The News Minute| October7, 2014| 7.30 am IST

Ashoka Mukpo is a freelance NBC cameraman being treated for Ebola in Liberia. Mukpo first went to Liberia as an aid worker, then started working as a freelance cameraman. But Mukpo has a past that has become the centre of discussions in America. 

Mukpo was recognised by another Buddhist Lama as the ninth Khamnyon Tulku, or reincarnated lama, a spiritual leader when he was a few months old.

Seattle Times reports that Mukpo’s mother, Diana Mukpo, comes from an upper-class aristocratic family in Great Britain and at the age of 16, married Tibetan Buddhist leader Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Ringpoche founded the Shambhala community that spread Buddhism in the West. 

Though Ashoka Mukpo was born to Ringpoche’s physician, Ringpoche raised him as his own and when he was a few months old, a Buddhist Lama recognised him as the ninth lama.

Mukpo is the fifth American diagnosed with Ebola and arrived in Nebraska on Monday night for further treatment,