Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso is the current and fourteenth Dalai Lama. He is the most famous Buddhist monk and is the leader of the exiled Tibetan government. In 1950, at age fifteen, he was designated as Tibet's Head of State. Gyatso was also elected as the vice chairman of China's National People's Congress in 1954 and in 1959, following the subsidence of the Tibetan Resistance Movement, Tenzin Gyatso fled to India where he pursued the creation of the Central Tibetan Administration in an attempt to conserve Tibetan culture and education. He also began to compose his policy concerning a peaceful solution to the Tibetan disaster. Gyatso is the first Dalai Lama to travel to the west, and helps to expand Buddhism while promoting perceptions of universal responsibility, secular ethnics, and religious harmony.Tenzin Gyatso was commemorated with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, Honorary Canadian Citizenship in 2006, and the United States Congressional Gold Medal in 2007.