The present and 14th Dalai Lama has always stated that he holds a special connection with the Fifth Dalai Lama and therefore it warrants a closer examination into the person of "The Great Fifth". Here are some brief information about the Fifth Dalai Lama that are perhaps not so well-known and yes, from the looks of it the 14th Dalai Lama is indeed very similar to the Fifth, in that both are/were savvy politicians with eyes trained more on gaining political power than anything else :
* The Fifth Dalai Lama was born to a family of Nyingma practitioners in 1617 in the Yarlung Valley of Tibet, descendants of the Imperial line of the Yarlung Dynasty. His father was Miwang Dundul Rabten and his mother was Kunga Lhadze. In 1622 he was identified as the rebirth of Sonam Gyatso by the First Panchen Lama Lobzang Chokyi Gyaltsen who had been the tutor to the Fourth Dalai Lama. The Panchen Lama gave him the name Lobzang Gyatso and enthroned him at Drepung.
* The Fifth Dalai Lama's recognition was controversial. The boy had been unsuccessfully claimed as the reincarnation of a Kagyu hierarch, the Fourth Tsurpu Gyaltsab Dragpa Dondrub.
* He received his full monastic ordination in 1638. Lingme Shabdrung and the First Panchen Lama administered the vows and gave him the name Ngagi Wangchug.
* The Fifth Dalai Lama studied with many of the leading lamas of his day, primarily from Gelug, Sakya, and Nyingma masters. And he is considered a significant lineage holder by the Nyingma. He trained with leaders of both the Changter and Zur tradition of the Kama. His family also maintained good relations with the Drugpa Kagyu - his cousin Pagsam Wangpo was the Fifth Gyalwang Drugpa.
* In 1637, when the Fifth Dalai Lama was twenty-five, the Mongolian leader, Gushri Khan, came to Tibet with a contingent of eight hundred soldiers, ostensibly on pilgrimage, but almost certainly to assert control over Tibet and find native allies for their dominion. It seems Gushri's reconnaissance mission was at the request of the Fourth Dalai Lama's treasurer, Sonam Chopel, part of the latter's effort to find a Mongol ally in the fight against Tsang.
* The Dalai Lama met with Gushri at this time and gave him the title of Tendzin Chogyal - "holder of the teaching, king of dharma". It was a symbolic title, designed to cement relations, and it was effective - both the Dalai Lama and Gushri reported receiving visions in which they played a key role vanquishing the enemies of the Gelug tradition and spreading it far and wide. During this visit Gushri, the Panchen Lama, Sonam Chopel, and the Dalai Lama discussed plans for Gushri to invade Kham and destroy the Bonpo kingdom of Beri, the excuse for which was a forged letter in which the Beri King declared his intention to invade Lhasa.
* In his autobiography, a work that is highly revisionist, the Dalai Lama wrote that Sonam Chopel secretly requested Gushri to follow his invasion of Kham with an attack on Tsang, thereby wiping out completely all rivals to Gelug dominance of Tibet. Gushri Khan began his invasion in 1639, overrunning Kham from top to bottom and utterly obliterating Beri. Instead of turning north and returning to Mongolia, Gushri then continued into Tibet. The Dalai Lama claims that he was horrified by this and demanded that Sonam Chopel undo his work and convince Gushri to turn back, which he refused to do, evermore to hold the blame for Gushri's violence. Gushri laid siege to Shigatse for roughly a year, ultimately crushing all resistance and taking control of Tsang.
* Contrary to standard accounts, Gushri did not then hand control of Tibet over to the Dalai Lama. Rather, Gushri declared himself King of Tibet, and was given an actual throne by the Tibetans on which to sit. He appointed Sonam Chopel as his regent, in charge of political maters, and he gave the Dalai Lama control of religious affairs. This fact is largely obscured in history, thanks to the Dalai Lama's own account of the events, written many decades later, after he had assumed political control of Tibet.
* The Dalai Lama spent the next several decades consolidating power, a process that involved the construction of a palace, naming himself an emanation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, a state visit to Beijing, and the invocation of the Golden Age of the Tibetan Empire.
* In 1645, the Fifth Dalai Lama began the construction of the Potala Palace on Red Hill in Lhasa, named after the pure land of the Avalokiteshvara, Potalaka, and placed on the site of the 7th century Tibetan Emperor Songtsan Gampo's capital. The naming of the palace contributed to the dissemination of the identification of the Dalai Lama as an emanation of Avalokiteshvara, something the Dalai Lama himself contributed to with his biographies of his previous incarnations into which he inserted the names of previously recognized emanations such as Songtsan Gampo and Dromton.
* In 1651 the Dalai Lama received an invitation from the Qing Emperor Shunzhi to visit Beijing. What is important here is the issue of how the Dalai Lama was received by the Emperor - if the Dalai Lama was received in Beijing by the offices of the Lifayuan, which administered non-Han Chinese Imperial territories, the Dalai Lama would have been submitting Tibet to a status of dependent state. If the Chinese Emperor traveled out of Beijing to meet the Dalai Lama en route, then he would have acknowledged that the Dalai Lama was ruler of his own land, equal in status to the Chinese Emperor.
* The Dalai Lama's own account has it that the Emperor met him outside of Beijing, as he had requested, although he admits to sitting on a lower seat than the Emperor and that he refused to drink his tea first, as the Emperor offered to allow. However, other sources make clear that the meeting took place in Beijing, and that the Dalai Lama, not satisfied by his treatment, left the capital after only six months. During his return the Emperor conferred a seal and a title, expressing his understanding that the Dalai Lama had accepted Chinese authority over Tibet.
* Another means employed by the Dalai Lama to consolidate power in Tibet was the removal of all remaining rivals. Because of Taranata's efforts in support of Tsang before the Mongol invasion, the Dalai Lama was persuaded to suppress the Jonang tradition as retaliation. In 1650 he sealed and banned the study of shentong, the Jonangpa's signature teaching, and prohibited the printing of Jonang shentong texts. In 1658 he forcibly converted Taranata's monastery, Tagten Puntsog Choling. Only the skillful intervention by the Fifth Tsurpu Gyaltsap Dragpa Chogyang prevented the Karma Kagyu from suffering the same fate, and that tradition was forced only to return monasteries it had converted during the height of the Tsang kings' power.
* The Fifth Dalai Lama did not submit entirely to pressure from within the Gelug establishment to utterly eliminate all other religious traditions. He remained a fervent supporter of the Nyingma, sending Dzogchen Pema Rigdzin to Kham to establish Dzogchen Monastery, in 1680s, and maintained a large number of Nyingma associated, to the consternation of the more conservative Gelug hierarchs. He also revealed treasure, through visions, producing two volumes of revealed scripture. These he transmitted to the Nyingma masters Terdag Lingpa of Mindroling and Rigdzin Pema Trinle of Dorje Drag.
* The Fifth Dalai Lama's name variants: Dorje Togmetsal; Ganshar Rangdrol; Jangsem Nyugusel; Nagpo Silgnon Dragpotsal; Ngagwang Lobzang Gyatso; Sahor Ngaknyon Silgnon Shepatsal; Silngon Dragtsal Dorje; Silngon Shepatsal
Information extracted from:
Ishihama, Yumiko. 1992. "A Study of the Seals and Titles Conferred by the Dalai Lamas." In Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the 5th Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Narita 1989, edited by Ihara Shoren and Yamaguchi Zuiho. Narita: Naritasan Shinshoji.
Ishihama, Yumiko. 1993. "On the Dissemination of the Belief in the Dalai Lama as a Manifestation of Bodhistattva Avalokitesvara." Acta Asiatica 64: 38-56.
