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You are here: Home Life in Lifestyle Reincarnated Tibetan spiritual leader speaks out

08/06/2009Reincarnated Tibetan spiritual leader speaks out

A Spanish boy proclaimed by the Dalai Lama as a spiritual leader when he was a baby, grants a rare interview about growing up in a monastery.

While the Dalai Lama was on a Europe tour last week, a Spanish man who proclaimed to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader spoke of his unhappy childhood at a monastery and his decision to abandon the faith.

Osel Hita Torres made world headlines in 1986 when the Dalai Lama recognised him, then aged 14 months, as the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe, who had died in California two years earlier.

He was brought to see the Dalai Lama in India by his parents and ended up living at a monastery there, where he was only allowed to socialise with others who had been proclaimed reincarnations, until he turned 18.

But even though many Buddhists worshipped him almost as a god, Torres, who was born in Granada in 1985, said in a rare interview published in Spain that he feels the experience stunted the development of his personality.

"Psychologically, everything affected me very much. I still feel fury inside and, sometimes, when it comes out, it causes me to lose control and I get depressed," Torres, 24, told daily newspaper El Mundo.

"They took me away from my family and stuck me in a medieval situation in which I suffered a great deal. It was like living a lie," added Torres, who now describes himself as a "spiritual scientific agnostic".

When he was eight, he managed to have a tape recorded message expressing his unhappiness delivered to his mother, who took him away from the Sera monastery.

But Torres said he quickly volunteered to return because of the pressure he felt over being considered to be the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe.

After leaving the monastery for good when he turned 18, he spent a year in Canada followed by six months in Switzerland where he studied philosophy, human rights, art and French.

1 reaction to this article

Tsering posted: 08-06-2009 | 2:47 AM

I am a Tibetan and I am here to tell you that he suffered under this God king reincarnation system. Do you believe people can reincarnate??? Wake up people. this is 21century. My Uneducated people in Tibet are fooled by Dalai Lama and his aristocrat Government. The bottom line is that the Dalai Lama system is King Power transforming system. It is a product of Feudalism. We Tibetan don't need Dalai Lama and old system. We lost Tibet to China because of Dalai Lama. Ignorant fosters superstition.

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