GREAT LAMA Chokyi Gyaltsen (1377-1448) was the first
to bear the title Tai Situ, which means "far-reaching, unshakable,
great master, holder of the command."
The current, Twelfth Tai Situpa was born in 1954 to a family
of farmers in the Palyul district of the Derge Kingdom. He
was traditionally recognized and enthroned at Palpung Monastery
at the age of eighteen months.
When he was six years old, political conditions forced him
to leave Tibet with only a few attendants. He traveled to
Bhutan first and then to Sikkim, where he joined the Sixteenth
Karmapa who had also come out of Tibet. After recovering from
illness and exhaustion, Tai Situpa went to live at the newly
constructed Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, the new seat of the
Sixteenth Karmapa. He received his formal religious training
under the guidance of the Sixteenth Karmapa, until 1975, when
at the age of twenty-two, he assumed his own traditional responsibilities.
He established his first monastic project, called Sherab Ling,
at the request of his Tibetan followers who had settled in