Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and formerly the ruler of the country. The Dalai Lama is believed to be a reincarnation of the Buddha. When he dies, his soul is thought to enter the body of a newborn boy, who, after being identified by traditional tests, becomes the new Dalai Lama.

The first to bear the title of Dalai Lama was Sonam Gyatso, grand lama of the Drepung monastery and leader of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect, who received it in 1578 from the Mongol chief Altan Khan; it was then applied retroactively to the previous leaders of the sect. In 1642 another Mongol chief, Gushri Khan, installed the fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) as Tibet's spiritual and temporal ruler. His successors governed Tibet—first as tributaries of the Mongols, but from 1720 to 1911 as vassals of the emperor of China.

When the Chinese Communists occupied Tibet in 1950, they came into increasing conflict with Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. He left the country after an unsuccessful rebellion in 1959 and thereafter lived in India. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for leading the non-violent opposition to continued Chinese rule in Tibet. Further conflict with Chinese authorities followed in 1995, over the identification of a new Panchen Lama (the second most senior Tibetan religious authority). In 1996 he published Violence and Compassion, in which he and French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière considered topics of political and spiritual interest.