Erdne Ombadykow

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Erdne Ombadykow (born c. 1972), also known as Telo Tulku Rinpoche, is the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader of Kalmykia. Born to Kalmykian parents in Philadelphia, he trained as a Buddhist monk in India, was recognized by the Dalai Lama as reincarnation of a Buddhist saint, and has served as sprititual head of Kalmykia since 1992. He divides his time between Kalmykia and his family in Erie, Colorado.

At age seven, he was sent to a monastery in India to study to become a Buddhist monk. In 1979 the Dalai Lama recognized him as the current reincarnation of the Buddhist saint Telo Rinpoche, the last in a long chain of reincarnations. In 1992 he joined the Dalai Lama on his first visit to Kalmykia, and became the country's spiritual leader, the Šajin Lama (Supreme Lama). At the time, he did not speak the Kalmyk language nor was familiar with the nation's culture. Frustrated, he left Kalmykia soonafter, and irrevocably left the monkhood. He had met his future wife, an ethnic Tibetan, in 1990 in India. They married in 1995 and moved to the United States. He then decided to resume serving as Kalmykia's spiritual head and has since overseen the construction of several Buddhist temples and sent several students to India to be trained as monks. His wife and son continue to live in the U.S.; he supports them by working a number of odd jobs in Colorado for part of the year, when not residing in Kalmykia.