Tulku Jigmed was born in the sheep year and is 11 years old. There are two Tulkus at the monastery and both are re-incarnations of Nubri Lama's teacher, Yung Tung Tendzin. Yung Tung Tendzin, had held the entire transmission of Wang, Lungs, Tri and Nyam Len (empowerments, verbal transmissions, instructions and experiential transmission) of the original Nubri Lineage, the Northern Treasure tradition (Chang Ter) of Rigdzin Godem. As a young man Nubri Lama stayed with his first teacher for six years until Yung Tung Tendzin went to Sikkim. When he returned to Kyimo Lung he invited Nubri lama to visit, and bestowed on Chö Kyi Nyima the entire transmission of Wang , Lung, and Tri of the lineage. One month later Yung Tung Tendzin died.
At that time there was a young nun from Kyimo Lung who wanted to go to Sikkim. She had several relatives in Rumtek. Nubri Lama was studying at Chorten Gompa at the time. The relatives took the young woman to Sikkim and left her with Lama. She told Lama that she wanted to go to Taktsi Nunnery. Lama met with the head nun there to formally arrange everything for the young nun. Immediately the head nun started complaining about the behavior of the nuns and told Lama that he had better talk plainly to the young Ani from Nubri and set expectations for her behavior at the convent. When Lama left Sikkim to return to Nubri he left the nun at Taktsi. Six months later, he learned that she was in Kathmandu he thought, "Oh dear, I told her to be good, now she must have done something terribly wrong."
It turned out that she was pregnant but apparently unaware of her condition. She thought that she was sick and had come to the city seeking medical treatment, and was staying in a boarding house. When the baby was born she was all alone and, tormented with anxiety, she opened the bedroom window and put the new born baby out onto the roof despite the torrential rain.
The host family however, knew what was going on and under threat of calling in the police made her admit to the birth of the child. The baby was found on the roof, directly under a drainpipe. The gutter had been pouring water on top the infant all night. The baby, beaten white as a conch by the stampeding water, was still somehow alive. This was the first sign that this baby was not ordinary. The host family raised the child until he was three and insisted that the nun reveal the identity of the father. She showed them a picture of a young boy she used to talk to, but they dismissed this idea saying that this child who hadn't even reached puberty could never have been the father.
When the child was four he started endlessly describing a land with a Gonpa. His mother then revealed that before she became pregnant she had had a dream where she had met a lama who had been doing a ceremony. All the tormas in the ceremony were made of gold and he told her to take them. "No," she said, "You see, I am too poor, I can't hold onto them." Then shortly thereafter, she had a second dream where she met the lama again, again he was doing ceremonies, however this time when he gave her a gold torma she accepted it.
A widely respected lama, Lopon Tsewang from Hee-nang monastery, came to a monastery close to Kyimo Lung to do a hundred thousand offerings (Tsok bum). Chö Kyi Nyima went to the Tsok. Later these two lamas fell to talking about the child who was also at the ceremony. The little boy used to walk right up to the shrine and just sit there quietly and he could sit very still. The two men decided that this child must be someone special. Lama asked Lopon Tsewang to recognize the child as a Tulku. He recounted how the old Lama Yung Tung Tendzin had given a turquoise stone to his niece. The little boy had gone up to the girl and told her it was his. "No, no, it's mine," she objected. "Well, it's yours now," he said, "but remember, I gave it to you."
There is also the story of the zee stone that the previous Yung Tung Tenzin had owned and then sold. Through happenstance the child came across the stone, held fast onto it and refused to let go. The main disciple of the old lama thought to himself,
"This child is surely someone special." He knew how the old lama liked to take a cup of local beer (chang). He got out two bowls, an old bowl which had belonged to the lama, and a nice new silver lined bowl. "Let's drink!" He proposed to the four year old.
"Good idea," said the boy, and picking up the new bowl that had been placed in front of him, said,
"This is must be your bowl because that one is mine." So saying he lifted the old bowl and drank the chang down in one swift gulp, an extraordinary action for a four year old.
One of the predecessor's disciples had a dream in which the child was walking past him when a large black lady with only one eye scooped the child up and said,
"If you are not going to take care of him, then I will." And the child began to dry, or shrivel up in her arms.
Then Nubri Lama himself had a dream. In the middle of a square piece of wood was a torma, which kept changing from the torma into the child and then back, over and over again. On the edge of the square were eight tormas. Lama began to worry that they symbolized something dangerous when they began to talk as the protectors Ekazati, Rahula etc. saying
"I will protect you from the East…….I will protect you from the West." When he woke up he told Lopon. Together they decided to recognize the child as a previous practitioner and a special person, rather that an incarnation of a particular lama. They gave the child nice new clothes and sat him on a throne and gave him texts etc. Many people came to see the child who did various wonderful things. He automatically did the correct thing with everything he was offered. Finally they decided that as all the protectors in Lama's dream were in the Nying Thig lineage they would ask Dodrup Chen Rinpoche to recognize the boy as a Tulku. Rinpoche recognized the child and gave him a scarf.
