The fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and, for decades, the most prominent symbol of the Tibetan people's struggle to preserve their identity under Chinese rule. Born to a peasant family in northeastern Tibet, he was identified as a small child as the reincarnation of his predecessor and recognized as the Dalai Lama, the latest in a long line of Tibetan spiritual and temporal leaders.
He was enthroned while still a boy and assumed full political authority as a teenager in 1950, just as the newly communist China asserted control over Tibet. For several years he sought to reach an accommodation with Beijing, but tensions mounted, and in 1959, after a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, he fled across the Himalayas into exile in India.
From the hill town of Dharamsala he established a Tibetan government-in-exile and devoted himself to keeping the Tibetan cause and Tibetan Buddhist culture alive. Traveling tirelessly around the world, he became a globally admired figure, preaching compassion, nonviolence, and dialogue, and seeking a "middle way" of genuine autonomy for Tibet rather than full independence.
His advocacy and his message of peace earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and a vast international following well beyond the Buddhist world. A warm and accessible figure who has engaged readily with science and other faiths, the Dalai Lama has remained the enduring embodiment of Tibetan aspirations into his later years.