Never met a Tibetan Lama but I was fortunate enough to meet a Chilean Alpaca.

‘Reincarnated’ Tibetan Lama Says No Thanks, I’d Rather Make Movies

Late last month, two Spanish media outlets confirmed that 24-year-old Tenzin Osel Rinpoche, one of the most renowned Buddhist “golden children” — toddlers determined through dreams, oracular riddles and their own “memories” to be tulkus, or reincarnations of high Tibetan Buddhist lamas — has abandoned his foretold identity. Instead of a Lama, he wants to be a filmmaker, and has reverted to his original Spanish name, Osel Hita Torres. (See pictures of the Dalai Lama at home)

The abdication of the anointed tulku is a significant embarrassment to the group he was supposed to head, the powerhouse Foundation for the Preservation of the Monastic Tradition (FPMT), the foremost Tibetan teaching organization in the West. It also challenges Westerners who have adopted Buddhism to find more sophisticated ways of understanding its magical side.

In 1989, with the approval of his Spanish convert parents, four-year-old Hita was tapped by FPMT monks as the reincarnation of the group’s co-founder Thubten Yeshe. Their methods will be familiar to anyone who has seen Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha or the current documentary Unmistaken Child: The monks reportedly heeded some dreams; the Dalai Lama consulted an oracle; and the capper was that young Hita “recalled” the color of the dead lama’s car.