JEAN WEST The Herald, July 24th 2001

Like any teenage boy, he enjoys sci-fi movies and cartoons. But Ugyen Trinley Dorje is no ordinary adolescent. He is exiled from his homeland, guarded round the clock and worshipped by millions. Could he be God on earth?

It is his eyes that seal his status. Beautiful, dark and hypnotic like horizontal teardrops that hold the secrets of the past 1,000 years. Cloaked in flowing maroon and saffron, his copper skin shining with adolescence, Ugyen Trinley Dorje exudes a spiritual opulence that belies his relatively modest surroundings.

I am staring into the face of a teenager revered as a deity, a young rosy-cheeked god, a living buddha and a symbol of the second coming for Tibet. He has strong ties with Scotland too. I should be quaking in my boots had I not respectfully removed them at the door. Instead, I feel a remarkable serenity.

The Karmapa Lama, at 16, has a kind of papal significance in eastern lands. For a weary and embarrassed heathen at the end of a 5,000-mile trek, this is a surreal event. "Hello," I say, ignorant of the protocol. "Hello," he smiles, and lightly shakes my hand. A red sacred ribbon is tied to my wrist before this apparent supreme being collapses his 6ft frame into a comfortable throne. In the candlelight, I assume an achy lotus position at his feet.

A 13-hour bus journey from Delhi delivered me the day before to Macleod Ganj, the post-colonial hill station near Dharamsala, cool above the Indian plains. Redundant for decades after a severe earthquake in 1905, it has long played host to the Tibetan government in exile.

Half an hour before, a taxi was hurtling me from my hotel through the twisting, rough-hewn roads that snake through this Himalayan pass into alpine green terrain. I was hot and anxious. It's a rare thing to get jumpy about interviewing a teenager. But a glance at His Holiness, sobriety etched across a face burgeoning with potential and skirted by soft, downy sideburns, asserts that he will never take readily to a skateboard. Nor will Britney Spears have much appeal.

His Holiness was always going to be unique. At seven, he was identified by a search party of high lamas, including Akong Tulku Rinpoche from Scotland's Samye Ling monastery near Dumfries, as the seventeenth reincarnation of the Karmapa, a twelfth-century Tibetan leader. He was whisked away from the yak-hair tent he shared with his nomadic family in Lhatok, eastern Tibet, to the snow-peaked surroundings of Lhasa's Tsurphu monastery.

The youth who now sits shyly with clasped hands before a gold Buddha ranks third in a centuries-old hierarchy headed by the Dalai Lama. The second member of this trinity - Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the then six-year-old Panchen Lama - was taken into "protective custody" in 1995 by the Chinese, who replaced him with their own puppet figure, Gyaltsen Norbu.

Indeed, the Karmapa Lama's own incarnation has also been hijacked by the Communist Party politics that have absorbed Tibet. The Chinese government approved Dorje's selection as head of the powerful Kagyu (black crown) lineage in 1992 and courted the child with expensive toys and tours, grooming him to rival the Dalai Lama. He even met President Jiang Zemin. But Dorje had different plans and took flight last year.

An escape on helicopters, jeeps, trains and horses steered him through the Himalayan peaks and into northern India's Himachal Pradesh. His escape mirrored that of the Dalai Lama 41 years earlier. Dorje now lives as a refugee at the Gyuto monastery. The journey put Dorje on the world map with the Nobel Peace Prize-winning exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Since then, Dorje has been under constant armed guard and long periods of what amounts to house arrest.

Accessing the Karmapa is a bureaucratic affair. I am ushered past a khaki-clad marksman with a rifle. Surrendering my passport, I am frisked by a humourless policewoman. Stripped of my tape-recorder, camera and batteries, I am free to proceed with notebook and pen. But how do you begin to interview your first god? Scotland seems an obvious icebreaker, especially because Akong Rinpoche, whose spiritual base near Lockerbie attracts worldwide curiosity, was among the first to meet the new Karmapa. Would His Holiness like to visit?

Through the broken English of his translator, Lama Tenam, Dorje asserts: "Yes. I'm not sure when I can visit, but I would definitely like to." He has seen pictures and is excited about Holy Island off Arran, owned by Samye Ling. Tai Situ Rinpoche, the man credited with discovering him, has been there. The Karmapa adds: "What I know about Scotland is limited because I don't speak English. It seems an environmentally nice place. I know Samye Ling monastery is located there because of Akong Rinpoche, who shares my lineage. I would like to visit Holy Island one day for a retreat." He then says: "I am the person who likes to travel around. Sometimes I feel I would like to go wherever I choose. But I have to face up to my time and situation."

