The Dalai Lama’s Brother, Tenzin Choegyal

“I’m kind of a nut, you know.” ‒Tenzin Choegyal

Sorry about the terrible photo quality. It was my first digital camera… and I had a cold, so the photo was blurry.

I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip.

We gathered into the living room at Cloud’s End Villa for a talk with the Dalai Lama’s brother, Tenzin Choegyal. He was also identified as a reincarnate lama at an early age, but he ditched the post because it didn’t suit him. I was one of the first people in the room, and I plopped down on the floor; I always sit on the floor because it seems appropriate for the youngest person in the group. Shantum walked up to the dais in the bay window and pulled up a seat for our Tibetan visitor, but Tenzin Choegyal mischievously plopped down in the center of the couch next to David and grinned.

I looked up at him from about three feet away and couldn’t help but stare: the Dalai Lama was in disguise! I thought he looked remarkably like the Dalai Lama, except he had short hair instead of a shaved head, and instead of red robes he wore Western pants, an oxford shirt, and a brown bomber jacket with the message “SF San Francisco” on the upper left side. He wore squarish glasses like the Dalai Lama’s.

Shantum had painted Tenzin Choegyal as not very sociable, saying he spends a lot of time in…