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Throngs line up to see teenage holy man
Thursday, February 22, 2001
By LAURINDA KEYS
NEW DELHI, India -- Tibetans lined the streets of the Indian capital today for a glimpse of a teenage lama who escaped Chinese-controlled Tibet last year and is beginning a pilgrimage to Buddhist holy sites in northern India.
Ugyen Thinley Dorje, 15, was whisked in a silver Mercedes past throngs of Tibetan men, women and children. They stood in rows seven deep to see the monk who has spent the last 13 months restricted to monasteries near Dharmsala, the exile headquarters of the Dalai Lama, the senior Tibetan religious and political leader.
The 17th Karmapa -- one of the most senior monks in Tibetan Buddhism -- was given permission by the Indian government early this month to visit Sarnath, Varanasi and Bodhgaya.
He left Dharmsala on Tuesday night, and arrived in New Delhi yesterday, but made no stops at the Tibetan Center or the area where most Tibetans live in the capital.
Dorje, head of the Karma Kagyu sect, will spend the next six days, including the Tibetan new year, at a monastery 12 miles from Sarnath, officials in Dharmsala said. On Feb. 26, he is to begin a three-week pilgrimage from Bodhgaya of the most sacred Buddhist shrines in India. Buddhists believe the founder of their religion achieved enlightenment at Bodhgaya.
The New Delhi government granted the Karmapa refugee status Feb. 3, giving him more freedom to travel in India. However, he was prohibited from going to Rumtek Monastery, the seat of his predecessor, in the former Himalayan Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim. Now an Indian state, Sikkim is also claimed by China.
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet after a failed 1959 revolt against Chinese rule, was followed to northern India by more than 120,000 refugees who settled with him in the Indian mountain town of Dharmsala. They and their descendants, and new refugees have settled in pockets all over India, and New Delhi is a major center for Tibetans.
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