Source: www.dzogchen.org

The 14th Dalai Lama - His Holiness in Exile

The current Dalai Lama is believed to be the reincarnation of each of the previous thirteen Dalai Lamas of Tibet (the first was born in 1351 AD), who are considered to be manifestations of Avalokitesvara, or Chenrezig, Boddhisattva of Compassion (Gyatso 1990: 9). The Dalai Lama states that he is "believed to be a manifestation of Chenrezig, in fact the seventy-fourth in a lineage that can be traced back to a Brahmin boy who lived in the time of Buddha Shakyamuni" (Gyatso 1990: 11).
 

The fourteenth and current Dalai Lama was born in 1935 as Lhamo Thondup, in the small village of Takster in north-eastern Tibet. Thondup’s parents were peasant farmers and he lived with them and several siblings in a flat-roofed, rectangular, stone and mud house. The child’s birth was intriguing because his father suddenly and unexplainably recovered from a life-threatening illness that had kept him bed-ridden for weeks. Before Thondup had reached the age of three, a search party formed in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to find the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama; the thirteenth Dalai Lama died in 1933 at the age of fifty-seven. The search party was created after the Tibetan regent (high-ranking member of government) encountered a stirring vision while meditating at the sacred lake of Lhamoi Lhatso in southern Tibet (Gyatso 1990: 3-11).

All at once, miraculously, the regent saw in the clear waters the Tibetan letters a, ka, and ma appear suddenly and then vanish. As he continued his spiritual contemplation, the vision of a three-storied temple with a gilded roof … clad in greenish-blue tiles became visible. To the east of the temple was a white path leading to a small mountain nearby, and at the place where the path met the mountain sat a single storied blue house with unusual gutter pipes (Goodman 1986: 8-9).

Certain that the letter a referred to the north-eastern Tibetan province of Amdo, the regent dispatched a search party of high lamas and dignitaries to travel and find the home of the new Dalai Lama. After a month-long trek from Lhasa, the search party reached the Kumbum monastery in the Amdo province. The Kumbum monastery was three-storied with a turquoise roof and seemed to match the regent’s descriptions and the prophecy of the letter Ka. The search party began to search neighboring villages to locate a hill and a house with peculiar guttering. When they saw gnarled juniper branches on the roof of Thondup’s home they were confident they were on the brink of finding the new Dalai Lama. Without revealing the purpose of their visit the group asked to spend the night at the home.  Disguised as a servant, abbot Kewtsang Rinpoche spent much of the evening observing and playing with the youngest child in the house - Lhamo Thondup (Gyatso 1990: 11-12).

The child recognized him and called out ‘Sera Lama, Sera Lama.’ Sera was Kewtsang Rinpoche’s monastery. Next day they left - only to return a few days later as a formal deputation. This time they brought with them a number of things that had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama, together with several similar items that did not. In every case the infant correctly identified those belonging to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama saying, ‘It’s mine. It’s mine.’ This more or less convinced the search party that they had found the new incarnation. (Gyatso 1990: 12).
 
 

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