The goal of this as-yet-untitled production, is to tell the life story of the Venerable Lama Norlha Rinpoche, one of the most inspiring and prolific teachers of Tibetan Buddhism alive today. Having just returned from fourteen weeks of filming in Asia, we are currently shooting the final interviews and scenes in New York, so it is a bit premature to compose an accurate synopsis for the film. For now, let us offer a few brief notes on Lama Norlha Rinpoche’s biography.

From his youth spent at a monastery in rugged Eastern Tibet to his solitary retreat in a cave, Rinpoche exhibited unwavering devotion to spiritual development. History, however, challenged the peace of that early ascetic life and forced him to begin his dramatic journey from the east to the west and back.

Time and again over his seventy years, he achieved what seemed to be impossible. He was a prisoner in a violent Chinese labor camp and he daringly escaped. He was a refugee among sickness and poverty in India and he established the first traditional three-year retreat outside of Tibet. He was an immigrant without resources and with almost no English, and he built a thriving Buddhist center in New York City. All of these accomplishments were the result of Rinpoche’s unquestioning loyalty to the requests of his own teachers, at a level of self-sacrifice unimaginable to most western people.

Today, in the context of many political challenges, Lama Norhla Rinpoche displays an uncanny ability to open and maintain monasteries, retreats, monastic colleges, village schools, and health clinics within his homeland of Nangchen, while simultaneously upholding the teachings of the Kagyu lineage in the Eastern USA. As we learned in our three months on the road with him, Rinpoche is a tireless traveler and a powerhouse of action, even at seventy years of age.

Despite a lifelong habit of humility, Rinpoche recently accepted the recognition of many high lamas who identified him as the reincarnation of the famous Norla Rinpoche of the last century. The film plans to explore the subtle intersections and parallels of these two connected lives.

Using some of the finest high definition video equipment available, traveling through some of the most inaccessible and shockingly beautiful landscapes imaginable, and with interviews with family, friends, teachers, colleagues, and students in Tibet, China, Nepal and India, we aspire to creatively document a contemporary version of a very old story; the story of the awakening of a great master.