AISYAH NUR ADDIA BINTI AZIZAN (2014282932) EH2205E

Leadership of the 14th Dalai Lama: Tenzin Gyatso

Figure 1: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th (present) Dalai Lama.

Tenzin Gyatso is the 14th and the present Dalai Lama and holds the profile of a spiritual and political leader of Tibet. Dalai Lamas are said to be reincarnated souls in the line of tulkus (reincarnation), who are considered to be manifestations of the bodhisattva of compassion. Dalai Lamas are said to spend their entire life committed to promoting humanity (The Nobel Peace..., n.d.). These souls chose to be reincarnated instead of attaining nirvana for the benefit of the society and mankind. The 14th Dalai Lama was appointed at the age of two and was formally recognized when he was 15.This is a study of the role of leadership of Tenzin Gyatso as a Dalai Lama. He strongly preaches as well as practices the importance of non-violence and peace and significance of compassion. For his outstanding achievements and relentless work on peace, he has been bestowed with the Nobel Peace Prize (The Nobel Peace..., n.d.). Relations between Peoples Republic of China and Tibet had worsened in Tenzin Gyatsos growing years. Ma Bufang prevented the Tibetans from gaining independence. He even threatened Tibet with aerial attack lest it seek helped from the Japanese (Biography of 14th, n.d.). Ma Bufang attacked various Tibetan Buddhist monasteries such as the Tsang monastery and Labrang monastery. In 1950, the army of the People's Republic of China had defeated the Tibetan counterparts and marched up to the edge of the Dalai Lama's territory, sending a delegation thereafter. Almost a month later, the 14th Dalai Lama ascended to his throne, assuming full political power and was formally adjudged as the temporal ruler of Tibet.

Figure 2: Dalai Lama in Beijing, 1954.

His first major political move was when he sent a delegation from Tibet to Beijing in 1950, which endorsed the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet. Four years later, along with the 10th Panchen Lama, he crossed borders to meet the Chinese leader Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Chou Enlai for initiating peace talks (The Nobel Peace..., n.d.). He attended the first session of the National People's Congress as a delegate. Later on, he was selected as a deputy chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, a post he officially held until 1964.

With the 1959 Tibetan uprising and the brutal suppression of the same in the Lhasa region by the Chinese troops, the Dalai Lama was forced to escape into exile for the fear of assassination. Assisted by the CIA Special Activities Division, the Dalai Lama crossed the border to reach Tezpur in Assam, India. His devoutness established a government of Tibet in Exile in Dharamsala, a city in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, India (Biography of 14th, n.d.). The city came to be known as Little Lhasa. Since then, he has been living in Dharamsala.

Figure 3: Abandoned former quarters of the Dalai Lama at the Potala. The empty vestment placed on the throne symbolises his absence.

Accompanying him were almost 80,000 Tibetans refugees who followed him through the journey and settled in Dharamsala. He then settled them in various agricultural settlements. Seeking to preserve the Tibetan culture and education system, the Dalai Lama established a Tibetan educational system in order to teach the Tibetan children the language, history, religion, and culture (The Nobel Peace..., n.d.). In the following years, he started the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts and the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, both of which became the primary university for Tibetans in India (Tenzin Gyatso Institute, n.d.).

Figure 4: The Dalai Lama's main teaching room at Dharamshala.The Dalai Lama not just focused on teaching the refugees the Tibetan culture, history and religion, he even initiated re-founding several monasteries and nunneries. The latter was basically his attempt to uphold and preserve the Tibetan Buddhist teaching and lifestyle. After the Chinese invasion, the Dalai Lama, through his Central Tibetan Administration, made appeals in the United Nations for the rights of Tibetans. The appeals led to the formation of three resolutions, which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1959, 1961 and 1965 (Biography of 14th, n.d.).

Each of the resolutions targeted China to provide Tibetans the basic human rights. Acting further to the cause, he established a democratic constitution, idolizing it upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1963. He created an elected parliament and an administration to champion his cause. Almost seven years later, the Dalai Lama opened to the world one of the most important institutions of Tibetology - the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala (Biography of 14th, n.d.). Housing more than 80,000 manuscripts and important knowledge resources related to Tibetan history, politics and culture, the institution is the paradise for someone who wants to get in-depth information about Tibetan history and its culture.

In 1973, he met Pope Paul VI in Vatican City. Since then, he visited Pope John Paul II on numerous occasions in 1980, 1982, 1986, 1988, 1990 and 2003 (Biography of 14th, n.d.). He is also believed to have held extensive interfaith dialogue with people of the Jewish faith. While he first met them in Dharamshala, where a delegation of Jewish teachers had come, he also visited Israel thrice and even had a meeting with the Chief Rabbi of the country.

In 1987, he travelled all the way to the West for the Congressional Human Rights Caucus held in Washington, D.C, where he talked about Tibet turning into a zone of peace or a sanctuary where enlightened people could retreat and live in peace without nuclear weapons. The plan which was mostly rough and imprecise turned to become a proposal, later on being popularly known as the Strasbourg Proposal (Biography of 14th, n.d.). According to it, he professed for a self-governing Tibet in association with the People's Republic of China. However, in 1991 the plan was rejected by the Tibetan Government in Exile because of Chinese leaderships negative attitude towards the proposal.

In 2007, the Dalai Lama participated in the Third Meeting of the Board of World Religious Leaders held in Amritsar India. Currently a member of the Board of World Religious Leaders as part of The Elijah Interfaith Institute, he was there to discuss on the topic of love and forgiveness (The Nobel Peace..., n.d.). The Dalai Lama has conducted numerous teaching activities across various institutions in the US. The first was when he was selected as the Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Thereafter, he gave lectures at the University of Michigan, conducted a series of teachings at Lehigh University and gave a public lecture at the Colgate University.

References:1. The Official Web Site of the Nobel Prize, The 14th Dalai Lama, Biographical The Nobel Peace Prize 1989, (n.d.), http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1989/lama-bio.html, [Retrieved on 27th September, 2015].

2. Tenzin Gyatso Institute (n.d.), http://www.tenzingyatsoinstitute.org/category/tgi/about/, [Retrieved on 27th September, 2015].

3. Dalai Lama Renaissance Documentary, Biography of 14th Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso (n.d.), http://dalailamafilm.com/Dalai-Lama-Tenzin-Gyatso-Biography.html [Retrieved on 27th September, 2015].