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The Michigan Daily - Thursday, January 25, 1996 - 5A
More people are believed
to be reincarnated lamas
AP PHOTO
lines are changing
no shop owner Phuc Thich, center, attends customers Monday at his shop, recently converted from a traditional silk store
to a CD music shop.
Revolutionaiy conditionin g
sid to protect ozone layer
Los Angeles Times
SEATTLE - It is a cloudy after-
noon, and when His Holiness Nawang
Kunga Tegchen Chokyi Nyima reaches
up and switches off the light, the kitchen
at the back of the monastery settles into
a dull twilight.
"Don't be skeeered!" he advises, then
erupts in a shriek of merriment at the
mere idea. Who wouldn't be scared in
such an evil light? He switches the over-
head bulb on and off several more times,
then takes a few fast laps around the
room, trailing soft giggles behind him.
This 4-year-old believed to be the
reincarnation of the revered Deshung
Rinpoche, one of the highest lamas of
Tibetan Buddhism's Sakya tradition, is
wearing the classic maroon garb required
of his sacred position.But in this case, it
is a pair of sweatpants and a matching
sweatshirt that says "Lil Monster."
"Lamas don't act that way!" pleads
Caroline Lama, a widowed day care
worker whose last name by marriage is
also the name for a spiritually advanced
person in Buddhism. She also, by luck
or grace, gave birth to a boy seen as the
next great teacher of Tibetan Buddhists
in exile.
Today, she will board a plane for
Katmandu, Nepal, with her playful
young son and leave him at a remote
Sakya monastery outside the city. He
will stay for the decade or more of
studies that will prepare him to become
a teacher and spiritual leader of his
faith. She will come home and wait for
him to grow up.
It may seem odd that the eternal cycle
of death and rebirth,learning and teach-
ing, should have visited the middle of
this north Seattle neighborhood, two
blocks away from a Pizza Hut outlet
and a Blockbuster video store.
But with spiritualism everywhere on
the rise, experts say, Buddhism in the
in the form of an
American young-
ster in Seattle. The
fictional story was
loosely based on
another case not in
Seattle.
The increase in
North American
and European in-
carnations of Bud-
dhist holy men -
as well as the first
incarnations of
holy men in female
form - "from the
"Somel
is a lama
to ChOOs
own rebi
University
doc
point of view of
United States has slipped outside old
neighborhoods of Asian immigrants and
the counterculture and is taking its place
in the religious mainstream.
There are hundreds of designated re-
incarnations of lamas around the world
- and a growing number, following
Buddhism's widening reach, are occur-
ring in the West.
Bernardo Bertolucci's 1993 film
"Little Buddha" depicted such a rein-
carnation of a Tibetan lama, ironically,
a 25-year-old Nova Scotia man, son of
a hippie mother who lived in a tepee,
.was designated a reincarnated holy man
at age 8. Including Lama's son, there
are believed to be four such "tulkus" in
North America.
Many of her non-Buddhist friends
have expressed surprise and shock that
she would give up her son to a monas-
tery in Nepal for 10 years. But Lama
says that is where he belongs.
Lama already has taken her son for a
visit to the mon-
astery in Nepali
One who stocking it with
familiar toys from
Mn iS abl home. His sleep-
ing room has an
e their urn with some of
the ashes of
rth. Deshung Rin-
- Peter Moran poche. He has be-
gun learning Ti-
of Washington betan, which will
toral candidate become his pri-
mary language.
And he met the
monks who will be his teachers. One of
them, Nawang Tyngure, has been as-
signed as his primary companion.
Now, when Lama asks: "Who loves
you the most?" Tulku-la replies with-
out hesitation: "Nawang Tyngure!"
"When he's with his monks, you can
just see the bliss on his face. You can
see that's where he's supposed to be,"
Lama says.
"He pretty much knows that he's
going to go over there and live with
Nawang Tyngure, and I'm going to
come back here," said Lama, who
will visit her son twice a year. She
will stay two months before leaving
him behind. She could stay in Nepal,
but she could not live in the monas-
tery and could not have any meaning-
ful role in his life.
BOSTON (AP) - Back around the
turn ofthe century, they air-conditioned
theaters by fanning air across giant
blocks ofwinterice that hadbeen stored
underground until the summer.
Now ice conditioning - the high-
tech variety - is back, and its promot-
ers say it will save energy and help
phase out ozone-depleting chemicals.
,Office buildings in Chicago's Loop
ready are cooled by a central plant
Tilled with 5 million pounds of giant ice
cubes. Boston is next.
Northwind Boston plans to build three
downtown cooling plants at a cost of
$60 million. The company was formed
Tuesday by subsidiaries of Boston
Edison Co. and Unicom Corp. of Chi-
cago.
The plants freeze large blocks of ice
at night, when electricity demand is low
, d the price cheap. During the day, as
e ice melts, the cold water is pumped
to the buildings. The process begins all
over again after dark.
The first plant, due to be hooked up
next year, could cool up to 10 buildings
the size of Boston's largest without
using chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.
The manufacture of CFCs was discon-
tinued this year because of concern
over the shrinking ozone layer.
