YANGSI - A FILM BY MARK ELLIOTT

The Buddhist teacher, yogi and author Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was one of the most widely acclaimed masters of our times. Here is a film about his reincarnation.
Synopsis: An intimate portrait of a young Tibetan boy who is recognized as the reincarnation of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one of the most revered Tibetan Buddhist masters of the twentieth century. He is known as the Yangsi, “the one who has come again into existence.” Providing a unique window into the world of Tibetan Buddhism, this film is a coming of age story with universal themes, made over a fourteen year period by Mark Elliott, an acclaimed filmmaker and longtime student of Tibetan Buddhism.




Narrated by Yangsi Rinpoche, he gives a first-person account of his experience of growing up into, and coming to terms with, his unique inheritance. Beginning with his enthronement at age four before a crowd of fifteen thousand people in Kathmandu, Nepal and being taken away from his family to undergo his training, he is placed in the care of the previous Khyentse Rinpoche’s regent, Rabjam Rinpoche at Shechen Monastery. With unprecedented access, the film chronicles his life during disciplinary training, intimate family visits and transmission of ritual ceremonies by teachers who had received them from him during his former life.

Khyentse Yangsi Rinpoche and Mark Elliott, Bhutan, 2011.

Filmed largely in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan and in Nepal, it presents everyday events in a reincarnation’s life, where a mother’s love plays as important a role as high tantric empowerments. Where tradition is challenged by modernity, and human relationships are as vital as study. Where imperfection meets with aspiration. And where doubt challenges devotion when having to live up to great expectations.
Yangsi follows this process up to the age of eighteen, when he for the first time assumes the role of the teacher, embarking on a world tour to continue the work of his predecessor, to be of service to sentient beings. Perhaps never before has this process been so openly and engagingly portrayed, sharing Yangsi’s aim of how Buddhism can be relevant in the modern world.
Director’s statement: Yangsi is the most personal film I have made. The young boy at the center of this film has a lot to live up to. His previous incarnation was known to millions as a great saint. How does he does he deal with the expectations placed upon him? How does a spiritual tradition evolve in modern circumstances that are so different from those of the boy’s previous incarnation, who spent more than twenty years as a yogi in retreat in mountain solitude? In answer to these questions I found a decency and wisdom throughout the filmmaking. Ultimately making Yangsi was for me an affirmation of the goodness of human nature and how it can be made manifest.
See here on how to purchase and download the film.