Suddenly I am aware of an audience. Indian intelligence officials and an elderly monk are monitoring our every word. It is depressing to see this manifestation of compassion surrounded by high security and guns.

But their presence is necessary. A Taleban hit list bears the Karmapa's name. He would be a perfect bargaining counter for detained Afghan prisoners. The Karmapa's attendant, Lama Phuntsok, says: "We have seen this list. That's why Indian intelligence have put more policemen here. They are frightened somebody might kidnap His Holiness. They would feel responsible."

Some believe the Karmapa is a Beijing agent, a charge he has publicly denied. Others worry that Chinese spies may try to infiltrate the monastery. His disappearance embarrassed Jiang Zemin's government, which claims he is only collecting musical instruments and his black crown from his Indian seat in Sikkim.

I ask whether the Karmapa is afraid. Phuntsok says: "The guards don't upset him. They cannot shoot right away. They need an order." He says he does not feel isolated as he has a Pekingese dog and a cockatoo but sees few people of his age except his sister, Ngodup Palzom.

Propelled into a lifetime of duty, he must surely have sacrificed the joys of childhood and the trappings of adolescence. The Karmapa smiles and speaks to translator Tenam, who says: "Frankly, he does not think he has missed these things. They are not very important to him. He is fully occupied and does not have these feelings." Nor is he lonely, although he perhaps wishes he were. "Being lonely is one of the best ways to attain enlightenment as a practitioner, as a master. It is not negative."

Dorje seems keen to say the right thing. But he speaks more emotionally of his parents, who are feared to be in Chinese custody. "My parents are very kind to me and, because of that kindness, I remember them very much. As a spiritual man, I always pray that they are healthy and prosperous and that everything is good. From deep inside, I care for them very much."

I pursue the Karmapa's adolescent endeavours. He is a private soul who rarely discusses his deeper thoughts. Even determining what food he likes is tricky. One source says: "We sometime serve the same thing ten times to see what he eats." While prayer and study are paramount, he enjoys science-fiction films and cartoons. "I was a little bit surprised," says Phuntsok, whose family moved to India with Dorje's predecessor, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje. "I said: 'Hey, big man, are you watching cartoons?' He is still not really an adult."

Even so, Dorje is already a talented artist, writes moving poetry and wants to learn English and Japanese. Tenam says: "Physically he is young but mentally he is extraordinary."

The Karmapa's sober temperament is said to mirror that of the holy man he succeeded. But his sense of humour comes out when he sees the Dalai Lama. It's touching to hear how he loves and trusts the head of the Gelugpa lineage.

Dorje first met the Dalai Lama at the age of 14 when he arrived in Dharamsala on January 5 last year. Painfully thin, cheeks cracked with the cold and wrapped in animal hides, he was touched by his host. "He received me with great love and affection. My joy knew no bounds."

Dorje told guards he was embarking on a strict retreat before leaping in disguise from his window at Tsurphu monastery on to the road and into a waiting jeep. In eight days, he covered 900 miles of Himalayan peaks and passes. "It was quite scary," he says. "But when people have to face up to certain difficulties, they just have to face them."

He adds: "No one told me to go and no one asked me to come. During this time, I was tired and not very well, yet despite the difficulties, I was completely determined to reach my goal." Phuntsok recalls: "It was a shock to see him. We were both happy and sad. Happy to be meeting a respected teacher and sad because he had problems."

Many put Dorje's survival down to divine powers. It was said three suns appeared when he was discovered and rainbows lit the skies at night when he was born. People claimed he rode on a jackal into the forest before he could walk and displayed uncanny psychic insight. Earlier this year, Akong Rinpoche told me: "The Karmapa is entirely different from any other child. He can tell you what you are thinking, where you are going, who is coming today, who is going to be born. He could tell people these things long before they knew he was the Karmapa."

He illustrates the point with a story about the sixteenth Karmapa, who died in January 1981. "I had asked if I could have one of his teeth when it came out, because they are so precious. He promised me one." But when his guru died, Akong Rinpoche thought he must have forgotten. However, he figured that, as the direct incarnation of the sixteenth Karmapa, the little Dorje would have some knowledge of it. "When I saw the seventeenth Karmapa for the first time, I asked, 'Where is my tooth?'" The boy gave him a baby tooth from beneath the carpet.

Rinchen Khandro, press officer at Samye Ling, was similarly moved during a public audience with the leader. On returning to Scotland, she and two monks had a brush with death when a concrete lamp-post crushed her car. "The Karmapa saved us," she insists.

I ask the boy whether he has supernatural powers. "You call it supernatural powers. I believe that whatever power is there is the power of the dharmas [Buddhist teaching]. It is because of this that all my predecessors did many things like leaving hand or footprints in stone. People say there are many things I can do. But, for whoever practises them, these things might happen."

