PEOPLE
From Issue #6
THE DALAI LAMA
Looking for the boy destined for greatness
By
Eileen Harrigan, 18
Reincarnation can be defined as a rebirth of the soul in a new body. The
Buddha of Compassion or His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been
reborn thirteen times. Since the first Dalai Lama, each reincarnation
has succeeded in bringing peace and wisdom to not only Buddhists
but to many around the world.
But
how is the Dalai Lama found?
In order to find the present 14th reincarnation, the Regent
of Tibet took a journey to lake Lhamo Lhatso in southern Tibet.
For centuries the Tibetans had observed that visions of the
future could be seen in this lake. The Regent had a vision.
Among other things, he saw three Tibetan letters followed by
a picture of a monastery with roofs of jade green and gold,
and a house with turquoise tiles.
The
vision contained enough information to seek out the next Dalai
Lama. In 1937 high lamas and dignitaries carrying the secrets
of the vision were sent to all parts of Tibet in search of the
place that the Regent had seen in the waters. When they arrived
in Amdo, they found a place matching the description of the
secret vision. So the high lama and a government official along
with two servants disguised themselves as traders and found
the house that was seen in the vision. There they found a two-year-old
boy.
The child soon became comfortable with his visitors and he began
to play with a rosary that the high lama wore, which had belonged
to the 13th Dalai Lama. In Central Tibet dialect, a language
unknown to the district he lived in, the child demanded the
rosary, claiming it belonged to him. He later addressed the
government official by his proper name and also identified the
high lama and servants.
Astonished,
the men left the village only to return to apply tests to the
child to help determine if he truly was the Dalai Lama. The
first test was to identify objects that personally belonged
to the Dalai Lamas before him. The child had to choose the correct
items from carefully crafted duplicates; items included spectacles,
a pencil, a bowl, a walking stick and a small hand drum. He
passed the test quite easily. Next, the child was examined for
8 distinctive marks of the Dalai Lama. After finding three of
the marks the examiners were so overcome with joy that their
eyes filled with tears.
There was no doubt that the two-year-old boy before them was
the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet.
In
1950, at the age of 15, His Holiness assumed full political
power but under uncertain political conditions as China had
invaded Tibet a year earlier in 1949. In 1959, with the brutal
suppression of the Tibetan national uprising in Lhasa by Chinese
troops, the Dalai Lama was forced to escape into exile. Today
the Dalai Lama still lives in exile and has been living in Dharamsala,
north India, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile since
1959.
China
retains political, economic and social control in Tibet to this
day, and recently announced plans to build a railway from China
into this inaccessible, mountainous country. Tibetans are concerned
that China is attempting to destroy the Tibetan culture by flooding
the country with Mainland Chinese making Tibetans a minority
in their own country.
Despite China's political will, the Tibetan culture is still
strong 52 years after the invasion. The 14th Dalai Lama was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his "peaceful
solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to
preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people."
