Lozang Gyatso, 5th Dalai Lama

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Ngawang Lozang Gyatso (Wylie transliteration: Blo-bzang Rgya-mtsho), (also Lobsang Gyatso) the Great Fifth Dalai Lama, (1617 – 1682),

The Fifth Dalai Lama Lozang Gyatso was a political and religious leader in seventeenth century Tibet. He was the first Dalai Lama to wield effective political power over central Tibet. He initiated the construction of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.

The Fifth Dalai Lama is known for unifying Tibet under the control of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism, after defeating the rival Kagyupa sect and a secular ruler, the prince of Tsang.

He accomplished this by requesting the aid of Gushi Khan, a powerful Mongol military leader. The Dalai Lama also established warm relations with the Shunzhi Emperor of China, the second emperor of the Qing Dynasty, during a state visit to Beijing in 1652. The emperor gave him the honorific title Dalai Lama, Overseer of the Buddhist Faith on Earth Under the Great Benevolent Self-subsisting Buddha of the Western Paradise. From this meeting onwards, the Dalai Lamas were considered priests to the throne by successive Qing emperors.

The Fifth Dalai Lama is famous also for being a great practitioner of Dzogchen. In his secret Lukhang temple on a lake behind the Potala palace in Lhasa one wall of murals illustrates a commentary by Longchenpa on a Dzogchen tantra Rigpa Rangshar, interpreted according to the His Holiness's own experience of practice. The murals show characteristic visions of the secret practice of thödgal.^[1]

The death of the fifth Dalai Lama was kept hidden for 15 years, by his prime minister and possible son Desi Sangay Gyatso in order that the Potala Palace could be finished and Tibet's neighbors not take advantage of an interegnum in the succession of the Dalai Lamas. Desi Sangay Gyatso also served as regent until the assumption of power by the Sixth Dalai Lama.

[edit] Legacy

The Fifth Dalai-Lama is known for the tension created by his banning of the Jonang tradition and forcibly converting (most of) their monasteries to the Gelugpa order. This ban was politically motivated, although there were some philosophical disagreements.

[edit] Reference

^ The Crystal and The Way of Light. Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. Compiled and Edited by John Shane, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, NY, USA, 2000, ISBN 1-55939-135-9, pp. 82-87, 190, 191