Meet Jalue Dorje: Minnesota teen who gave up American life to live as a monk in India

For some, life is all about the luxuries of accessibility. A spacious home, a good car, branded clothes and consistent comfort. For others, it's more about meaning, about finding out their truest self, figuring out their purpose and serving others.

Once upon a time in his life, Jalue Dorje wanted the first life. He spent much of his time following NBA games, playing Madden NFL on his Xbox and relishing his teen years with pizza rolls and Diet Cokes. But six months later today, he lives as a monk in the Indian Himalayas.

The 19-year-old was just 2 when he was recognised by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist figures as a reincarnated lama. He grew up with a love for rap music, video games and American football.

Having finished high school in 2025, he relocated to northern India to join the Mindrolling Monasteries about 7,000 miles away from his home in Columbia Heights, Minnesota. He recently travelled to Nepal to reunite with his parents, who flew from Minneapolis, and participated in sacred rituals led by the abbot of Shechen Monastery.

While monastic robes have swapped his hoodies and sweatpants, Dorje is peculiarly remembered by both Drake raps and Indian monastics like Shantideva.

While he follows monastic rules, he carries his American identity with him in subtle ways like his Crocs under the robe, donned with The Simpsons jibbitz charms.

Each morning, he wakes at dawn. After prayers, he walks from his hotel through crowded Kathmandu streets lined with fruits, incense and spices, dodging mopeds near the soaring white dome and spire of Boudhanath, one of Tibetan Buddhism's most revered sites.

Standing before three huge gold statues of the Buddha in the monastery, Dorje bowed to Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, the monastery’s spiritual head, and presented him with a golden plate that symbolises the entire universe, and a “khata” — a white Tibetan ceremonial scarf.

It was the first mandala, or offering, Dorje had made since his long journey to follow his predestined spiritual path. It was a moment, he says, when he realised how far he’d come.

“This is the real one, you know? We’re here and this is really happening,” he says. “I’m doing what the prophecy fulfilled.”

Life with Buddhism

Since being recognised by the Dalai Lama at the age of two, Dorje has spent much of his life training to become a monk. Memorising sacred scriptures, practising calligraphy, and learning the Buddha’s teachings, he has been doing it all.

The identification of a lama involves spiritual signs and visions. Dorje's parents took him to the Dalai Lama when he visited Wisconsin in the US. The spiritual leader cut a lock of Dorje's hair in a ceremony and advised the parents to raise him in the states to perfect his English and then send him to a monastery.

He was four months old when he was identified by Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche, a venerated master of Tibetan Buddhism. He was later confirmed by several lamas as the eighth Terchen Taksham Rinpoche — the first was born in 1655. "From my parents’ end, educating me was a really big one,” Dorje said. “They followed the words of his holiness; he laid the foundation, and they took that gamble.” He remembered how different life was since he couldn't sleep till late or watch cartoons but also credited his parents for cleaning hotel rooms and doing laundry at hospitals while raising him.

Fluent in both English and Tibetan, Dorje was officially enthroned as a lama in a 2019 ceremony in India. Growing up, his father would give him Pokémon cards in return for memorising Buddhist scriptures.

What would he have been if not a spiritual leader? Well, Dorje said a sports journalist would have been cool. While moving to India, he packed his headphones, laptop, a fantasy football magazine and a book on Guru Rinpoche, the Indian Buddhist master who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet. His parents flew with him to New Delhi and then drove north to Dehradun, near the Himalayan foothills, in the equivalent of a college dropoff. They bought him a larger bed. They painted his monastic room and erected a shrine where he could pray at dawn and dusk.

In the future, he hopes to return to the US to teach in Minnesota's Buddhist community at the Nyingmapa Taksham Buddhist Center.