Followers of the Yellow Hat sect believe there is only one Dalai Lama, who has been reborn over the centuries. Each successor is expected to show signs of continuity with the one who had most recently died. In the following paper I hope to accurately depict the life accounts and experiences of the Dalai Lama. I believe this Tibetan Spiritual leader to be one of the most interesting figures of modern times.
It was nearing the end of the Tibetan year of the water bird. Barley four weeks had passed since his holiness Thupten Gyatso, the thirteenth Dalai Lama, had passed away to the Heavenly Fields at the age of Fifty-eight. There was a great numbing throughout the land. Throughout Tibet there were signs of despondency, for although the government had instructed all local authorities to be on the lookout for the births of remarkable male children in their areas and the occurrence of any significant signs in connection with such births, no positive report had been received.(Goodman 7-8).
There was no way of knowing just how long it would take for the late Dalai Lama could find and enter its newest human capsule. For as the Buddha had taught, to be reborn in human form is "as rare as for a solitary one eyed turtle, swimming beneath the surface of the oceans, to come up every century with the head through the hole of an ox yoke floating in that same ocean."(Goodman 8).
Tibet desperately needed a new Dalai Lama to provide a rallying point around which her desperate elements could unite, and to promote a return to the stability engineered and inspired by the 13th incarnation.(Goodman 14-16) .
Eventually after years of looking the monks finally had two candidates for the Dalai Lama, and the two young boys were taken in for interviews to see if they were what the monks had hoped they were. The first boy came in dressed in new clothes accompanied by his mother. Although he seemed less than special at first glance and was, more over, exceptionally shy they tested him anyway.