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40 A Different Type of Reality 41 Chapter 2 A BUDDHIST RENAISSANCE It was Vajrayana s ability to absorb ever more deities into an already complex cosmology plus more than a hint of magic that gave Padmasambhava or Guru Rinpoche the leg up as he progressed towards Lhasa battling and subduing Tibet s local demons Around 775 ce still in the reign of Trisong Detsen Padmasambhava and Santaraksita inspired the foundation of Tibet s first monastery at Samye a settlement not far from where the Yarlung River opens out into the Tsangpo valley It was built along the lines of a famous monastery in Bihar India with four walls arranged to mimic the layout of a mandala Its three storeys were designed respectively according to Indian Chinese and Tibetan styles a medley that mirrored the disparate influences on Buddhism s introduction in Tibet The country was still heavily reliant on gurus and texts from both China and India In 792 Trisong Detsen felt compelled to choose whether to follow Indian or Chinese teachings and launched a great debate to help him decide Over a period of two years with representatives from both sides positioned either side of the Tibetan king philosophical arguments were batted to and fro In the end the result was influenced as much by political concerns as religious argument While the king wished to protect himself from a newly aggressive China India lying beyond the impenetrable Himalayas seemed to pose little threat An acolyte of Santaraksita called Kamalasila who was invited to present the Indian case won the day Trisong Detsen subsequently forbade his subjects to follow Chinese teachings and Kamalasila remained in Tibet to move the Indian teachings forward The opposing camp nevertheless plotted revenge Four Chinese butchers were dispatched to kill Kamalasila which they accomplished by pinching his kidney with their hands Kamalasila s body was embalmed and placed in a monastery twenty miles north of Lhasa where it remains to this day By the time Trisong Detsen died around 797 the ruling class remained committed to the Indian and not the Chinese form of Buddhism And Tibet as a whole continued to enjoy a golden age with its still vast territories But there remained one more hurdle to the acceptance of Buddhism Atisa the great Buddhist sage from Bengal Atisa 982 1054 was persuaded to visit Tibet aged sixty and remained there until he died He heralded a long line of Indian teachers who were instrumental in establishing Buddhism in Tibet In this depiction Atisa holds a thin palm leaf manuscript with his left hand symbolizing one of the many important texts he wrote and makes the gesture of teaching with his right hand Painting is early to mid 12th century gold and distemper on cloth New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Art Resource Scala Florence

A Different Type of Reality 42 Trisong Detsen s two grandsons nicknamed Ralpacan Long Hair and Langdarma Mature Bull had very different views on the new religion Ralpacan s inclination was to accelerate the move to Buddhism favouring monks above everyone else even allowing them to walk on his hair a sign of his professed abasement He also introduced systems of weights measures and coins based on what had been learned from India But for some he was going too quickly In particular he failed to gauge his brother s attachment to the ancient deities of Tibet which in rather loose terms were grouped under a belief system called Bon Scholars today cannot agree exactly what Bon looked like in these early days but over the centuries it cunningly evolved to resemble even duplicate Tibetan Buddhism with obvious name substitutions for Buddha and the key deities It is now so close to Buddhism as to be a sect accepted by the current Dalai Lama With the brothers at loggerheads a religious war broke out Ministers faithful to Langdarma killed Ralpacan by twisting his face down towards the nape of his neck there was no lack of imagination when it came to killing people Langdarma took over the reins of power and promptly disbanded the monasteries and forced celibate monks to marry Followers of Buddhism were reduced to hiding their sacred texts in mountain caves around Lhasa In 842 Langdarma himself was assassinated by a Buddhist monk Tibet now entered a period of political and religious turbulence while the desire for empire among the nobles became compromised by a nonviolence ethic that Buddhism had begun to instil in the country The glory days of the early kings were beginning to fade As political unity suffered Buddhism re emerged In the late 10th century more than one hundred years after Langdarma s assassination Tibetans from both the west and east of the country who had remained faithful to the new religion returned to Lhasa and re established Buddhism among the noble families In time Buddhism spread to the general population Monasteries proliferated creating an insatiable demand for Indian gurus and their teachings Indian teachers were invited northwards while Tibetan scholars journeyed to the universities of India for their own study and acquisition of Buddhist texts and learning The next hundred years in this cultural metamorphosis would see an astonishing cast of legendary figures emerge from both Tibet and the plains of Bengal One such