HOME



picture info

Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣 识一切 瓦齐尔达喇 达赖 喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shunyi King of Ming dynasty, Ming China. He offered it in appreciation to the Gelug school's then-leader, Sonam Gyatso, who received it in 1578 at Yanghua Monastery. At that time, Sonam Gyatso had just given teachings to the Khan, and so the title of Dalai Lama was also given to the entire tulku lineage. Sonam Gyatso became the 3rd Dalai Lama, while the first two tulkus in the lineage, the 1st Dalai Lama and the 2nd Dalai Lama, were posthumously awarded the title. Since the time of the 5th Dalai Lama in the 17th century, the Dalai Lama has been a symbol of unification of the state of Tibet. The Dalai Lama was an important figure of the Gelug tradition, which was dominant in Central Tibet, but his religious authority went beyond sectarian bo ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

14th Dalai Lama
The 14th Dalai Lama (born 6 July 1935; full spiritual name: Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, shortened as Tenzin Gyatso; ) is the incumbent Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader and head of Tibetan Buddhism. He served as the resident spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet before 1959 and subsequently led the Tibetan government in exile represented by the Central Tibetan Administration in Dharamsala, India. A belief central to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as well as the institution of the Dalai Lama is that he is a living Bodhisattva, specifically an emanation of Avalokiteśvara (in Sanskrit) or Chenrezig (in Tibetan), the Bodhisattva of Compassion. The Mongolic languages, Mongolic word ''dalai'' means ''ocean.'' He is also known to Tibetans as Gyalwa Rinpoche ("The Precious Jewel-like Buddha-Master"), ''Kundun'' ("The Presence"), and ''Yizhin Norbu'' ("The Wish-Fulfilling Gem"). His devotees, as well as much of the Western world, often call him ''His Ho ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Potala Palace
Potala Palace ( Tibetan: པོ་ཏ་ལ་ཕོ་བྲང​​ Chinese: 布达拉宫) is the name of a museum in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region in China, built in the ''dzong''-style. It was previously a palace of the Tibetan sovereign, the Dalai Lama, and was the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas from 1649. In 1959 the Tibetan government ceased inhabitation when the buildings were seized by the People's Republic of China. The palace is named after Mount Potalaka, which within Buddhist thought is the mythical abode of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. The 5th Dalai Lama made decree for its construction in 1645Laird, Thomas. (2006). ''The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama'', pp. 175. Grove Press, New York. . with advice of Konchog Chophel the Thirty-Fifth Ganden Tripa of the monastical tradition of Tsongkhapa. The Potala is on ruins of the White or Red Palace, built by decree of Songtsen Gampo in 637. Built at an altitude o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