"We're offering these owners an al-
Polish head
to resign
from post
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -
Poland's prime minister, facing a mili-
tary investigation into chargeshe spied
for Moscow, said yesterday he would
resign his post and fight to clear his
name.
Jozef Oleksy, the first former Com-
munist to become premier, was visibly
nervous as he announced his decision
n national television.
The propaganda against me and my
party and the coalition continues, but
the running of the nation must be put
first," Oleksy said.
The announcement came just hours
after the military prosecutor's office
opened an investigation into charges
Oleksy passed classified information
to Moscow from the early 1980s un-
til he became prime minister in
arch.
Oleksy vigorously denied the alle-
gations.
"I am not afraid of the investiga-
tion," he said. "Only that can show the
truth and clear my name."
Oleksy acknowledged previously
that he was friends with a man who
later proved to be a top Soviet spy in
Poland, but claimed he had only social
contacts with him and did not know he
as an agent.
It was not clear exactly when Oleksy
would step down. When he does, Presi-
dent Aleksander Kwasniewski must
name a new prime minister within two
weeks.
The charges that he passed classified
documents and other information to
?l4ncrsvirra firt md. tac imo. nnth~l hu
ternative to changing refrigerants or
replacing their whole chiller system,"
said Rick Zimbone, president of the
Boston Energies Technology Group,
the Boston Edison subsidiary partici-
pating in Northwind.
By eliminating their own air condi-
tioning units, building owners could
save on maintenance. Northwind's cost
would be comparable to installing a
new system.
A four-story plant in Chicago owned
by Unicom Thermal Technologies be-
gan pumping cooled water to Chicago
office buildings in the spring, just in
time for a killer heat wave during the
summer.
"It worked great for us. It kept up all
summer long," said Rich Penner, who
works in one of those buildings as a
supervisor at Inland Steel Co. "It was a
very smooth transition."
The 19-story building is one of nine
connected by underground pipes to the
Adams Street plant. Two more plants
are under construction.
The Adams Street cooling plant cov-
ers half a city block. Above the Osco
Drug store on the ground floor, a net-
workofchillersandpumpsgives wayto
two stories of ice tanks. Each tank is the
size of a tractor trailer and contains four
miles of tubing that freezes the water.
"If you were to cut off the roof of the
building and look down from the top, it
wouldn't look a whole lot differentthan
an ice cube tray," said Joe King, a
spokesman for Unicom, which also
owns Commonwealth Edison.
The 34-degree water from the plant is
piped to a heat-transfer station in each
building. The heat-transfer station, the
size ofa couple of desks, draws cold out
of the water. The warm water is then
looped back to the cooling plant.
The system planned for Boston would
use hydro-chlorofluorocarbons, or
HCFCs, as a coolant.
That means it would still emit chlo-
rine into the air, although less than if it
used CFCs, according to Gerald Wil-
son, a professor of electrical engineer-
ing at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
"It's not fundamentally different. So
the claim that it's better for the ozone
layer is debatable," Wilson said.
"They're not out of the woods yet on the
ozone."
Wilson said the biggest advantage to
the plant is that it uses nearly all of its
electricity during off-peak hours. Power
produced off-peak is cleaner and
cheaper.
"The downside here is that they are
still using electricity," he said.
Tibetans is not really a problem, in fact
in a way it makes sense," said Peter
Moran, a University of Washington
doctoral candidate. He has been track-
ingthe growth of Buddhism in the West
and the inevitable Westernization of
the ancient faith as its followers move
to new lands.
"Someone who is a lama, a spiritu-
ally advanced person, is able to choose
their own rebirth, and they choose a
rebirth that will be of greatest benefit to
other people," he said. "Because there
are more Westerners and more Western
women interested in Buddhism, for Ti-
betan teachers to take rebirth in those
forms sort of makes perfect sense."
A Spanish boy was recently desig-
nated a reincarnated lama, ortulku, and
Government recalls infant car seats-
WASHINGTON (AP)-Thegovern-
ment announced yesterday that 15,370
infant car seats are being recalled as pos-
sible safety hazards in car crashes.
The National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration said the rear-facing
Dreamride Ultra infant seats failed a gov-
ernment crash test by tipping toward the
front of the car by more than 70 degrees.
Federal safety standards require that
rear-facing seats stay almost upright
during impact in a crash at 30 mph.
The recall is for 15,370 Dreamride
Ultra car seats, model 02-179, manu-
factured from April 8, 1994, through
June 15, 1995.
Carole Dingledy, spokeswoman for
Cosco Inc., the manufacturer, said the
company had no immediate comment.
Dr. Ricardo Martinez, NHTSA's ad-
ministrator, urged parents with the seat
to contact Cosco to receive a reinforce-
ment kit. Until the kit is in hand,
Martinez advised parents without a
suitable replacement seat to continue
using the Cosco model.
"Properly used, child safety seats are
lifesavers," Martinez said. "An unre-
strained child is at a much greater risk
of injury in a crash than a child in a
restraint system."
NHTSA officials have warned par-
ents, however, never to use a rear-
facing infant seat in the front passenger
seat if the car is equipped with a right-
side air bag.
F.
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ADAPTEC TO THE RESCUE
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