was Rinchen Zangpo a young man from western Tibet who was dispatched by local rulers to seek the teachings of Indian masters in nearby Kashmir Over a seventeen year period during three separate trips Rinchen collected texts and became the first of the great translators of Sanskrit texts into Tibetan In between times back in Tibet he founded numerous monasteries and helped reinforce the supremacy of Buddhism over Bon But there was no substitute for the genuine Indian guru Rinchen suggested to his superiors that Atisa the most celebrated of all Indian teachers should be invited to Tibet This would have required a copious outlay of gold It would always take a certain amount of the precious metal which Tibetan nobles had in abundance to entice the Indian masters to make the journey and pass on their teachings Atisa was born into Bengal royalty in 982 but gave it all up to pursue the Buddhist way of life learning it is said from more than 150 teachers and becoming master of countless sutras and tantra practices He was particularly attached to an advanced form of tantra called Kalachakra Meaning literally Wheel of Time this tantra invokes a complex theory of cosmology and not untypically in tantric practice plenty of subtle body meditation including increasing engagements with a consort When Atisa was finally lured to Tibet in 1042 after countless entreaties he was already sixty years old Mila Raspa s nine storey tower in Lhodrag Tibet Mila Raspa journeyed from gang member practicing the black arts to becoming one of the most celebrated Bodhisattvas in Tibetan history He is counted as one of the founders of the Kagyu pa sect The young man s waywardness was cured by his guru Marpa by instructing Mila Raspa to build this famous tower at Lhodrag in south east Tibet and then to dismantle and rebuild it several times Only then did Marpa deign to initiate Mila Raspa s religious instruction Photograph by Hugh Richardson 1950 Pitt Rivers Museum University of Oxford 43

44 A Different Type of Reality 45 Mani wall near Tinje Upper Dolpo Nepal

A Different Type of Reality 46 He travelled towards Lhasa taught widely for more than a decade and ended his life living in a cave near the capital where the faithful would visit him for instruction Rare among Indian imports he spoke good Tibetan and connected well with both the elite and the common peasant For all their moral content his teachings included plenty of magic for safeguarding ordinary life on the high plateau such as preserving crops from hailstorms and the like Atisa was instrumental in establishing Buddhism as the nation s religion and remains one of Tibet s most venerated figures A contemporary of Atisa from Bengal was Naropa born into a high class Brahmin family and like Atisa moved to quit a life of privilege and pursue the Buddhist path Naropa had been instructed by a tantric guru called Tilopa popularly known as The Great Magician Forced to submit to twelve inhuman sufferings during his initiation by Tilopa Naropa later acquired equal fame as a guru and taught at the University of Nalanda One day Naropa received and accepted as an initiate a young Tibetan called Marpa who had travelled to India via Nepal seeking religious instruction Marpa stayed many years with Naropa and in turn became a celebrated guru and great translator of Indian texts He reputedly returned to Tibet with a wife and seven female consorts By all accounts his conduct was not beyond reproach He was frequently drunk and quite ready to relieve his disciples of whatever possessions might be required to finance his next spate of wanderings But this was all explained away by the fact he had by now acquired the status of a Bodhisattva and his errant behaviour was simply testing his disciples faith in their guru Marpa s most famous disciple was another bad boy called Mila Raspa born in central Tibet in 1052 Mila s early years were not a great success His father died when he was young he abused his mother and he eventually joined a gang perfecting the magic art of killing people Mila learned the art well trying it out during the wedding feast of a hated cousin and succeeding in finishing off thirty five guests As an encore he summoned up a hailstorm that destroyed the village s barley crop Realizing that this might be taking things a bit far he looked for help and at the age of thirty eight found Marpa Then followed a harrowing series of penances insisted on by Marpa to cleanse Mila s waywardness He was told to build a series of towers and then tear them down returning the stones to where he had found them He was then told to build a multi storey tower that stands to this day Marpa meanwhile would feign total disinterest in his pupil often pretending to be too drunk to cast a glance in his direction Finally Marpa became satisfied that Mila Raspa was ready for initiation and his instruction began Six years after meeting Marpa an enlightened Mila Raspa headed home to find that all that remained of his mother was her dried bones There and then he dedicated himself to a life of extreme asceticism And thus came about one of Tibet s greatest legends Mila Raspa in deep meditation in his cave subsisting year in year out on the nettles that grew around him and ultimately attaining the unspoken dream of every guru the state of Bodhisattva Mila s sole item