![]() 'We have lost the battle'ĭharamsala has been the Dalai Lama's home since 1959 when, in the midst of a Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation forces, the 24-year-old Dalai Lama disguised himself as a soldier and fled to India. She presses her forehead to his hand, and aides carry her away. "Good, good," he says, still rubbing her hand. "No, no, do not talk like that," says the Dalai Lama, rubbing her palm in a circular motion. "They say that at the moment you die, the pain is especially bad," she says. ![]() The nun leans closer and their heads touch. ![]() ![]() The Dalai Lama blows on the beads, then pinches her lightly on the cheek and teases her about gaining weight. Kneeling, head bent, she holds out prayer beads for him to bless. The nun, wearing the crimson robe emblematic of Tibetan Buddhists, is very old and very feeble and is assisted to the low platform where the Dalai Lama is sitting cross-legged. (CNN) - During a visit with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, photographer David Turnley filmed an exchange between the Tibetan Buddhist leader and a nun that appears in the CNN production, "The Dalai Lama: At Home in Exile." Dalai Lama, quoted in Asiaweek, May 1996 Of course, I've been optimistic for 37 years now!" The Dalai Lama begins each day with six hours of prayer and meditation The Dalai Lama: Man of peace takes his place on world stage Lecture du Monde en cours sur un autre appareil.CNN In-Depth Specials - Visions of China - Profiles: The Dalai Lama You have 85% of this article left to read. As spiritual leader, he oversees the four great schools of Tibetan Buddhism: the Gelugpa sect, to which he belongs, the most recent and the so-called "reformed" school (14 th century) that of the Nyingmapa, the "elders" that of the Sakyapa, which favors meditative practices and finally that of the Kagyupa, the school of "oral transmission." Throughout this time, the veneration he has enjoyed by some 7 million Tibetans, including some 130,000 scattered across five continents, has never wavered: The "Presence" ( kundun), as he is also known to his followers, remains the object of a community like no other. Now 88 and living in exile in his Himalayan home of Dharamsala, India, the "Precious Protector" is embarking on the final leg of the journey he began in Taktser over eight decades ago. His very young holiness was unwillingly thrust into history. With the red flag already flying over the eastern regions of Tibet, the Kashag (government) decided to end the current regency and hand over the reins of the country to a 15-year-old teenager. In 1950, the Chinese invasion upset the young man's political timeline, as he would normally have had to wait until adulthood to assume his status as temporal ruler. The child's first journey to Lhasa in 1939, carried on a palanquin pulled by two mules through the sumptuous landscapes of the high plateaus, inaugurated a destiny nothing short of extraordinary. Dhondup, the aptly named "auspicious goddess" at his birth, became Tenzin Gyatso, his name as Dalai Lama, the 14 th in his line. As during the "missions" organized over the centuries to find the tülkus of previous Dalai Lamas, in the eyes of Tibetans, signs such as these proved beyond a doubt that a new "ocean of wisdom" had been found. Heir to a lineage dating back to the year 1391, the child's beginnings were classic for a young Dalai Lama: Not only did he identify things he had no reason to have seen before, according to the prevailing Tibetan "narrative," but he reacted in the language of Lhasa, which he could not possibly have known: The Tibetan dialect spoken by his parents in the distant Amdo province was quite different. While the specter of a new world war loomed elsewhere on the planet, the Snow Kingdom, that Tibet still shrouded in mystery and almost cut off from the outside world, had just found its new spiritual guide. The little boy, aged just 3, was called Lhamo Dhondup and was soon identified as the tulku (reincarnation) of his late predecessor. These objects belonged to the 13 th Dalai Lama, who had died four years earlier. That day, in a modest farmhouse made from stone and mud, a toddler seized the ritual objects presented to him by high lamas from Lhasa, the capital: "Mine! Mine!" he said. It was in Taktser, a remote village on the Tibetan border, in 1937. Le Monde retraces the journey of Tenzin Gyatso, the 88-year-old man who embodies the destiny of Chinese-occupied Tibet. The spiritual leader of the Tibetans was back in the news this spring, because of a controversy over his behavior toward a child. Long Read'The Dalai Lama's extraordinary journey' (1/6). The early days of the Dalai Lama: From prophecy to exile By Bruno Philip (Dharamsala (India) special correspondent) and Raphaëlle Rérolle (Dharamsala (India) special correspondent) Published on August 7, 2023, at 6:00 pm (Paris)
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