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Dalai Lama is a title given by the Tibetan people for the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism, the newest of the classical schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th and current Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso, who lives as a refugee in India. The Dalai Lama is also considered to be the successor in a line of tulkus who are believed to be incarnations of Avalokiteśvara, a Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Sino-Tibetan, in a few sources also known as Trans-Himalayan, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. Other Sino-Tibetan languages with large numbers of speakers include Burmese and the Tibetic languages. Other languages of the family are spoken in the Himalayas, the Southeast Asian Massif, and the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Most of these have small speech communities in remote mountain areas, and as such are poorly documented.
Tibetan Buddhism is the form of Buddhism practiced in Tibet, where it is the dominant religion. It is also found in the regions surrounding the Himalayas, much of Central Asia, the Southern Siberian regions such as Tuva, as well as Mongolia.
Tibet is a region in East Asia covering much of the Tibetan Plateau spanning about 2.5 million km2. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Tamang, Qiang, Sherpa, and Lhoba peoples and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han Chinese and Hui people. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 5,000 m (16,000 ft). The highest elevation in Tibet is Mount Everest, Earth's highest mountain, rising 8,848 m (29,029 ft) above sea level.
The Central Tibetan Administration or CTA is an organisation based in India. The CTA is also referred to as the Tibetan Government in Exile which has never been recognized by China, however it is recognized by most Tibetans world-wide. The Tibetan diaspora and refugees support the CTA by voting for members of Parliament, the President and making annual financial contributions through the use of the "Green Book." Its internal structure is government-like; it has stated that it is "not designed to take power in Tibet"; rather, it will be dissolved "as soon as freedom is restored in Tibet" in favor of a government formed by Tibetans inside Tibet. In addition to political advocacy, it administers a network of schools and other cultural activities for Tibetans in India. On 11 February 1991, the CTA became a founding member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) at a ceremony held at the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) or Xizang Autonomous Region, called Tibet or Xizang for short, is a province-level autonomous region in Southwest China. It was formally established in 1965 to replace the Tibet Area, an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), which took over from the Republic of China (ROC) about five years after the dismissal of the Kashag by the PRC after the 1959 Tibetan uprising and about 13 years after the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China in 1951.
Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, was an 8th-century Buddhist master from India. Padmasambhava was invited to Tibet by king Trisong Detsen and founded Tibetan Buddhism together with other invited scholars and masters. Padmasambhava is venerated as the "second Buddha" by the Nyingma school, the oldest buddhist school in Tibet known of as "the ancient ones". He helped construct the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet at Samye, at the behest of Trisong Detsen. Padmasambhava was presented with Yeshe Tsogyal, either the consort or wife of Trisong Detsen, and she became a great master and Buddha in her lifetime after studying with Padmasambhava.
The Tibetic languages are a cluster of Tibeto-Burman languages descended from Old Tibetan, spoken across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas in Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Classical Tibetan is a major regional literary language, particularly for its use in Buddhist literature.
The Tibetan script is an abugida of Indic origin used to write certain Tibetic languages, including Tibetan, Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Ladakhi and sometimes Balti. It has also been used for some non-Tibetic languages in close cultural contact with Tibet, such as Thakali. The printed form is called uchen script while the hand-written cursive form used in everyday writing is called umê script.
The Tibetan people are an East Asian ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6.5 million. In addition to living in Tibet Autonomous Region, significant numbers of Tibetans live in the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan, as well as in India, Nepal, Bhutan and the western world.
The Tibetan Plateau, also known in China as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau in Central Asia and East Asia, covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Northwestern Yunnan, Western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu and Qinghai provinces in Western China, Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti as well as Bhutan. It stretches approximately 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north to south and 2,500 kilometres (1,600 mi) east to west. It is the world's highest and largest plateau, with an area of 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi). With an average elevation exceeding 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World".
Wylie transliteration is a method for transliterating Tibetan script using only the letters available on a typical English language typewriter. The system is named for the American scholar Turrell V. Wylie, who created the system and described it in a 1959 paper published in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies. It has subsequently become a standard transliteration scheme in Tibetan studies, especially in the United States.
The Tibetan Mastiff is a large Tibetan dog breed belonging to the mastiff family. Its double coat is long, subject to climate, and found in a wide variety of colors, including solid black, black and tan, various shades of red and bluish-gray, often with white markings.
Rinpoche, also spelled Rimboche and Rinboku, is an honorific term used in the Tibetan language. It literally means "precious one", and may refer to a person, place, or thing—like the words "gem" or "jewel" . The word consists of rin(value) and po(nominative suffix) and chen(big).
The Tibetan calendar is a lunisolar calendar, that is, the Tibetan year is composed of either 12 or 13 lunar months, each beginning and ending with a new moon. A thirteenth month is added every two or three years, so that an average Tibetan year is equal to the solar year.
Standard Tibetan is a widely spoken form of the Tibetic languages that has many commonalities with the speech of Lhasa, an Ü-Tsang dialect. For this reason, Standard Tibetan is often called Lhasa Tibetan. Tibetan is an official language of the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The written language is based on Classical Tibetan and is highly conservative.
Lama is a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term guru, meaning "heavy one", endowed with qualities the student will eventually embody. The Tibetan word "Lama" means "highest principle", and less literally "highest mother" or "highest parent" to show close relationship between teacher and student.
The 1959 Tibetan uprising or the 1959 Tibetan rebellion began on 10 March 1959, when a revolt erupted in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, which had been under the effective control of the People's Republic of China since the Seventeen Point Agreement was reached in 1951. Armed conflict between Tibetan guerillas and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) had started in 1956 in the Kham and Amdo regions, which had been subjected to socialist reform. The guerrilla warfare later spread to other areas of Tibet and lasted through 1962. Some regard the Xunhua Incident in 1958 as a precursor of the Tibetan uprising.
The 14th Dalai Lama is the current Dalai Lama. Dalai Lamas are important monks of the Gelug school, the newest school of Tibetan Buddhism, which was formally headed by the Ganden Tripas. From the time of the 5th Dalai Lama to 1959, the central government of Tibet, the Ganden Phodrang, invested the position of Dalai Lama with temporal duties.
The Tibetan Empire existed from the 7th to 9th centuries AD when Tibet was unified as a large and powerful empire, and ruled an area considerably larger than the Tibetan Plateau, stretching to parts of East Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.
References
- ↑ Li, Tao; Jiang, Hongying (2003). Tibetan customs. 五洲传播出版社. p. 35. ISBN 978-7-5085-0254-0 . Retrieved 5 August 2011.
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