of clothing was a cotton garment that in time became shredded beyond repair His wife and sister would bring him food and clothing and be shooed away for their trouble According to his own word it was simply through acceptance of the Buddhist concept of emptiness shunyata that he was able to sustain so much hunger thirst and cold for so long Yet amid this supremely ascetic existence he would burst spontaneously into song by turns insightful melancholy and joyful Mila Raspa famed ascetic and poet Mila Raspa 1052 1135 was a disciple of Marpa in a lineage that can be traced back to the Indian sages Tilopa and Naropa and that eventually gave rise to the Kagyu pa sect of Tibetan Buddhism In this classic depiction Mila Raspa meditates in his cave wearing a meagre cotton garment and subsisting on the nettles growing around him Late 19th to early 20th century thangka from Dhodeydrag monastery Thimphu Bhutan Wikimedia Commons 47

48 A Different Type of Reality His Hundred Thousand Songs remains a beloved text for Tibetans of which this example was sung to his sister Peta on one occasion 5 Salutations to my lordly lamas And may they bless this hermit O sister your affection leaves only sadness Since neither joy nor sorrow are permanent I beg you listen a while to my song If you consider my lair I seem a wild beast At the sight of it others would feel aversion If you consider my food I seem a mere animal At the sight of it others would just feel sick If you consider my body I seem a skeleton At the sight of it even an enemy would weep If you consider my conduct I seem a madman At the sight of it you my sister are sad But if you consider my mind it is really enlightened At the sight of it my former lamas rejoice The gritty gravel beneath me Persistently pricks my skin and my flesh Inside and out my body has the nature of nettles And is changeless in its greyish colour High in this lonely rock gorge Nothing eases my constant melancholy And such melancholy is inseparable From the enlightenment of holy lamas As a result of my great effort There is no doubt my spiritual understanding grows O Peta do not be sad but cook some nettles Mila Raspa nevertheless had time for some travel and teaching and one disciple in particular called Buton Rinchen Drup the 11th Abbot of Shalu monastery Buton 1290 1364 was the compiler of the two Tibetan Buddhist canons the Kangyur and the Tengyur The Kangyur grouped together the prevalent sutras and tantras used in Tibetan Buddhism while the Tengyur provided religious commentary Shalu monastery is located near Shigatse This thangka in colours and gold on cotton was painted by Khyenrab Jamyang active in the second half of the 17th century Its surrounding fabric and head piece are intact Asian Art Museum of San Francisco The Avery Brundage Collection 49 Gampopa would continue the lineage that had originally started with Tilopa This would develop a critical mass of followers and eventually constitute the Tibetan Buddhist tradition called Kagyu pa or Oral Tradition An offshoot of this order called Drukpa would become dominant within Bhutan By this time towards the end of the 11th century Kagyu pa was one of three distinct orders or traditions in Tibetan Buddhism The original introduction of Buddhism by Santaraksita and Padmasambhava and incorporating some Bon tradition from that time was known as Nyingma pa literally the ancient school To keep up with the state of play among the other schools the Nyingma pa school benefitted from hidden texts called terma supposedly written and concealed by Padmasambhava and his inner circle of twenty five disciples The ancient tradition could therefore be given a sort of makeover whenever one of these hidden texts was discovered The other order was the Sakya pa school born out of a prosperous monastery situated on a key trade route to Nepal at Sakya in central Tibet Whereas the lineage in the Nyingma pa and Kagyu pa schools passed from guru to pupil the lineage in Sakya pa remained in the noble family that founded it and indeed remains with that family today The 11th century thus saw Tibet transform into a Buddhist powerhouse The transference of Buddhist texts and knowledge from India to Tibet would continue for another century But come the 13th century Tibet suddenly found itself the sole guardian of the Vajrayana tradition Muslim hordes were invading India and in short shrift destroyed every vestige of Buddhist culture there Nalanda and other university sites were sacked and the original Sanskrit sutra and tantra texts disappeared without trace Tibet through three centuries of constant acquisition of manuscripts and scrupulous translation had now become the custodian of a culture initially taught to them by Indian gurus By now the proliferation of Buddhist texts in Tibetan were in desperate need of organization This 5 David L Snellgrove and Hugh Richardson A Cultural History of Tibet 1968

