Dalai Lama (দালাই লামা) (UK: /ˈdælaɪ ˈlɑːmə/, US: /ˈdɑːlaɪ/; Tibetan: ཏཱ་ལའི་བླ་མ་, Wylie: Tā la'i bla ma [táːlɛː láma]) is a title given by the Tibetan people to the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest and most dominant of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and incumbent Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, who lives in exile as a refugee in India. The Dalai Lama is also considered to be the successor in a line of tulkus who are believed to be incarnations of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

Since the time of the 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century, his personage has always been a symbol of unification of the state of Tibet, where he has represented Buddhist values and traditions. The Dalai Lama was an important figure of the Geluk tradition, which was politically and numerically dominant in Central Tibet, but his religious authority went beyond sectarian boundaries. While he had no formal or institutional role in any of the religious traditions, which were headed by their own high lamas, he was a unifying symbol of the Tibetan state, representing Buddhist values and traditions above any specific school. The traditional function of the Dalai Lama as an ecumenical figure, holding together disparate religious and regional groups, has been taken up by the fourteenth Dalai Lama. He has worked to overcome sectarian and other divisions in the exiled community and has become a symbol of Tibetan nationhood for Tibetans both in Tibet and in exile.

Name

The name "Dalai Lama" is a combination of the Mongolic word dalai meaning "ocean" or "great" (coming from Mongolian title Dalaiyin qan or Dalaiin khan, translated as Gyatso or rgya-mtsho in Tibetan) and the Tibetan word བླ་མ་ (bla-ma) meaning "master, guru".

The Dalai Lama is also known in Tibetan as the Rgyal-ba Rin-po-che ("Precious Conqueror") or simply as the Rgyal-ba.

History

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In Central Asian Buddhist countries, it has been widely believed for the last millennium that Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, has a special relationship with the people of Tibet and intervenes in their fate by incarnating as benevolent rulers and teachers such as the Dalai Lamas. This is according to The Book of Kadam, the main text of the Kadampa school, to which the 1st Dalai Lama, Gendun Drup, first belonged. This text is said to have laid the foundation for the Tibetans' later identification of the Dalai Lamas as incarnations of Avalokiteśvara. [better source needed]

It traces the legend of the bodhisattva's incarnations as early Tibetan kings and emperors such as Songtsen Gampo and later as Dromtönpa (1004–1064).

This lineage has been extrapolated by Tibetans up to and including the Dalai Lamas.

Origins in myth and legend

Thus, according to such sources, an informal line of succession of the present Dalai Lamas as incarnations of Avalokiteśvara stretches back much further than Gendun Drub. The Book of Kadam, the compilation of Kadampa teachings largely composed around discussions between the Indian sage Atiśa (980–1054) and his Tibetan host and chief disciple Dromtönpa and Tales of the Previous Incarnations of Arya Avalokiteśvara, nominate as many as sixty persons prior to Gendun Drub who are enumerated as earlier incarnations of Avalokiteśvara and predecessors in the same lineage leading up to him.

In brief, these include a mythology of 36 Indian personalities plus 10 early Tibetan kings and emperors, all said to be previous incarnations of Dromtönpa, and fourteen further Nepalese and Tibetan yogis and sages in between him and the 1st Dalai Lama. In fact, according to the "Birth to Exile" article on the 14th Dalai Lama's website, he is "the seventy-fourth in a lineage that can be traced back to a Brahmin boy who lived in the time of Buddha Shakyamuni."

Avalokiteśvara's "Dalai Lama master plan"

According to the 14th Dalai Lama, long ago Avalokiteśvara had promised the Buddha to guide and defend the Tibetan people. In the late Middle Ages, his master plan to fulfill this promise was the stage-by-stage establishment of the Dalai Lama theocracy in Tibet.

First, Tsongkhapa established three great monasteries around Lhasa in the province of Ü before he died in 1419. The 1st Dalai Lama soon became Abbot of the greatest one, Drepung, and developed a large popular power base in Ü. He later extended this to cover Tsang, where he constructed a fourth great monastery, Tashi Lhunpo, at Shigatse. The 2nd studied there before returning to Lhasa,[where he became Abbot of Drepung. Having reactivated the 1st's large popular followings in Tsang and Ü, the 2nd then moved on to southern Tibet and gathered more followers there who helped him construct a new monastery, Chokorgyel. He established the method by which later Dalai Lama incarnations would be discovered through visions at the "oracle lake", Lhamo Lhatso.

