A New Incarnation

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In his homeland of Tibet, he was special from birth, though his family wasn't aware of it. But at the tender age of seven, Ugyen Trinley Dorje was proclaimed the 17th incarnation of the Karmapa, the leader of Tibet's oldest Buddhist sect, and young Dorje began a life of utter uniqueness. Spiritually, as the central figure for an entire sect, he was raised in a monastery surrounded by devout followers decades older than himself. Politically, he would eventually confront the choice of becoming either a Tibetan quisling, doing Beijing's bidding, or an independent thorn in China's side like the Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibet's youngest (but most powerful) Buddhist sect.

The Karmapa chose the latter, escaping from the Tsurphu Monastery northwest of the capital, Lhasa, 15 months ago to join the Dalai Lama in exile in India. And now Tibet's most celebrated prodigal son leads a life even weirder—and to date, less happy. He spends his days in an empty monastery with his sister, who had escaped earlier from Tibet, a few retainers, a dog and a cockatoo. As a refugee in India, he is technically free to move around and even go abroad. In reality, he needs permission from Delhi and his minders for almost anything he does, including a walk in the monastery grounds. Though he lives in the cool hills of northern India, the weather is too hot for a boy raised in the mountains of Tibet. "Here in India, my mind is a little unclear," he says. "I think it might be the difference in climate."

Be that as it may, the Karmapa's thinking—why he left China, what he plans to achieve in exile—is becoming clearer to the outside world. Following a low-key 15 months of adjustment, the 16-year-old is starting to tell the world about his role in the long-running standoff between China, which wants unadulterated control over Tibet, and an exile movement still hoping for a level of autonomy that can save their culture from being stamped out forever. "There was no doubt in my mind that China was planning to use me," he said in Dharamsala last week. When asked if he left a letter behind when he escaped, as Beijing claims, the Karmapa says he did. And did he write, as Beijing reported, that he was visiting India for the purpose of collecting religious instruments and a black hat, the symbolic crown of the Kagyupa, or Black Hat, sect? "There was no mention in it at all of the black hat," he says. "What would be the purpose of taking it back to China—to put it on Jiang Zemin's head?"

By tradition the Karmapa isn't supposed to engage in politics, but this son of nomads is already emerging as a deft diplomat. He describes the Dalai Lama as "the supreme leader of Tibet" and says he endorses "everything the Dalai Lama stands for"—without actually mentioning autonomy, independence or any other idea that would be a red flag waved at Beijing. If anyone in China had been hoping to work out a separate deal with the boy, they might want to reconsider. The Karmapa insists he will only return to Tibet when the Dalai Lama does. "I will go back with him," he says.

The Dalai Lama has helped guide the boy's education in India, urging high lamas of the sect to expose the Karmapa to influences beyond his immediate circle of tutors and religious teachers. "In his separate way, the Karmapa is a prisoner of his Kagyupa sect just as the Dalai Lama was a prisoner of his Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect and the Tibetan court in Lhasa," says a close friend of the Tibetan leader. It was only when the Dalai Lama fled to India at the age of 23 that his intellectual liberation got under way. The almost father-son relationship that has developed between the 65-year-old Dalai Lama and the Karmapa has given rise to speculation that over time the barriers that divide Tibet's four main Buddhist sects might disappear—and that the Karmapa might succeed the Dalai Lama as leader of the Tibet freedom movement when he dies. This would be a radical departure from the past, but Tibetans may need to adopt dramatically new approaches to their political lives with China bent on subjugation and, some would argue, cultural genocide. "Tibetan leaders are capable of reinventing themselves when necessary with quite astonishing success," says Tibet expert Robbie Barnett of Columbia University.

The boy has gravitas, wisdom and a spiritual maturity that impresses people who meet him—plus a laptop, which he hopes one day to use for e-mail. But the happiest moments of his life, he says, were in childhood before he was "recognized." And what he misses most, he says, is his mother and father. He may be the world's oldest incarnate lama, he may be the embodied hope of a whole people. But at 16 he is also still just a kid.