After the death of his father, Rigsang, a Tibetan American teen, is left in the care of his two uncles. One is a Catholic priest living in New York, the other a Buddhist lama visiting from India. What starts as a promising relationship between the two uncles is interrupted by awkward moments of philosophical tension between their different faiths, until it deteriorates into open hostility over the stewardship of their nephew's future education. When the priest finds a scholarship to attend a Catholic school, the lama is convinced that his nephew is being converted to Christianity, and all hell breaks loose.