Asked if he had felt different as a child, Dorje says: "When I was young, there was no special feeling. I used to think the same as other children. But, after I was recognised and named as the Karmapa, everybody focused on me." I skirt around political issues for some time. Diplomacy is paramount and the Karmapa is traditionally apolitical.

He hopes to return to Tibet one day with the Dalai Lama. "I endorse and support everything His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama stands for. He is the supreme leader of Tibet and the champion of world peace and human rights."

When I ask him why he left Lhasa, Dorje says he had been requesting access to the teachers who could furnish him with the traditions of the Kagyu sect. But even his key instructor, Tai Situ Rinpoche, who lives at Sherabling monastery in Bhattu, near Baijnath, was not allowed into Tibet. So Dorje took the matter into his own hands. He knows his escape has not been without consequence for his people. Devotees were arrested, and one Tibetan refugee told me it was now much more difficult to get a passport.

"I have a very big responsibility as Karmapa and leader of the lineage," says Dorje. "These lineages should be taught by the genuine masters but they are in India. I felt I could not offer the people in Tibet too much because I was young and I needed a lot of teachings. That was one of the main reasons."

He longs to take up residence at Rumtek monastery in Sikkim, his official seat. But further controversy dogs his path. In the mid-1990s, a rival as the Karmapa emerged in the shape of a child called Thaye Dorje. Defecting members of the Kagyu school groomed the rival and laid claim to the same throne, sparking rioting in Sikkim. But Ugyen Trinley Dorje has the Dalai Lama's support.

Divine powers are said to have let Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, the sixteenth Karmapa, choose the body he returned in. It is claimed that, ten months before his death in 1981, he left instructions with Tai Situ Rinpoche, a senior figure in Tibetan Buddhism, about how to locate his next incarnation. A decade passed without a sign, then Tai Situ Rinpoche broke open an amulet his mentor had left him and found a spiritual guide to Ugyen Trinley Dorje in an envelope. It described the location of the boy's birth. In 1992, senior masters of the Kagyu school, including Akong Rinpoche, went to Lhatok, posing as pilgrims looking for lost relatives. They were directed to Bakor, the Valley of the Cow, and to the boy's father Dondrup and his mother Loga.

In 1994, Shamar Rinpoche, nephew of the sixteenth Karmapa, followed different instructions and located Thaye Dorje in Lhasa. The child was smuggled from Tibet and welcomed by rival followers in New Delhi. Some regard Ugyen Trinley Dorje as a fake backed by greedy monks with eyes on his multi-million-pound inheritance.

For some straight talking, I head to Sherabling, Tai Situ Rinpoche's monastery. Bespectacled and dressed in yellow silk, the teacher grins broadly. I ask if there is any substance to these rival claims. He puts them down to religious freedom. "All the authorities in Tibetan Buddhism - starting from the Dalai Lama - believe in this Karmapa," he says. "The Dalai Lama is very thorough about these things. But he would say, 'If you don't want to believe, don't believe.' A few people don't believe. But then a lot of people don't believe in the Buddha. It's healthy." Speaking of Thaye Dorje's camp, he adds: "We should pray for their well-being, but we cannot say they are a branch of the Kagyu lineage if they are against the Karmapa."

Asked about the ethics of removing a child from his home, he says: "You are speaking from a Western perspective. No one was snatched. It is a great privilege for his parents. But the exiled Karmapa is a big loss for his people." Tai Situ Rinpoche now delivers spiritual teaching to his charge at Gyuto twice a week. The Indian authorities will not let his student attend Sherabling, but Rumtek is Dorje's ultimate goal. "Going to Rumtek monastery would be like returning home to continue the activity of my predecessor," says Dorje.

The Sikkim issue is complicated by Sino-Indian border disputes. Both countries lay claim to the region, which fuels suspicions about His Holiness. "There are some in the Indian government who wonder if I might be an agent of the Chinese government," the Karmapa told an Indian newspaper. So is Sikkim safe for the Karmapa? Phuntsok says: "I don't see any problem. We are always ready to go."

A few days later, I attend a public audience with the Karmapa. International visitors give him flowers, white silk scarves, and cakes with candles for his sixteenth birthday. This is not your average birthday boy. Reciting an almost musical incantation, his thoughts seem far away. When a small child is brought forward for a blessing, though, his eyes light up.

To the Western world, Ugyen Trinley Dorje may appear a slave to claims of rebirth, a sorry little pawn in an international game. But, to Tibetan Buddhists, he is a powerful symbol of salvation. "If the Kagyu lineage is Catholicism, the Karmapa is the Pope," says Tai Situ Rinpoche. The turbulence and peace that go with the job will be taken in his stride.