THE BELOVED SPIRITUAL LEADER for approximately 500 million Buddhists around the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the chosen embodiment of the prior thirteen Dalai Lamas and a direct link to the “Enlightened One,” the Buddha. His Holiness was born in Tibet in 1935 and, after a series of reincarnation tests by sanctioned Buddhist search teams (disguised as traders), he was confirmed and enthroned as the Dalai Lama at four-and-a-half years old. The Dalai Lama spends nearly all of his time at Namgyal Monastery, his personal residence in Dharamsala, India, home of the Tibetan government-in-exile since 1959. His teachings are frequent, typically in a live webcast using the latest in social media (including Facebook), and take place in this parlor beset with cameras, television monitors, and an overflow of Tibetan tangkas (paintings) and traditional offerings such as fruit, flowers, and muffins.
In his recent message to Buddhists the world over, in May 2021, celebrating the Buddha’s birthday, the Dalai Lama (translated as “Ocean” and “Wisdom”) wrote: “The Buddha’s teaching is essentially practical. It is not just for one group of people or one country, but for all sentient beings. People can follow this path according to their ability and inclination. I, for instance, started my Buddhist education as a child and although I am now nearly eighty-six years old, I am still learning. Therefore, whenever I can, I encourage Buddhists I meet to be twenty-first century Buddhists, to discover what the teaching really means and to put it into effect. This entails listening and reading, thinking about what you have heard and read and making yourself deeply familiar with it.”