China Seminar | 9 February 2012

Love & Happiness in the Heart of a Tibetan Living Buddha

NIE Xiaoyang

Some 300 years after his death, a very special monk in Tibetan history has again drawn attention from millions of curious people. His name is Tsangyang Gyatso, the sixth Dalai Lama. While a lot of people considered him as a “playboy monk” because he once rejected monastic lifestyle and indulged his passion for women and wine, his entire life actually was much more complicated and meaningful. Tsangyang Gyatso left a great number of wide-spread songs telling of his desires and experiences of love, but in fact most of the “love songs” actually demonstrated his understandings towards life and Buddhist beliefs. He then was deposed and mystically disappeared at the age of 25, and the latest research has found that after the disappearance he changed his name, visited many holy Buddhism places, and later became an eminent Lama. Through his poems, works and a biography written by one of his followers, the speaker will review how Tsangyang understand love and happiness.

Nie Xiaoyang, senior writer of Xinhua News Agency, author of the newly published book Searching for the Sixth Dala Lama and His Inner World. Now the managing editor of the Globe magazine, Mr. Nie also once served as Xinhua’s Baghdad Bureau Chief. He is also the author of four other books, whose contents range from his findings in war-time Baghdad to his maiden voyage to the Arctic.