Date - 6th of July, 1935. Place – Takster village
in the Amdo province of north-eastern Tibet. It was the fifth day of the fifth
month in the Wood Pig year as per the Tibetan calendar; a new member joined the
big family of Choekyong Tsering and Diki Tsering. It’s a boy this time. The
Tserings brought sixteen children to earth, only seven survived. The newest
addition to their family was named Lhamo Thondup – Goddess who accomplishes all
wishes. Little did the poor farmer family know that this boy was going to be
the global icon of peace and humanity during the most vulnerable time period in
the history of mankind. That he would be known to the whole world as Jetsun
Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gytaso – His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama.
One of the most extraordinary traits of Tibetan Buddhism is
their deep-rooted faith in the theory of reincarnation – a soul takes multiple
births until it reaches the Nirvana. And only a truly enlightened one can
achieve Nirvana – the one who has learned what the Void or Shunyata is.
However, a Bodhisattva is the one who, despite being enlightened, has
voluntarily delayed the Nirvana in order to teach the mankind. A Dalai Lama is
a Bodhisattva who also happens to be the manifestation of Lord Avalokiteshvara
– the Bodhisattva of compassion, the One who gazes down upon the mankind. Dalai
means ocean in Mongolic language, and Lama means teacher. A Dalai Lama is the ‘teacher
spiritually as deep as the ocean’. He is the head of the Gelugpa or the
Yellow-hat sect of Vajrayana Buddhism. Chronologically, Gelugpa is the youngest
of all four prominent sects of Vajrayana – it rose to power not before than 17th
century when the Mongol king Ghusri Khan vested the supreme authority to the
fifth Dalai Lama in 1642. However the Gelugpa sect was established during the
15th century by Je Tsongkhapa or more popularly known as Je
Rinpoche.
His Holiness was only two years old when he was recognised
as the reincarnation of his predecessor Thubten Gyatso, HH the Thirteenth Dalai
Lama. Traditionally, a search party of monks set out in search of the next
Dalai Lama following various signs and visions pointing to the possible area
where He could be found. One morning the monks observed that the embalmed body
of Thubten Gyatso which had been facing south, was facing northeast. Also the
Regent, the Fifth Reting Rinpoche had a vision of a monastery with three floors
and a turquoise and gold roof and a little house with twisted gutters in front
of it. It took them several months to trace the location of the little house
and the monastery that later turned out to be the monastery of Kumbum in the
Amdo province. Little Thondup passed all the tests with much ease. He seized
only the belongings of the Thriteenth Dalai Lama from all the objects offered
to him.
In 1940, he was brought to the Potala Palace in Lhasa and
his journey as the spiritual king of Tibet began. It was not easy for a little
boy to enjoy a life of absolute divinity and solitude. He looked out at the
outer world with an insatiable curiosity. The mere spiritual education was not
enough for him. He was destined for more. And that’s why probably the gods
brought him Heinrich Harrar – the Austrian explorer who would help in shaping
the adolescent mind of one of the greatest world leaders of all time. It is
quite extraordinary how fate sometimes brings two people close together.
October, 1950 – the darkest time in the history of Tibet.
The People’s Republic of China marched into Tibet after defeating the Tibetan
army. Amidst the utmost turbulence, HH the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, at the age of
15, was officially enthroned as the temporal ruler of Tibet. The day was 17th
November, 1950.
The rest of the history is more political than a spiritual
one. In 1959, upon receiving the threat of assassination, His Holiness and his
closest followers and advisers fled Tibet with the help of CIA and took refuge
in India. India offered him political asylum – he established the Government of
Tibet in Exile in Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. And since then His Holiness’s
fight for the freedom and sovereignty of Tibet never stopped for a single day.
China has called him a separatist and, well, a terrorist. No wonder China is
best friends with Pakistan.
On December 10, 1989, he said in his Nobel Peace Prize
acceptance speech,
“No matter what part of the world we come from,
fundamentally we are all the same human beings. We all seek happiness and want
to avoid suffering. We all have essentially the same needs and similar
concerns. As human beings, we all want to be free, to have the right to decide
our own destiny as individuals as well as the destiny of our people. That is
human nature.
.... I pray for all of us, oppressor and friend, so that
together we can succeed in building a better world through mutual understanding
and love, and that in doing so we may reduce the pain and suffering of all
sentient beings.”
A very happy birthday to His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama. May he live a very long, happy and healthy life. In a world as tumultuous as ours, we need him more than ever.
Image courtesy: google images
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