Tenzin Gyatso | |
---|---|
The 14th Dalai Lama | |
Reign | 17 November 1950 – present |
Predecessor | Thubten Gyatso |
Prime Ministers | |
Tibetan | བསྟན་འཛིན་རྒྱ་མཚོ། |
Wylie | bstan 'dzin rgya mtsho |
Pronunciation | [tɛ̃ ́tsĩ càtsʰo] |
THDL | Tenzin Gyatso |
Father | Choekyong Tsering |
Mother | Diki Tsering |
Born |
Taktser, Amdo, Tibet |
6 July 1935
Signature |
The 14th Dalai Lama (/ˈdɑːlaɪ ˈlɑːmə/ (US), /ˌdælaɪ ˈlɑːmə/; (UK) (religious name: Tenzin Gyatso, shortened from Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, born Lhamo Thondup, 6 July 1935) is the current Dalai Lama. Dalai Lamas are important monks of the Gelug school, the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism which is nominally headed by the Ganden Tripas. From the time of the 5th Dalai Lama to 1959, the central government of Tibet, the Ganden Phodrang, invested the position of Dalai Lama with temporal duties.
The 14th Dalai Lama was born in Taktser village, Amdo, Tibet (currently administratively in Qinghai province, Republic of China), and was selected as the tulku of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1937 and formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama at a public declaration near the town of Bumchen in 1939. His enthronement ceremony as the Dalai Lama was held in Lhasa on 22 February 1940, and he eventually assumed full temporal (political) duties on 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet. The Gelug school's government administered an area roughly corresponding to the Tibet Autonomous Region just as the nascent PRC wished to assert central control over it.