The 3rd built on his predecessors' fame by becoming Abbot of the two great monasteries of Drepung and Sera. The stage was set for the great Mongol King Altan Khan, hearing of his reputation, to invite the 3rd to Mongolia where he converted the King and his followers to Buddhism, as well as other Mongol princes and their followers covering a vast tract of central Asia. Thus, most of Mongolia was added to the Dalai Lama's sphere of influence, founding a spiritual empire which largely survives to the modern age. After being given the Mongolian name 'Dalai', he returned to Tibet to found the great monasteries of Lithang in Kham, eastern Tibet and Kumbum in Amdo, north-eastern Tibet.

The 4th was then born in Mongolia as the great-grandson of Altan Khan, thus cementing strong ties between Central Asia, the Dalai Lamas, the Gelugpa and Tibet. In fulfilment of Avalokiteśvara's master plan, the 5th in the succession used the vast popular power base of devoted followers built up by his four predecessors. By 1642, a strategy that was planned and carried out by his resourceful chagdzo or manager Sonam Rapten with the military assistance of his devoted disciple Gushri Khan, Chieftain of the Khoshut Mongols, enabled the 'Great 5th' to found the Dalai Lamas' religious and political reign over more or less the whole of Tibet that survived for over 300 years.

Thus the Dalai Lamas became pre-eminent spiritual leaders in Tibet and 25 Himalayan and Central Asian kingdoms and countries bordering Tibet and their prolific literary works have "for centuries acted as major sources of spiritual and philosophical inspiration to more than fifty million people of these lands". Overall, they have played "a monumental role in Asian literary, philosophical and religious history".

Establishment of the Dalai Lama lineage

Gendun Drup (1391–1474), a disciple of the founder Je Tsongkapa, was the ordination name of the monk who came to be known as the 'First Dalai Lama', but only from 104 years after he died. There had been resistance, since first he was ordained a monk in the Kadampa tradition and for various reasons, for hundreds of years the Kadampa school had eschewed the adoption of the tulku system to which the older schools adhered. Tsongkhapa largely modelled his new, reformed Gelugpa school on the Kadampa tradition and refrained from starting a tulku system. Therefore, although Gendun Drup grew to be a very important Gelugpa lama, after he died in 1474 there was no question of any search being made to identify his incarnation.

Despite this, when the Tashilhunpo monks started hearing what seemed credible accounts that an incarnation of Gendun Drup had appeared nearby and repeatedly announced himself from the age of two, their curiosity was aroused. It was some 55 years after Tsongkhapa's death when eventually, the monastic authorities saw compelling evidence that convinced them the child in question was indeed the incarnation of their founder. They felt obliged to break with their own tradition and in 1487, the boy was renamed Gendun Gyatso and installed at Tashilhunpo as Gendun Drup's tulku, albeit informally.

Gendun Gyatso died in 1542 and the lineage of Dalai Lama tulkus finally became firmly established when the third incarnation, Sonam Gyatso (1543–1588), came forth. He made himself known as the tulku of Gendun Gyatso and was formally recognised and enthroned at Drepung in 1546. When Gendun Gyatso was given the titular name "Dalai Lama" by the Tümed Altan Khan in 1578,: 153  his two predecessors were accorded the title posthumously and he became known as the third in the lineage.

14th Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama giving teachings at Sissu, Lahaul

The 14th Dalai Lama was born on 6 July 1935 on a straw mat in a cowshed to a farmer's family in a remote part of Tibet. According to most Western journalistic sources he was born into a humble family of farmers as one of 16 children, and one of the three reincarnated Rinpoches in the same family. On February 5, 1940, request to exempt Lhamo Thondup (Chinese: 拉木登珠) from lot-drawing process to become the 14th Dalai Lama was approved by the Central Government.

The 14th Dalai Lama was not formally enthroned until 17 November 1950, during the Battle of Chamdo with the People's Republic of China. On 18 April 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama issued statement that in 1951, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government were pressured into accepting the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet by which it became formally incorporated into the People's Republic of China. The United States already informed the Dalai Lama in 1951 that in order to receive assistance and support from the United States, he must depart from Tibet and publicly disavow "agreements concluded under duress" between the representatives of Tibet and China. Fearing for his life in the wake of a revolt in Tibet in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India, from where he led a government in exile.

With the aim of launching guerrilla operations against the Chinese, the Central Intelligence Agency funded the Dalai Lama's administration with US$1.7 million a year in the 1960s. In 2001 the 14th Dalai Lama ceded his partial power over the government to an elected parliament of selected Tibetan exiles. His original goal was full independence for Tibet, but by the late 1980s he was seeking high-level autonomy instead. He continued to seek greater autonomy from China, but Dolma Gyari, deputy speaker of the parliament-in-exile, stated: "If the middle path fails in the short term, we will be forced to opt for complete independence or self-determination as per the UN charter".

