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| Sunday, 25 September 2005 |
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Junior Observer |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Dalai Lama : Spiritual leader of Tibet
The line of Dalai Lamas, spiritual and civil rulers of Tibet since the 13th century, is a succession of incarnations. A Dalai Lama is not appointed or elected; he is born to the position. Each Dalai Lama is said to be a reincarnation of the previous one. Tibetans regard the Dalai Lama as the human embodiment of Avalokiteshvara (in Tibetan, Chenrezig), the deity of compassion, who chooses to return to the world to serve humanity. Before each Dalai Lama dies, he leaves signs to indicate where he will take his next rebirth. In accordance with tradition, search parties were sent to find the successor to the 13th Dalai Lama. Two years later, following the various signs, a government party was led to Takster, where they found the infant Lhamo Thondup. After a series of tests, the child (later named Tenzin Gyatso) was recognized as the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama. But by then the Chinese had control of the Amdo province. The local leader demanded a huge ransom before he would release the child. After two years of negotiations, the young Dalai Lama and his entourage were allowed to leave Amdo and travel to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where he was officially installed in the Potala Palace. The Dalai Lama's education as a Buddhist monk began in earnest when he was six. After 18 years of intense study, he graduated with the equivalent of a Ph.D in Buddhist Metaphysics. It was granted after a three-month oral examination in public before thousands of monks and scholars. In 1958 he took preliminary examinations at each of the three monastic universities, Drepung, Sera and Ganden. The final examination was held in 1959 at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa. That morning, the young scholar was examined by 30 scholars of logic. In the afternoon, he debated Buddhist philosophy with 15 scholars, and in the evening, 35 more scholars tested his knowledge of the canon of monastic discipline and metaphysics. The Dalai Lama passed with honours, attaining the highest academic degree of Geshe Lharampa, while under intense political pressure from the Chinese to give in to their demands to take over Tibet. A regent was appointed during the Dalai Lama's minority, but in 1950, just 16 years old, he was forced to assume full political power. The crisis was intensified by the Chinese communist invasion. Much of the country was occupied, and armed Chinese garrisons were established. With the Tibetan army being no match for the invading forces, the Dalai Lama's only option was to negotiate. In 1956 he visited India, where he met Jawaharlal Nehru but won little support for the Tibetan cause. In 1959 the Tibetans rebelled, the Chinese crushed the uprising and the Dalai Lama was forced to flee across the Himalayas to neighbouring India. He immediately established a democratic government-in-exile, dedicated to work for the freedom of Tibet and the welfare of Tibetan refugees. With the help of the Indian Government, he set up schools, including English language, Hindi and western-style education, along with Tibetan language and culture. Then came handicraft factories, hospitals, orphanages, monasteries and cultural institutions which gave rise to the foundation for a new Tibetan society. There are now 53 Tibetan refugee settlements in India. In the last decade, at the invitation of groups and governments, the Dalai Lama has travelled the world, seeking support for the Tibetan cause and sharing his belief in kindness and compassion as the ultimate solution to personal and political conflict. Since his first visit to the West in 1973, he has met many world leaders, among them the Presidents of the United States, France and Germany, the Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, members of European royalty, including Prince Charles and the King of Norway, and civic and religious leaders, including Pope John Paul II. The Dalai Lama has addressed the United States Congress, the European Parliament, and innumerable university, inter-faith and civic gatherings. Among the awards received by His Holiness are the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, 1989 Prix de Memoire, Humanitarian Award, World Management Congress, Raoul Wallenberg Congressional Human Rights Award and Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize from the University of Tubingen, Germany. ########## Virginia Woolf : British author and feminist
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25, 1882, in London. She was educated at home by her father, Sir Leslie Stephen, the author of the Dictionary of English Biography, a well-known editor and literary critic. She also read extensively. Her mother, Julia Duckworth Stephen, was a nurse, who published a book on nursing. Her mother died in 1895, which was the catalyst for Virginia's first mental breakdown. Following the death of her father in 1904, she and her sister, Vanessa, moved to a home in Bloomsbury, forming the initial kernel for the intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury Group. She began writing professionally in 1905, initially for the Times Literary Supplement. In 1912 she married Leonard Woolf, a civil servant and political theorist. Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. She went on to publish novels and essays as a public intellectual to both critical and popular success. Much of her work was self-published through the Hogarth Press. She is hailed as one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century and one of the foremost Modernists, though she didn't like some artists in this category, such as James Joyce.Woolf is considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. Her reputation declined sharply during the post-World War Two period, but was re-established with the surge of feminist criticism in the 1970s. Her work was later judged to be lacking in universality and depth, without the power to communicate anything of emotional or ethical relevance to the disillusioned common reader, weary of the 1920s aesthetes (people who love art) who seemed to belong to an era definitely closed and buried. Virginia Woolf's peculiarities as a fiction writer have tended to hide her central strength: she is arguably the major lyrical novelist in the English language. Her novels are highly experimental, narrative and frequently uneventful.On March 28, 1941, Woolf filled her pockets with stones, and drowned herself in the River Ouse, near her home in Rodmell. She left a suicide note for her husband: "I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness... I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work" (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, p. 481). Virginia Woolf's works are often closely linked to the development of feminist criticism, but she was also an important writer in the modernist movement. She revolutionised the novel with a stream of consciousness, which allowed her to depict the inner lives of her characters in all too intimate detail. |
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You must have heard about Dalai Lama. The 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet was
born in 1935, soon after the 13th Dalai Lama passed away. He was the
fourth son of a poor peasant family in Takster village in the Amdo
province of eastern Tibet. 
Virginia Woolf was a British author and feminist. Between the world
wars, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a
member of the Bloomsbury Group. 
