STORY - VISITING THE GOLDEN CHILD (PDF-1892)

In 1995, at the request of my dharma teacher, I took my family on a pilgrimage to Tibet to see the 17th Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje, the young Tibetan lama that the Eddie Murphy movie "The Golden Child" is said to be patterned after. Like the Dalai Lama, the Karmapa is the head of one of the four main lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. At that time the Karmapa was 12-years old, but his incarnation goes back seventeen generations. In fact the Karmapa Lineage was the first of Tibet's reincarnated lamas. The current Karmapa is the 17th, while the current Dalai Lama is the 14th. I had no real idea how this trip would affect me. I will pick up the story from the point where we actually arrived at the Karmapa's ancestral home, Tsurphu Monastery in the Tolung Valley, deep in the mountains of Tibet at some 15,000 feet in altitude. There I sat, with my wife, two of my daughters, and my son in a little room waiting to see the Karmapa. We were about to spend three days there as the Karmapa's guest.