User:Softlavender/Old stuff/Mukpo

Gesar Mukpo (born 1973) is a Canadian filmmaker. He is the son of world-renowned Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and is the writer and director of the films Tulku.

Gesar Mukpo, who wrote and directed Tulku, was born in 1973, the son of world-renowned Tibetan Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his British wife Diana. At the age of three, Mukpo was indentified by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche as the reincarnation of the late Shechen Kongtrul Rinpoche (the Jamgon Kongtrul of Shechen), one of his own father's teachers in Tibet. Three-year-old Gesar was then enthroned as a tulku in Berkeley, California.

In the film, Mukpo's British mother describes her scandalous marriage to a Tibetan monk, and her vision in a dream of a being who asked to be her son. When Gesar was born and was identified as a tulku, his father believed he could be a great teacher, but did not send him away to a monastery, believing it would separate him from his environment too much.

Mukpo, who grew up internationally, and whose father died in 1987, lives an ordinary secular life in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He has a daughter, is seperated from his wife, and is a music video producer.

Mukpo visits the Tibetan refugee colony of Bir in Northern India, which welcomed fleeing Tibetans after the Chinese occupation of Tibet beginning in the 1950s. He interviews his mentor Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, with whom he studied in India instead of attending college. Khyentse, who is an award-winning filmmaker (The Cup, Travelers and Magicians) as well as a renowned Buddhist master, In Nepal, Mukpo visits the Shechen Monastery, which brings back fond memories. When Mukpo was 15, his father died, and his mother sent him there to study with Dilgo Khyentse for a year.