NEPAL. Bodnath. Tharlam monastery. The Rinpoche with his paternal grandmother who lives in Bodnath. Deshung Rinpoche stays with her on Sundays and during the holidays. Deshung Rinpoche, a 6 year old American boy, is believed to be the reincarnation of the Tibetan Buddhist monk Lama Deshung Rinpoche III, who died in 1987. Born in Seattle, his mother is American and his father, who died, was Tibetan. He lived in the USA until the age of 4 and is now being educated in Nepal.
Two or three years after their death, important lamas are reincarnated in the body of a child. The search for this child is based on the information left by the lama himself: dreams, visions and the intuition of other lamas. The Tulkus are discovered at 3 or 4 years of age, declared at about 4 or 5 and then enter the monastery at the age of 6. According to the rules of the monastery, each Tulku is instructed by a tutor and is either prevented or restricted from seeing other young monks from their age group. All the Tulkus are called Rinpoche which means "the precious one".