The 14th Dalai Lama became one of the two most popular world leaders by 2013 (tied with Barack Obama), according to a poll conducted by Harris Interactive of New York, which sampled public opinion in the US and six major European countries.

In 2014 and 2016, he stated that Tibet wants to be part of China but China should let Tibet preserve its culture and script.

In 2018, he stated that "Europe belongs to the Europeans" and that Europe has a moral obligation to aid refugees whose lives are in peril. Further he stated that Europe should receive, help and educate refugees but ultimately they should return to develop their home countries. He made similar comments in an interview the following year, in which he also said "If female Dalai Lama comes, then (she) should be more attractive", because if a female Dalai Lama looked a certain way people would "prefer not see … that face."

In March 2019, the Dalai Lama spoke out about his successor, saying that after his death he is likely to be reincarnated in India. He also warned that any Chinese interference in succession should not be considered valid.

In October 2020, he stated that he did not support Tibetan independence and hoped to visit China as a Nobel Prize winner. He said "I prefer the concept of a 'republic' in the People's Republic of China. In the concept of republic, ethnic minorities are like Tibetans, The Mongols, Manchus, and Xinjiang Uyghurs, we can live in harmony".

In December 2021, he praised India as a role model for religious harmony in the world.

A February 2023 video shows the Dalai Lama in the city of Dharamshala, India, asking a boy for a kiss on the lips, and then to suck his tongue. He later apologized for the incident and expressed regret through a statement that claimed he "often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras" and "regrets the incident."

Residences

The 1st Dalai Lama was based at Tashi Lhunpo Monastery, which he founded. The Second to the Fifth Dalai Lamas were mainly based at Drepung Monastery outside Lhasa. In 1645, after the unification of Tibet, the Fifth moved to the ruins of a royal fortress or residence on top of Marpori ('Red Mountain') in Lhasa and decided to build a palace on the same site. This ruined palace, called Tritse Marpo, was originally built around 636 AD by the founder of the Tibetan Empire, Songtsen Gampo for his Nepalese wife. Amongst the ruins there was just a small temple left where Tsongkhapa had given a teaching when he arrived in Lhasa in the 1380s.

The Fifth Dalai Lama began construction of the Potala Palace on this site in 1645, carefully incorporating what was left of his predecessor's palace into its structure. From then on and until today, unless on tour or in exile the Dalai Lamas have always spent their winters at the Potala Palace and their summers at the Norbulingka palace and park. Both palaces are in Lhasa and approximately 3 km apart.

Following the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising, the 14th Dalai Lama sought refuge in India. Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru allowed in the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government officials. The Dalai Lama has since lived in exile in McLeod Ganj, in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh in northern India, where the Central Tibetan Administration is established. His residence on the Temple Road in McLeod Ganj is called the Dalai Lama Temple and is visited by people from across the globe. Tibetan refugees have constructed and opened many schools and Buddhist temples in Dharamshala.

Searching for the reincarnation

The search for the 14th Dalai Lama took the High Lamas to Taktser in Amdo.

Palden Lhamo, the female guardian spirit of the sacred lake, Lhamo La-tso, who promised Gendun Drup the 1st Dalai Lama in one of his visions that "she would protect the 'reincarnation' lineage of the Dalai Lamas"

By the Himalayan tradition, phowa is the discipline that is believed to transfer the mindstream to the intended body. Upon the death of the Dalai Lama and consultation with the Nechung Oracle, a search for the Lama's yangsi, or reincarnation, is conducted. The government of the People's Republic of China has stated its intention to be the ultimate authority on the selection of the next Dalai Lama.

High Lamas may also claim to have a vision by a dream or if the Dalai Lama was cremated, they will often monitor the direction of the smoke as an 'indication' of the direction of the expected rebirth.

If there is only one boy found, the High Lamas will invite Living Buddhas of the three great monasteries, together with secular clergy and monk officials, to 'confirm their findings' and then report to the Central Government through the Minister of Tibet. Later, a group consisting of the three major servants of Dalai Lama, eminent officials,[who?] and troops[which?] will collect the boy and his family and travel to Lhasa, where the boy would be taken, usually to Drepung Monastery, to study the Buddhist sutra in preparation for assuming the role of spiritual leader of Tibet.

If there are several possible claimed reincarnations, however, regents, eminent officials, monks at the Jokhang in Lhasa, and the Minister to Tibet have historically decided on the individual by putting the boys' names inside an urn and drawing one lot in public if it was too difficult to judge the reincarnation initially.

In his autobiography, Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama states that after he dies it is possible that his people will no longer want a Dalai Lama, in which case there would be no search for the Lama's reincarnation. "So, I might take rebirth as an insect, or an animal - whatever would be of most value to the largest number of sentient beings" (p. 237).