “under the rock,” his daughter and wanting to go home. Ngawang Samden, having been very close to Cherok Lama and knowing something about incarnations, immediately tuned her listening very carefully.

The woman continued. She had finally succumbed to her son’s wishes that morning by promising him that she would bring him to this house under the rock up the mountain that he kept speaking of. However, not knowing clearly herself the place he referred to and knowing that a lama nearby was giving a long-life ceremony that day, she tried in vain to quell the boy’s insistence by bringing him to the lama’s house.

On arrival however the two-and-a-half-year-old screamed furiously that this was not where he wanted to go, that he wanted to go to Cherok. It was then, as this mother was continuing up the path to find this place called Cherok, that she ran into Ngawang Samden.

On the agreement that Ngawang Samden would take the boy for ten days so the mother could get some work as a porter, he then moved to Lawudo. When the ten days were up, however, he refused to leave, saying that if he couldn’t return to Cherok then he would be a Lawudo monk and that he never wanted to live with his family again.

It was also at this point that Ngawang Samden checked with Ven. Trulshik Rinpoche of Thubten Chöling Gompa in Solo if the reincarnation was correct. Trulshik Rinpoche replied that the boy was indeed the incarnation of Kushog Mangden and later gave the name Ngawang Ridzin Gyatso. Ngawang Samden started sending me letters saying that I must come meet the boy. She described to me the event that led to his recognition and said that he had been asking about me. True or not, she needn’t have said another word. In October 1995 I went to meet the lama who was not yet three.

There was no denying that the young lama was extraordinary. From waking until sleep the only entertainment he was interested in was doing puja. He would sit crossed-legged in Lawudo’s dining room, holding dorje and bell, wearing the red hat of his predecessor, reciting in tantric voice the text in front of him (though not in a language understandable to his listeners). In front of him, on the floor, were his attendants, playing cymbals (a pair of enamel mug lids), gyaling (a length of plastic pipe) and passing out tsog (balls of clay), only when the lama said so and not before.

So powerful was he during these daily pujas that though I would often be brought to laughter by the scene I was witnessing, I was equally brought to tears by its utter beauty. As solemnly as he would hold up a small stupa to his forehead, lower his eyelids and go into meditation, just as spontaneously would he burst into laughter and announce the puja done. Besides this, his favorite activities were standing with his gyaling perched atop the wall of Lawudo’s courtyard, blessing the valley below with his new young voice and talking about who he was and what he wanted to do.

I have never spent as much time with another young tulku, so I have nothing to compare my experience with, but this boy left no room for misunderstanding about his intentions. Having a three-year-old dictate letters for me to write to Lama Zopa and others stating that he was the real Cherok Lama and please to help him accomplish his wishes was certainly a new one for me. As stated, he wanted to go to Kopan, study, become a big lama and then teach Westerners. Point blank. His heartfelt connection with Westerners was, and is, undeniable. Each person who arrived at Lawudo in the year he lived there was formally shown around hand in hand by a little boy in a maroon chuba and yellow sweater and I saw not one who wasn’t visibly affected by the affectionate character of the boy they knew nothing of.

In August I returned to Lawudo once again, this time with instructions from Lama Zopa to bring Cherok Lama down with me to Kopan. In the year that had ensued, his wish to go to Kopan had not diminished nor altered and it was now clearly in everyone’s favor to fulfill his wish. For the next three months until we left for Kathmandu, little Rinpoche’s excitement grew and with it an insatiable appetite to know about helicopters. Each day when I would visit him he would have built another helicopter, out of socks, Styrofoam, piece of plastic pipe, marbles and plastic wheels. I regret not having photographed any of his creations as they were works of ingenuity far more advanced than his years. He would then ask how many days until we would ride in the helicopter and go to Kopan. At 3 a.m. on November 1 he was to wait no longer and with the excitement of a child at Christmas he woke us all saying “today helicopter going.” Together with his attendant Ven. Tsultrim Norbu from Lawudo and Brian as coolie we walked to Shangboche airport by starlight. At 3 p.m. when we finally took off Rinpoche grinned a grin of supreme accomplishment. To my mind he had waited for years beyond his current age for this moment. I was grateful to have been a cog in the wheel.

On the morning of Cherok Lama’s “entrance into the monastery” at Kopan a few weeks later we went to Lama Lhundrup’s room for the hair-cutting and name-giving ceremony. Rinpoche made three prostrations to Lama Lhundrup as well as offering a kata and fruit. At the lama’s feet a piece of hair was cut from Rinpoche’s crown and the name Losang prefixed to his name. Losang Ngawang Ridzin Gyatso was then ready to officially become part of the Kopan community of 230 monks and as well to be recognized by the community as a tulku. There was clearly a sense of joy in the community that day to have such an incarnate lama amongst them.

Before beginning his formal studies after Tibetan New Year (February 8), he delighted in having so many adoring monks around to push him in the wheel barrow, play with toy cars and best of all to chase him as he buzzed around the hill as a clearly manifest helicopter. However, having seen more of the modern world now, his interest does not stop with just the flying machine. Motorcycles, cars, bicycles, boats, you name it, this boy is avid of vehicles. Hopefully for us he will be a vehicle that aids us all on our paths to enlightenment.