Language | English |
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ISBN-10 | 0-349-11581-8 |
No of pages | 246 |
Font Size | Medium |
Book Publisher | Little Brown & Co |
Published Date | 25 Jul 2005 |
Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (born Lhamo Döndrub), the 14th Dalai Lama, is a practicing member of the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism and is influential as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the world's most famous Buddhist monk, and the leader of the exiled Tibetan government in India.
Tenzin Gyatso was the fifth of sixteen children born to a farming family. He was proclaimed the tulku (an Enlightened lama who has consciously decided to take rebirth) of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two.
On 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, he was enthroned as Tibet's ruler. Thus he became Tibet's most important political ruler just one month after the People's Republic of China's invasion of Tibet on 7 October 1950. In 1954, he went to Beijing to attempt peace talks with Mao Zedong and other leaders of the PRC. These talks ultimately failed.
After a failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959, the Dalai Lama left for India, where he was active in establishing the Central Tibetan Administration (the Tibetan Government in Exile) and in seeking to preserve Tibetan culture and education among the thousands of refugees who accompanied him.
Tenzin Gyatso is a charismatic figure and noted public speaker. This Dalai Lama is the first to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Buddhism and to promote the concepts of universal responsibility, secular ethics, and religious harmony.
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, honorary Canadian citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal on 17 October 2007.
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FREEDOM IN EXILE - Here, in his own words, The Dalai Lama describes what it was like to grow up revered as a deity among his people, reveals his innermost feelings about his role, and discusses the mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism. He tells of secret deals struck with the CIA as Tibet continued to struggle for independence, talks freely of the many world leaders he has known, and talks of the West's malaise from his standpoint as a spirtual and temporal figure of world reknown.
ANCIENT WISDOM, MODERN WORLD - With wit, gentle good sense and with penetrating insight, the Dalai Lama shows how the truths that have stood the test of generations of practise can provide us with the tools to live happy, fulfilled and meaningful lives. In the process, it becomes apparent that he does not merely espouse the 'feelgood' religiosity some accuse him of.
The reader is left admiring not just the wisdom of the author, but the wisdom of the culture he represents. In ANCIENT WISDOM, MODERN WORLD, His Holiness the Dalai Lama addresses these issues, in a spiritual complement to his autobiography FREEDOM IN EXILE.