A Different Type of Reality 50 Herculean task would be accomplished by a certain Buton Rinchen Drup 1290 1364 a lama from Shalu monastery situated near Shigatse in central Tibet Buton collected sorted and edited everything he could lay his hands on and succeeded in establishing definitive versions of the two essential canons of Tibetan Buddhism the Kangyur literally Translation of the Buddha Word containing the sutra and tantra texts and the Tengyur which are practical and philosophical commentaries on the Kangyur These are not light tomes The Kangyur is generally compiled into 108 volumes and the Tengyur occupies 250 volumes or more Each volume comprises perhaps one hundred or more rectangular sheets of paper loosely housed in a box the text for each sheet having been precisely carved out of wood and block printed Today as one enters a Tibetan monastery boxes upon boxes of these sacred texts can be seen stored on shelves THE MONGOLS AND CHINA As Buton toiled and Buddhism in India disappeared without trace Tibetans were being jolted out of their customary isolationism by momentous happenings to the north From the late 12th century onwards a military genius called Genghis Khan whose basic strategy was to decimate the population of the lands he conquered was rampaging across Asia and pushing towards Europe His favourite son and heir was Ogodei and it was Ogodei s son Godan who ordered the subjugation of Tibet around 1244 launching a small expeditionary force to test the waters Almost blas about the impending threat the powerful Sakya monastery dispatched their grand lama and his two nephews to Godan s court for a parley There the chief lama took it upon himself to submit Tibet to the pleasure of Godan while with a piece of tantric magic succeeded in curing Godan of an illness This triggered Godan s conversion to Buddhism and the beginning of a more or less peaceful relationship between the two nations that earned the sobriquet Patron and Priest While the Mongols claimed sovereignty of Tibet appointing the grand lama of Sakya as their regent the latter provided much requested religious guidance to the Mongol court Later one of the lama s nephews would win the confidence of Godan s cousin Kublai Khan the immensely powerful ruler of China This perpetuated the idea that the Mongols were regarded as Tibet s patrons while the Sakya lineage continued their role as the Mongol s priests When in 1368 the Mongol stranglehold on China was displaced by the Ming dynasty Tibet would regain a measure of independence under a powerful leader called Changchub Gyaltsen who as a monk grew up in the Sakya monastery but later deserted it for different teachings Under his rule cultural traditions dating back to the early Yarlung kings were reintroduced border posts built especially along the Chinese border bridges constructed and legal and tax frameworks created By this time the late 14th century Buddhism permeated the whole of Tibetan society from the rulers and aristocrats to nomad herdsmen and village cultivators The three main sects with their tantric lineages controlled and influenced everyone s lives Divorced from their previous Indian sources Tibetan monks and scholars wrote their own religious works and did so in prodigious quantities One nagging issue however remained In a country dominated by religious activity there was incessant jostling among the sects on who should claim political leadership Into this vacuum stepped a young monk called Tsongkhapa Tsongkhapa was born in 1357 in northeast Tibet and indoctrinated in all the prevailing lineages and tantra He professed to be spiritually connected to the great Atisa and wrote numerous treatises many concentrating on the fundamental question of shunyata or emptiness He believed as much in logical intellectual discourse as the mystical practices of tantric meditation He espoused Nagarjuna s middle way that things do exist in that we sense them but that they have no independent reality In his Praise of Dependent Relativity he wrote with obvious excitement Whatever depends on causes and conditions Is empty of intrinsic reality What excellent instruction could there be More marvellous than this discovery Tsongkhapa offered Tibetans a sort of clearing house for the innumerable variants of Buddhism practised in the country adding much needed intellectual rigour and monastic discipline His movement caught on partly and ironically because it professed to have no political interests 51 Godan Khan grandson of Genghis Khan Godan Khan 1206 1251 ordered the subjugation of Tibet around 1244 In the process Godan would be converted to Buddhism by the grand lama of the Sakya monastery setting in train the Patron and Priest relationship that would bedevil Tibetan Chinese relations thereafter Godan s cousin Kublai Khan Emperor of China also embraced Buddhism http www portalememoria org godan khan 1206 1251 CC BY SA 3 0

A Different Type of Reality 52 By the time Tsongkhapa died in 1419 two great monasteries close to Lhasa at Drepung and Sera had been built by his followers and the distant Emperors of China had begun to hear about him His movement became known as Gelug pa or Model of Virtue and would become the fourth of the great Tibetan Buddhist sects The Chinese called the new sect Yellow Hats to distinguish it from all previous sects grouped under the moniker Red Hats The terminology stuck A hallmark of the Gelug pa sect would be the adoption of reincarnation to identify a successor when the chief lama died This was occasionally practised in other sects and probably dated back through the Kagyu pa lineage to Naropa in India In Buddhist literature the theory is well spelt out At death the lama enters a deep meditative state in which the subtle body