Once the boy was acknowledged as the true incarnation of the Dalai Lama, he was initiated in a ceremony at the Kumbum monastery and remained there for several months until his journey to the holy city of Lhasa. On his arrival in Lhasa in 1939, the four-year old child was bestowed as the new spiritual leader of Tibet in a one-day ceremony. At the end of the following year he was formally enthroned by the Regent at the Potala palace, the seat of the Tibetan government (Gyatso 1990: 12-14).
 

The small boy’s name was changed to Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso and he began to assume his responsibilities as heir to the throne of Tibet. His daily life was usually confined within the palace walls and only occasionally did he see members of his own family. His time was routinely divided between meditation and prayer, and education. He was tutored in subjects including penmanship, memorization of Buddhist texts, logic, Tibetan art and culture, Sanskrit, medicine, Buddhist philosophy, poetry, music and drama, astrology, metre and phrasing, synonyms, and the art of debating (Gyatso 1990: 20-25). "He watched life from a removed vantage point, from up in high palace windows, or hidden behind heavy brocade curtains; or sometimes through a telescope he’d been given. Years passed and he gradually grew happier with his situation" (Compassion 1998: 1).
 

Years later, in the summer of 1950, the Dalai Lama was in his summer residence when he felt the earth move beneath his feet, and heard a large, crashing sound outside. He looked into the night sky and heard more crashing sounds and assumed it was some sort of artillery barrage conducted by the Tibetan army. The next day he learned that people outside of Lhasa reported seeing a strange red glow in the direction of the noise, and it was determined that the cause of the strange event was not a military test, but some sort of natural phenomenon. The unusual phenomenon would prove to be an evil omen - two nights later Chinese soldiers raided the eastern Tibetan border. Two months later, news reached Lhasa that 80,000 soldiers of the Chinese PLA (People’s Liberation Army) had swarmed into the Tibetan border. Chinese radio claimed that the "liberation" of Tibet had begun, and the Dalai Lama was aware that Tibet was in grave danger because the Tibetan army was only 8,500 strong (Compassion 1998: 1-2).