Compassion in Exile: 14th Dalai Lama (video)

Fame World; Lemle Pictures (DVD: festivalmedia.org); Time.com; Stephan Molydeaux; CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly

(Fame World) The Dalai Lama is not enlightened by his own admission, but Westerners and Tibetans prefer to think of him as a selfless, all-wise Yoda character, which "Star Wars" creator Lucas based on his tutor, particularly his speech quirks and odd syntax patterns.
"Compassion in Exile: The Story of the 14th Dalai Lama," spiritual leader of Tibet in exile

Blasphemy or anti-China?

An inspiration to many as a messenger of peace, the 14th Dalai Lama is a man who has dedicated his entire life towards preserving the rich Tibetan culture.

He resides in the foothills of India's Himalayas, in a hilltop station called Dharamsala, where teaches the importance of love, forgiveness, and care for the benefit of all rather than living in resentment for what the militant Communist Chinese did, which forced him to secretly side with the CIA and serve them as an asset and operative, according to American historian Michael Parenti.

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The Dalai Lama with a Western audience

The Dalai Lama does not blame China so much as he blames an internal Tibetan group for the trouble, due to their worship of an inimical deity. These Tibetans protest him whenever they can. This is known as Dorje Shugden Controversy.

Critic Stephan Molydeaux on the Dalai Lama system of Tibet. What Molydeaux does not
know, besides basic Buddhism, is that speaking of others' faults is bad karma in Mahayana.

 

Rare photo of the child lama (time.com)

Born Lhamo Dondrub (his name as a lama being Tenzin Gyatso), he was officially recognized as the 14th "Dalai Lama" on Nov. 17th, 1950 when he was just 15 years old.

Now known as "His Holiness" as a boy he was taken to Tibet's capital of Lhasa, to the Potala Palace in 1940, where he began his monastic education as well as Vajrayana training.

Photo-op for the Dalai Lama with children

The palace is a sort of "Vatican East," once a store of imperial Tibetan "Vatican records" priceless to Vajrayana/Esoteric Buddhism, a Mahayana school peculiar to the Himalayan region and practiced in Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal, parts of China and Russia, and even reaching Southeast Asia.

I was once a cute child (time).

By 1950, when Tibet was under the influence of Chinese military, the current Dalai Lama was 16 and was called upon to be the head of state of the Tibetan people, a god-king or Buddhist pope and secular ruler to the Tibetan people, once a powerful empire spreading influence from Mongolia to Bangladesh.
 
In 1959, during the first Tibetan Uprising (see), the Dalai Lama fled to India along with his small escort and later  took up residence in Dharamsala, a guest of China's enemy-neighbor, India. He met with the then Prime Minister of India, Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru, who agreed to provide shelter to Tibetan refugees escaping communist China.

 

According to official records, only about 60 Gyatso monks fled with the Dalai Lama to India. Today, the monastic community in India has grown to a population of about 500 monks. Know more about the world; subscribe.

The Dalai Lama and his court are guests of India, living in the Himalayan Dharamsala.