Today is the annivesary of the Fifth Dalai Lama. The Fifth Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso, popularly known "The Great Fifth", was the first Dalai Lama to assume political rule of Tibet, forging lasting alliances with Mongol armies and the Qing court in China. He was both a brilliant tactician and a religious thinker, authoring commentaries and ritual manuals, as well as histories and biographies. Although responsible for considerable sectarian violence and Geluk hegemony, including the suppression in Tibet of the Jonang tradition and the forcible conversion of many monasteries to the Geluk faith, the Fifth Dalai Lama never abandoned his family’s Nyingma affiliations, and he sponsored the establishment or renovation of several Nyingma monasteries. The great palace of Potala that he built as his residence and seat in Lhasa was named after that bodhisattva’s pure land, Potalaka, a naming that contributed to the dissemination of the identification of the Dalai Lama as an emanation of Avalokiteśvara. Learn more in biography: https://treasuryoflives.org/zh/biographies/view/Ngawang-Lobzang-Gyatso/6065 Painting: Scenes from the Life of Fifth Dalai Lama from the collection of Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, C2003.9.2, HAR 65275 (fb)

Today is the anniversary of Khandro Tsering Chodron, known to many simply as Khandro-la. Following her marriage to Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro in 1948 she lived at Dzongsar and received instruction from tutors and lamas including Khyentse himself. She accompanied Chokyi Lodro when he left Dzongsar in 1955 and travelled to Lhasa and then into Sikkim and India. After Khyentse Chokyi Lodro's death in 1959, she lived for more than four decades in the presence of his reliquary stūpa, at the Royal Chapel in Gangtok, Sikkim, in simple conditions. She moved to France in 2006 and remained there until her death in 2011, after which a golden-domed memorial stupa was constructed to house her relics. Even though she never formally taught or gave empowerments, she was widely revered, even among senior Tibetan Buddhist teachers, for the sanctity of her presence, and for her humility, devotion, and playful humour. Learn more in biography by Adam Pearcey https://treasuryoflives.org/biographies/view/Tsering-Chodron/13697 This biography is also available in Chinese thanks to translator Serena Yang https://treasuryoflives.org/zh/biographies/view/Tsering-Chodron/13697 (fb)