Published by: World Tibet Network News, Saturday, March 23, 1996

KATMANDU, Nepal (Reuter) 21 March - The mother of a 4-year-old American boy watches her son as he sits mesmerized by a Winnie the Pooh cartoon and says she is resigned to leaving him behind in Nepal.

For Carollyn Lama is the mother of Sonam Wangdu, a stocky, brown-haired Anglo-Saxon boy who Buddhist priests have hailed as the fourth incarnation of the head teacher of Tibetan Buddhists in Nepal.

"I will be very sad," Lama told Reuters. "But I knew this is going to happen before he was born."

She says she and her husband, a Seattle restaurant worker who died in a car accident two years ago, had dreamed that their son would be the incarnation of Deshung Rinpoche even before he was born.

"He is always a very happy child -- since he came here, he is the happiest I have ever seen him," says Lama, who converted to Buddhism seven years ago and likes to be called Dawa Drolma.

Wangdu, dressed in trousers and a pullover, quarrelled and frolicked with young lamas on the sprawling lawns of the Tharlam Monastery that is run by Nepal's more than 12,000-strong Tibetan refugee community.

"I enjoy it," he told Reuters while drinking his coffee.

Wangdu, like his mother, speaks only American-accented English but he has already started learning Tibetan from the lamas around him.

"He is an interesting addition to our family," said a young local lama, gesturing towards his new friend.

The boy and his mother seem unperturbed by the mystery shrouding the disappearance of a 6-year-old boy whom the Dalai Lama, Tibet's god-king, chose as the second holiest senior priest in Tibetan Buddhism.

China rejected his choice and appointed another 6-year-old boy as a rival reincarnation of the late Panchen Lama.

The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India's Himalayan town of Dharamsala since 1959 along with thousands of his followers after an abortive uprising against the Chinese annexation of Tibet in 1950.

As the Rinpoche, Wangdu will some day be entrusted with the task of teaching Buddhist Sakya Pa philosophy to thousands of young monks at the monastery in Nepal.

Tempa Wangchuk, a philosophy teacher at the monastery, said the little lama would be taught Tibetan in the Himalayan kingdom for the next five or six years before being sent to India to study Buddhist literature, religion and philosophy at a Buddhist college.

"He learns at accelerated rates," Carollyn Lama said. "He talks great but he is stubborn."

Wangdu, who was enthroned more than two years ago, wears traditional brown Buddhist robes when he attends religious ceremonies but has not yet shaven his head.

"He cannot marry, but he can lead a normal life inside the monastery," Wangchuk told Reuters. He said the small boy had a sharp mind and was a quick learner.

His mother says she plans to leave for Seattle towards the end of March to return to her job of taking care of the aged and the infirm.

"He has thousands of students who are all waiting for him to give training," she says. "How can I stand in the way of that? To have your child raised in something you believe in so strongly is like a blessing."