Tag: Lamaism

Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th and current Dalai Lama. He is often referred to simply as the Dalai Lama. He is a practicing member of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism and is influential as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, as the world's most famous Buddhist monk. He is the leader of the exiled Tibetan government in India.

Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family in the village of Taktser, or Tengtser, of the Tibetan province of Amdo, originally named Lhamo Döndrub (Tibetan: ལ; Wylie: Lha-mo Don-'grub). His first language was the Amdo dialect of Tibetan.

At the age of two, Tenzin Gyatso was proclaimed the Tulku (rebirth) of the thirteenth Dalai Lama.

On 17 November 1950, at the age of fifteen, he was enthroned as Tibet's Head of State. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950.

In 1954, he went to Beijing to talk with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC.

After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.

Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.