ABSTRACT
This chapter tells of Dechen Chökyi Drönma, born about 1940, who was recognised as a female tulku, or incarnate lama, at the age of five. Her title of Samding Dorje Phagmo originated in the fifteenth century, and as the 12th in the line of incarnations of Chökyi Drönma she became the highest-ranking female Buddhist in Tibet. As the head of a religious order courted by the Chinese government, she was targeted by Tibetan rebels during the rebellion of the late 1950s and fled (in her own words abducted) to India. She was again targeted in the 1960s during the Cultural Revolution, but she remained faithful to her Buddhist lineage and was reinstated as the head of Samding Monastery, which was eventually rebuilt.
