TIBET STRUGGLES TO SURVIVE.

TIBET (China); CHINA; INDIA

This article focuses on the national identity struggle of Tibet, China. The thirteenth Dalai Lama, Thupten Gyatso, the incarnation of Tibet's patron deity, Chenresi passed on to the Honorable Field in 1933, there to await rebirth as the present Dalai Lama in 1935. A quarter of a century later, the fourteenth Dalai Lama fled from tightening Chinese Communist control of Tibet to exile in India. Now the prophecy has been fulfilled. The Tibet that long fascinated the world with its distinctive religion has disappeared. Moreover, the Cultural Revolution has brought destruction of even the showpiece relics of Lamaist Buddhism in its homeland. The inaccessibility which heightened the fascination of the bleak land behind the Himalayan, Kun Lun and Tahsueh Mountains has been ended with the construction of roads and airports yet by Chinese policy Tibet remains closed and largely unknown to the outside world. Over the years, the expanding Chinese and British Indian empires nibbled at the edges of the Dalai Lama's realm, making it difficult if not controversial even to define what Tibet is. During the four decades of de facto independence, Tibet was governed by the thirteenth Dalai Lama and then by regents until the discovery and education of the fourteenth incarnation of the religious leader, Tenzin Gyatso. Tibet, according to an official description, is a country in which political and religious affairs were carried on simultaneously, with their chief aims the propagation of Buddhism and the seeking of happiness for all souls on earth.