For some, life is defined by luxury and accessibility: a spacious home, a good car, branded clothes, and consistent comfort. For others, it is about meaning, discovering one's true self, finding purpose, and serving others. Jalue Dorje once aspired to the first life, spending his time following NBA games, playing Madden NFL on his Xbox, and enjoying teenage staples like pizza rolls and Diet Cokes. But six months later, he now lives as a monk in the Indian Himalayas.
A Transformative Path
The 19-year-old was just two years old when he was recognized by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist figures as a reincarnated lama. He grew up with a love for rap music, video games, and American football. After finishing high school in 2025, he relocated to northern India to join the Mindrolling Monasteries, about 7,000 miles from his home in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. He recently traveled to Nepal to reunite with his parents, who flew from Minneapolis, and participated in sacred rituals led by the abbot of Shechen Monastery.
Blending Identities
While monastic robes have replaced his hoodies and sweatpants, Dorje is uniquely remembered by both Drake raps and Indian monastics like Shantideva. He follows monastic rules but carries his American identity in subtle ways, such as wearing Crocs under his robe, adorned with The Simpsons jibbitz charms. Each morning, he wakes at dawn. After prayers, he walks from his hotel through crowded Kathmandu streets lined with fruits, incense, and spices, dodging mopeds near the soaring white dome and spire of Boudhanath, one of Tibetan Buddhism's most revered sites.
Standing before three huge gold statues of the Buddha in the monastery, Dorje bowed to Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, the monastery's spiritual head, and presented him with a golden plate symbolizing the entire universe, and a "khata," a white Tibetan ceremonial scarf. This was the first mandala, or offering, Dorje had made since his long journey to follow his predestined spiritual path. It was a moment, he says, when he realized how far he had come. "This is the real one, you know? We're here and this is really happening," he says. "I'm doing what the prophecy fulfilled."
Life with Buddhism
Since being recognized by the Dalai Lama at age two, Dorje has spent much of his life training to become a monk. He memorizes sacred scriptures, practices calligraphy, and learns the Buddha's teachings. The identification of a lama involves spiritual signs and visions. Dorje's parents took him to the Dalai Lama when he visited Wisconsin. The spiritual leader cut a lock of Dorje's hair in a ceremony and advised the parents to raise him in the United States to perfect his English and then send him to a monastery.
He was four months old when he was identified by Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche, a venerated master of Tibetan Buddhism, and later confirmed by several lamas as the eighth Terchen Taksham Rinpoche, the first of whom was born in 1655. "From my parents' end, educating me was a really big one," Dorje said. "They followed the words of his holiness; he laid the foundation, and they took that gamble." He recalled how different life was, as he could not sleep late or watch cartoons, but also credited his parents for cleaning hotel rooms and doing laundry at hospitals while raising him.
Balancing Two Worlds
Fluent in both English and Tibetan, Dorje was officially enthroned as a lama in a 2019 ceremony in India. Growing up, his father would give him Pokémon cards in return for memorizing Buddhist scriptures. If not a spiritual leader, Dorje said he would have been a sports journalist. While moving to India, he packed his headphones, laptop, a fantasy football magazine, and a book on Guru Rinpoche, the Indian Buddhist master who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet. His parents flew with him to New Delhi and then drove north to Dehradun, near the Himalayan foothills, in the equivalent of a college dropoff. They bought him a larger bed, painted his monastic room, and erected a shrine where he could pray at dawn and dusk. In the future, he hopes to return to the United States to teach in Minnesota's Buddhist community at the Nyingmapa Taksham Buddhist Center.
