This film is a portrait of a 12-year-old western boy who is living in Nepal and studying in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery as a monk. Ossian Kennard Maclise was born in Great Barrington, Mass., USA, to an English mother and an American father.

When he was two he travelled with his parents to India and later to the Himalayan Kingdom of Nepal. Ossian chose to enter a Tibetan Buddhist monastery at the age of four and with his parents' consent was admitted as a novice monk.

Three years later he was "recognised" as a tullku (a reincarnation of a High Tibetan Lama) by his monastic order.