5th Dalai Lama
The 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso (; ; 1617–1682) was recognized as the 5th Dalai Lama, and he became the first Dalai Lama to hold both Tibet's political and spiritual leadership roles. He is often referred to simply as the Great Fifth, being the key religious and temporal leader of Tibetan Buddhism and Tibet. He is credited with unifying all of Tibet under the Ganden Phodrang, after Gushri Khan's successful military interventions. As an independent head of state, he established priest and patron relations with both Mongolia and the Qing dynasty simultaneously, and had positive relations with other neighboring countries. He began the custom of meeting early European explorers. The 5th Dalai Lama built the Potala Palace, and also wrote 24 volumes' worth of scholarly and religious works on a wide range of subjects. Early life To understand the context within which the Dalai Lama institution came to hold temporal power in Tibet during the lifetime of the 5th, ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tibetan Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhism is a form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. It also has a sizable number of adherents in the areas surrounding the Himalayas, including the Indian regions of Ladakh, Gorkhaland Territorial Administration, Darjeeling, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh, as well as in Nepal. Smaller groups of practitioners can be found in Central Asia, some regions of China such as Northeast China, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and some regions of Russia, such as Tuva, Buryatia, and Kalmykia. Tibetan Buddhism evolved as a form of Mahayana, Mahāyāna Buddhism stemming from the latest stages of Indian Buddhism (which included many Vajrayana, Vajrayāna elements). It thus preserves many Indian Buddhist Tantra, tantric practices of the Gupta Empire, post-Gupta Medieval India, early medieval period (500–1200 CE), along with numerous native Tibetan developments. In the pre-modern era, Tibetan Buddhism spread outside of Tibet primarily due to the influence of the Mongol Emp ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Sam Van Schaik
Sam Julius van Schaik is an English tibetologist. Education He obtained a PhD in Tibetan Buddhist literature at the University of Manchester in 2000, with a dissertation on the translations of Dzogchen texts by Jigme Lingpa. Career Since 1999 van Schaik has worked at the British Library in London, where he is currently the Head of the Endangered Archives Programme a position to which he was appointed in February 2019. He was previously a project manager for the International Dunhuang Project, specialising in the study of Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang. He has also taught occasional courses at SOAS, University of London. From 2003 to 2005 van Schaik worked on a project to catalogue Tibetan Tantric manuscripts in the Stein Collection of the British Library, and from 2005 to 2008 he worked on a project to study the palaeography of Tibetan manuscripts from Dunhuang, in an attempt to identify individual scribes. Books Van Schaik is the author or co-author ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Ganden Phodrang
The Ganden Phodrang or Ganden Podrang (; ) was the Tibetan system of government established by the 5th Dalai Lama in 1642, when the Oirat lord Güshi Khan who founded the Khoshut Khanate conferred all spiritual and political power in Tibet to him in a ceremony in Shigatse. During the ceremony, the Dalai Lama "made a proclamation declaring that Lhasa would be the capital of Tibet and the government of would be known as Gaden Phodrang" which eventually became the seat of the Gelug school's leadership authority. The Dalai Lama chose the name of his monastic residence at Drepung Monastery for the new Tibetan government's name: ''Ganden'' (དགའ་ལྡན), the Tibetan name for Tushita heaven, which, according to Buddhist cosmology, is where the future Buddha Maitreya resides; and ''Phodrang'' (ཕོ་བྲང), a palace, hall, or dwelling. Lhasa's Red Fort again became the capitol building of Tibet, and the Ganden Phodrang operated there and adjacent to the Potala Palac ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or Qingzang Plateau, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central Asia, Central, South Asia, South, and East Asia. Geographically, it is located to the north of Himalayas and the Indian subcontinent, and to the south of Tarim Basin and Mongolian Plateau. Geopolitically, it covers most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, most of Qinghai, western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu provinces, southern Xinjiang province in Western China, Bhutan, the Administrative divisions of India, Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti district, Lahaul and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, northwestern Nepal, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. It stretches approximately north to south and east to west. It is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of . With an average elevation exceeding and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that har ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Seventeen Point Agreement
The Seventeen-Point Agreement, officially the Agreement of the Central People's Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, was an agreement between the Local Government of Tibet and the Central People's Government of China. It was signed by plenipotentiaries of the CPG and the Tibetan Government ( Ganden Phodrang) on 23 May 1951, in Zhongnanhai, Beijing. The 14th Dalai Lama ratified the agreement in the form of a telegraph on 24 October 1951 even though the United States informed him that in order to receive assistance and support from the United States, he must depart from Tibet and publicly disavow "agreements concluded under duress". The Dalai Lama stated that the Tibetan local government, ecclesiastic and secular folk, unanimously support the agreement, and will actively support the People's Liberation Army in Tibet in consolidating national defense, drive out imperialist influences from Tibet, and safeguard the unificatio ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Priest And Patron
__NOTOC__ The priest and patron relationship, also written as priest–patron or cho-yon (; zh, t=檀越關係, p=Tányuè Guānxì), is the Tibetan political theory that the relationship between Tibet and China referred to a symbiotic link between a spiritual leader and a lay patron, such as the historic relationship between the Dalai Lama and the Qing emperor. They were respectively spiritual teacher and lay patron rather than subject and lord. ''Chöyön'' is an abbreviation of two Tibetan words: ''chöney'', "that which is worthy of being given gifts and alms" (for example, a lama or a deity), and ''yöndag'', "he who gives gifts to that which is worthy" (a patron). During the 1913 Simla Conference, the 13th Dalai Lama's negotiators cited the priest and patron relationship to explain the lack of any clearly demarcated boundary between Tibet and the rest of China (ie. as a religious benefactor, the Qing did not need to be hedged against). According to this concept, in the cas ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Panchen Lama
The Panchen Lama () is a tulku of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Panchen Lama is one of the most important figures in the Gelug tradition, with its spiritual authority second only to the Dalai Lama. Along with the council of high lamas, he is in charge of seeking out the next Dalai Lama. ''Panchen'' is a portmanteau of ''Pandita (Buddhism), Pandita'' and ''Chenpo'', meaning "great scholar". The recognition of Panchen Lamas began with Lobsang Chökyi Gyaltsen, tutor of the 5th Dalai Lama, who received the title "Panchen Bogd" from Altan Khan and the Dalai Lama in 1645. ''Bogd'' is Mongolian, meaning "holy". Khedrup Gelek Pelzang, Sönam Choklang and Ensapa Lobsang Döndrup were subsequently recognized as the first to third Panchen Lamas posthumously. In 1713, the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing dynasty granted the title Panchen Erdeni to the 5th Panchen Lama. In 1792, the Qianlong Emperor issued a decree known as the 29-Article Ordinance for the More Effective Governing o ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Melvyn Goldstein
Melvyn C. Goldstein (born February 8, 1938) is an American social anthropologist and Tibet scholar. He is a professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on Tibetan society, history and contemporary politics, population studies, polyandry, studies in cultural and development ecology, economic change and cross-cultural gerontology. Education and career Goldstein was born in New York City on February 8, 1938. Goldstein obtained a BA with a major in history in 1959, and an MA in history in 1960 from the University of Michigan. He pursued his research in anthropology at the University of Washington and was awarded a PhD in 1968. In 1968, he joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 1974 and full Professor in 1978. From 1975 to 2002 he was the Chairman of the Department of Anthropology. Betw ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Regent
In a monarchy, a regent () is a person appointed to govern a state because the actual monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge their powers and duties, or the throne is vacant and a new monarch has not yet been determined. The rule of a regent or regents is called a regency. A regent or regency council may be formed ''ad hoc'' or in accordance with a constitutional rule. ''Regent'' is sometimes a formal title granted to a monarch's most trusted advisor or personal assistant. If the regent is holding the position due to their being in the line of succession, the compound term '' prince regent'' is often used; if the regent of a minor is their mother, and she is wife or widow of the king, she would be referred to as ''queen regent''. If the formally appointed regent is unavailable or cannot serve on a temporary basis, a may be appointed to fill the gap. In a monarchy, a regent usually governs due to one of these reasons, but may also be elected to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]