The Dalai Lama is the spiritual and temporal head of Tibet. He is believed to be a manifestation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion. After a Dalai Lama dies, he is reincarnated with the birth of a new child. There have been 14 manifestations of the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso was born into a peasant family in Taktser, China. In 1937, at the age of 2, he was designated the 14th Dalai Lama. His enthronement ceremony was on Feb 22, 1940, but his rights were exercised by a regency until 1950. He fled to Chumbi in S. Tibet after an abortive anti-Chinese uprising in 1950, but negotiated an autonomy agreement with the People's Republic of China the following year. For the next eight years he served as ruler of Tibet under this autonomy agreement. In 1959, after China's suppression of a popular Tibetan national uprising, the Dalai Lama was forced into permanent exile, settling in Upper Dharamsala near Dharamsala in the province of Himachal Pradesh.

In India, he established a democratically based alternative Tibetan government. He helped created a Tibetan constitution, based on Buddhist principles and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a model for a future free Tibet. He has also declared that once Tibet regains its freedom, he will not hold public office. In 1989, Tenzin Gyatso was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his commitment to the nonviolent liberation of his homeland.