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The 12th Tai Situpa

This document - first of four concerning the Tai Situpas The origins of the Tai Situ lineage The early Tai Situ incarnations The later Tai Situ incarnations

The current and twelfth Tai Situpa, Péma Tönyö Nyinjé, was born in 1954, in the Tibetan year of the Male Wood Horse, in the Palyul district of Dérgé, Eastern Tibet, to a farming family named Liu. His birth was accompanied by auspicious signs associated with the birth of a high incarnate lama. He was recognised as the Situ reincarnation by the sixteenth Karmapa. The Karmapa was visiting Beijing with the Dalai Lama, as part of a delegation, when he became aware of the imminent birth of the twelfth Tai Situpa. He composed a letter in which he gave a clear description of the identity of the parents and their place of residence, and that letter, coupled with
The XIIth Tai Situpa

the unmistakable signs surrounding the birth and unusual physical phenomena such as a rainbow inside the house and harmless earth tremors, enabled an accurate recognition of the current incarnation.

At the age of eighteen months he was escorted to his monastic seat, Palpung Monastery, to be enthroned there by the Karmapa according to tradition. When political hostilities became acute in Eastern Tibet he was taken to the Karmapa's main monastery, Tsurphu, near Yangpachen in Central Tibet, where he performed his first Red Crown Ceremony, a practice that has become a tradition since the fifth Tai Situpa received the Red Situ Crown from the ninth Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje. He stayed in Tsurphu Monastery for one year. At the age of five he left Tibet with his attendants for Bhutan, where King Jigme Dorje and the Queen Mother had been disciples of the previous Situpa Pema Wangchok. He then went to Sikkim, where he lived in Gangktok until he fell ill with tuberculosis, at which time he moved to Darjeeling, where he could be close to medical facilities. After his recovery he returned to Sikkim, this time to Rumtek Monastery, where he remained under the care of the Karmapa and received his formal religious training under his guidance.

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This document - first of four concerning the Tai Situpas The origins of the Tai Situ lineage The early Tai Situ incarnations The later Tai Situ incarnations