From all sides, the pressures are very great, confessed the embattled 21st reincarnation of the abbot of Kumbum Monastery. He was talking over a hasty breakfast of barley porridge and Tibetan salted tea in his private apartments.
On the broad shoulders of Arjia Lobsang Thubten, the son of Mongolian nomads, rests the future of the 400-year-old monastery where Tsongkapa, the founder of the Yellow Hat, or Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, was born.
The first Arjia Rinpoche was the reincarnation of Tsongkapa's father and is one of the eight high lamas of the Gelugpa school.
The living Buddha or Rinpoche, a square-faced man with glasses and big hands, had been up until 2 am the night before, attending a meeting.
Another long day of alternating religious and political meetings stretched ahead and already at eight in the morning, secretaries or relatives kept poking their heads round the door asking for instructions in Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian.
The strain on Arjia Rinpoche is considerable. The bitter conflict between Beijing and the Dalai Lama over the selection of the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama has put him in an impossible situation.
Under constant guard both by the authorities and his own fervent monks, Arjia Rinpoche, as the highest-ranking living Buddha in Qinghai province, is valiantly trying to negotiate a path between the demands of his spiritual leader in India and those of the Communist Party.
