Dalai Lama - Spiritual leader

Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso' (born on the 6 July 1935 in Qinghai, is the 14th and current Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is a revered spiritual leader among Tibetans and exerts a powerful influence over the the Gelug School of Tibetan Buddhism. He is head of the Tibetan Government in Exile in Dharamsala, India. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he is also the world's best-known Buddhist monk.

Gyatso was the fifth of 16 children born to a farming family in the village of Taktser, Qinghai province where he learned the Amdo dialect of Tibetan as his first language. He was proclaimed the tulku (rebirth) of the thirteenth Dalai Lama two years after he was born. On 17 November 1950, at the age of fifteen, he was enthroned as Tibet's Dalai Lama, thus becoming Tibet's most important political ruler. This occurred only one month after the People's Liberation Army's invasion of Tibet.

After initially ratifying, under military pressure, the 1951 Seventeen Point Agreement, he left Tibet for India following the failed uprising and the collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement in 1959. In India he was active in establishing 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 described as a "charismatic" figure and noted public speaker. He is the first Dalai Lama to travel to the West. There, he has helped to spread Tibetan 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.