Osel Hita Torres - The reluctant lama

[Dechen Norbu]

I think we should leave these guys alone and let them decide their own lives without our commentaries.
If they want to become teachers, by all means. If they don't, we shouldn't even comment. They never asked to be recognized.
What a bad karma to be recognized as a tulku and not wanting to be one, no? I think they have the right to live privately, make their own choices and whatever happens, happens. We should avoid expectations. Maybe he becomes a Dharma teacher, maybe he doesn't. What is it to us? I just hope this guy manages to be happy in the middle of all this show where he was dropped without ever being asked permission...

[Thrasymachus]

--- There are lots of hints his family is quite independently wealthy:

But having a lama in the family was disruptive for her other five children as they all travelled the world, trying to stay reasonably close to Osel when he was very small.

To follow around a lama, especially with such a big family must cost a lot.
-- The mother has a villa in Ibiza likely one of the more expensive real estate localities in Spain. Maybe they even have more houses.

I wonder what impact the family's likely wealth had on the decision to recognize him as a tulku?

--- This also does not bode well:

But Lama Yeshe had heart problems, and he died in 1984 in a Los Angeles hospital, aged 49.

According to modern medical research and longevity studies, if you have lowered stress levels from an activity like prolonged meditation practice, you should have a longer lifespan. On the other hand the Tibetans traditionally have a diet very heavy in meats and other animal products, which is the most sub-optimal diet you could eat. Still it does not bode well that he would die so soon but allegedly have the power to reincarnate.

[gregkavarnos]

Apart from your post contravening right speech (ie engaging in gossip and slander) it may also even be considered baseless slander from a legal perspective.

Just so you know, here in Europe people may own prime real estate but actually be very poor. You see they may have inherited the real estate but not have the money to maintain it. Or, for example, seaside real estate was not always considered prime property here in Europe because of piracy. It was only after the establishment of powerful nation states that maritime law was, and could be, enforced. Also the concept of prime property changes over time. For example the Greek island of Mykonos is a dry, barren and infertile lump of rock that people did not want to live on since they could not produce food to eat. It remained this way (except for a very small section of the capital) until the 1970's when tourism to the Greek islands (and mass tourism in general) started to take off. Now it is virtually impossible to buy land there. Many of the now wealthy indigenous residents of Mykonos were just hopelessly poor sheep herders and small scale fishermen. I think you may find the same phenomenon in Ibiza.

Still it does not bode well that he would die so soon but allegedly have the power to reincarnate.

Why? His dying young may have as much to do with the ripening of karma from previous lives as with his previous rebirths eating habits.

[zerwe]

--- This also does not bode well:

But Lama Yeshe had heart problems, and he died in 1984 in a Los Angeles hospital, aged 49.

According to modern medical research and longevity studies, if you have lowered stress levels from an activity like prolonged meditation practice, you should have a longer lifespan. On the other hand the Tibetans traditionally have a diet very heavy in meats and other animal products, which is the most sub-optimal diet you could eat. Still it does not bode well that he would die so soon but allegedly have the power to reincarnate.

From my understanding and in case you didn't know, Lama Yeshe's heart problems were the result of Rheumatic fever. Which, in case you didn't know,

is the result of repeated prolonged streptococcal infection resulting in damage to the AV valves in the heart. Which, in case you didn't know, causes a

leaking between atria and ventricles leading to all sorts of conditions including a unhealthy hypertrophy of the heart muscle leading to ischemia and

death.

Shaun

[Jikan]

I wonder what impact the family's likely wealth had on the decision to recognize him as a tulku?.

Speculations built on speculations in this sentence. You haven't demonstrated that the Torres family is independently wealthy, but you have repeated some rumors to that effect; on the basis of those rumors, you suggest another.

Public criticism is fine and useful if it is predicated on demonstrable fact and clear analysis, and not presupposition and rumor.