Dalai Lama Tickets Continued
The current Dalai Lama is the fifth of sixteen children of a
farming family in the Tibetan province of Amdo. He was proclaimed the
tulku (rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of three. On
November 17, 1950, at the age of fifteen, he was enthroned as Tibet's
Head of State and most important political ruler, while Tibet faced
occupation by the forces of the People's Republic of China.
After the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959,
Tenzin Gyatso fled to India, where he was active in establishing the
Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan government in exile) and
preserving Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of
refugees who accompanied him.
The Dalai Lama is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and advocate of
non-violence. He has continued to seek 'genuine autonomy' for his
homeland, a territory now claimed by China. The Chinese believe
communism liberated the Tibetans from a feudal theocracy led by the
Dalai Lamas and that Tibet has developed considerably under their
rule. Others have claimed human rights abuses, as well as cultural and
ecological destruction. This simple Buddhist monk is considered by
some to be one of the world's enduring figures of struggle and
compassion against oppression.
