Much has been written about Osel Hita Torres for many years, as a quick Google search will reveal. “But they are snippets of a life that was never told from start to finish. So far, hardly anyone has understood me,” he explains to himself at the beginning of November in the offices of HBO Max Spain. His life is unrepeatable. Or perhaps it would be more descriptive to say that they have many lives locked into the same body. He is the only Westerner declared by the Dalai Lama to be the reincarnation of a Buddhist master. The platform expands its catalog with a documentary series that bears its name and tells its story.
Argentinian director Lucas Figueroa begins the story with a context-rich chapter that takes the viewer on a journey that will not end as it began. It is the testimony he discovered while reading the biographical book of Maria, Osel’s mother. In 1986, an event shook the world when a baby from the Alpujarra was recognized as the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe. This visionary Buddhist teacher decided to blend with the hippie culture of Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s to break through the cultural barriers that separated his religious teachings from the western world. During his visits to a Spanish community, he became acquainted with the marriage of María Torres and Paco Hita, who formed a strange triangle with Francois Camus, a Frenchman, a young millionaire and local benefactor. The spiritual leader sensed that this was where he would return to after his death. The birth of one of the couple’s children, Osel, fit the prophecy and he was posted to India for his enthronement and training.
Hita grew up in this temple, with lights and shadows, which she explains in detail for the first time in this series of four chapters. Reminiscing about his childhood, he speaks of the feeling of abandonment, of being sold by himself, that has accompanied him for years. And the strict rules he was subjected to in his llama training that left him stressed and living in the middle of nowhere at the age of seven. I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t watch movies or eat with anyone. He could only study for hours, between 8 and 16 a day, often texts in Tibetan, Hita recalls. When he came of age, he decided to leave town to travel the world, be closer to his family and discover an earthly vision of life that he had rarely experienced until then, except on rare visits to his native Spain. And so he was a teenager in Pachás Ibiza, drugs and raves, homeless in Venice, a student in prestigious schools in Switzerland and Canada… Now, at 37, he feels at peace with his family and his religious past , he is a family man and environmental activist who combines the extreme visions of two worlds, the Eastern spirituality and the capitalistic hedonism of the West.
Osel Hita during one of his trips around the world after leaving the Buddhist temple he grew up in. HBO Max
“I was living in Argentina when all this happened and reading Maria’s memoirs it seemed like an unlikely story,” says Figueroa, who decided to travel to different countries to meet the characters featured in the text and with his holding camera. After years of work, Hita, who had voluntarily disappeared from the media for more than a decade, decided that he too wanted to participate in the visual testimony of his life story.
“This path of the protagonists of the documentary series, where the bad becomes good and vice versa, is what I’m looking for for the audience,” comments the director. This is done through two particularly intriguing characters, the adult llama child and Maria, a mother with a very unusual appearance who goes from judging to understanding. “She, her way of being, makes you look at yourself and analyze your own prejudices,” defends the series executive. In reality, Osel is “the story of a family in the midst of extraordinary situations,” he continues.
unforgiving worlds
There are so many cultural conflicts that Osel shows that he also questions whether Western and Eastern societies are doomed to not understand each other, no matter how much globalization reaches the world. “There are and will be approaches, but only in very specific cases,” says Figueroa. “I believe it’s possible to share, unite, break taboos, break down barriers… I’m honored to be part of this process,” says Hita, who feels that her life is “an experiment ‘ was proving that understanding is possible.
An archive image of María Torres, the other great character in HBO Max history
Putting herself in the role of a spectator thanks to this project helped Hita change the perspective of her biography. “The series really helped me to see things objectively in the face of such an extreme experience for me. It was like therapy, a long learning process,” says the former llama boy. In her current life project, Hita gives lectures around the world, including in Buddhist centers by those who have accepted that she has deviated from the path that her religion has mapped out for her. He presents himself as a leader who is always learning, not a guru who knows everything. His Global Tree Initiative foundation collects the lessons he has received and applies them in the fight to protect the environment. It’s going to be one of the themes the show explores more over the two seasons than its creator intended.
“My emotional bond was with my teacher, the only constant figure in my childhood. I didn’t grow up with my parents, I got to know them little by little. It was difficult for me to have intimacy and communication with them. But it’s always been easier for me to understand my parents than they understand me. When I first saw the finished series, I couldn’t wait for the chapters to end so I could text my mom and dad and tell them I love them.”
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