takes over from the physical body This releases the mind into an intermediate state between death and the next life called Bardo The mind now directs itself to the sexual coupling of a suitable man and wife and is born nine months later to them as the lama s reincarnation In practice identifying a baby or young child as a lama s chosen successor lends itself to legend and apocryphal hearsay However certain facts are indisputable After certain geographical constraints are respected such as the child being foretold to be living near a lake or the such like the young child is generally shown a range of ritual objects some belonging to the previous lama some not It is well documented that in successful cases the child identifies the lama s possessions and no others The third reincarnation after Tsongkhapa was a child called Sonam Gyatso who became a powerful lama with political ambitions Replaying the overtures towards the Mongol kings of days gone by Sonam Gyatso accepted to visit an outlier Mongol descendant called Altan Khan They met in 1578 on Lake Kokonor north east of Tibet in China and amid much pomp and ceremony exchanged honorific titles Altan Khan bestowed on Sonam Gyatso the title Tale a Mongolian word meaning ocean perhaps because he deemed the Tibetan lama to be an ocean of wisdom Tale would later get transliterated to Dalai and the chief lama of the Gelug pa sect became known thereafter as the Dalai Lama The renewed Mongol Tibetan alliance was further strengthened when Sonam Gyatso died and his reincarnation was found in a great grandson of Altan Khan an astute piece of political manoeuvring or just good luck depending on your point of view This consolidated the Gelug pa sect as a major force and ensured that the Mongols retained a degree of temporal influence in Tibet Two reincarnations later we meet Lobsang Gyatso the great 5th Dalai Lama who was born in 1617 and another Mongol outlier Gushri Khan whose Khoshut clan had supplanted the Altan Khan dynasty in overseeing Tibetan politics Gushri Khan controlled Tibet s military forces mostly with respect to unruly outsiders and was content to leave internal matters entirely to Lobsang Gyatso The 5th Dalai Lama became the first person to govern Tibet in both political and religious spheres His time heralded a glorious epoch in Tibet s history Contrary to Tibet s traditional isolationism rulers from neighbouring states were encouraged to visit This included Shah Shuja a Mughal prince and governor of Bengal the Malla kings from Kathmandu the kings of Dolpo and Jumla today part of north west Nepal and representatives from Ladakh Bhutan declined the invitation having successfully repulsed an invasion of their territory by their intended host Most importantly the 5th Dalai Lama opened relations with the newly minted Manchu dynasty in China which was in the process of usurping the previous Ming dynasty It s not clear whether the Tibetans fully realized the fundamental precept of Chinese diplomacy which was to regard all other nations as intrinsically Tsongkhapa founder of the Gelug pa or Yellow Hat sect Tsongkhapa 1357 1419 founded a lineage that favoured intellectual rigour over mystical ritual His reincarnations became known as the Dalai Lama and would come to dominate Tibet in politics as well as religion Two great monasteries at Drepung and Sera near Lhasa were built by his followers This is the first of fifteen thangkas illustrating how throughout his previous lives Tsongkhapa cultivated the path to enlightenment His Eminence Tsem Tulku Rinpoche 53

54 A Different Type of Reality inferior If they had they might have been more careful about the next steps For the moment however the Manchu Emperor Shunzhi appeared mainly interested in Tibet s ability to keep their meddling Mongol neighbours to the north somewhat under control At home the 5th Dalai Lama developed Tibet in many ways He constructed new monasteries placing them prominently on hill tops so they dominated the surrounding landscape The culmination was the construction beginning in 1645 of his own majestic Potala Palace on the hill dominating Lhasa There had already been odd buildings there from the time of the earliest kings but the 5th Dalai Lama s project was of a different order With its massive ramparts sometimes hung with super sized thangkas wall hangings its steep staircases its series of huge flat roofed apartments topped by golden finials the structure literally reaches for the sky and has remained to this day one of the great wonders of the world The palace was named after the Potala hill on Cape Comorin at the southern tip of India because a rocky point there was considered sacred to Avalokitesvara or Chenrezig the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion By now the Dalai Lama had come to be revered not merely as the reincarnation of his predecessor but also the very manifestation of the divine Avalokitesvara himself When the 5th Dalai Lama died all sorts of problems surfaced one of which was intrinsic to the practice of reincarnation If a successor is only identified as a baby after the previous Dalai Lama has died a Regent is necessarily required to rule until the successor reaches some measure of maturity To buy time the Regent in this case decided to conceal for a while the fact that the 55 5th Dalai Lama had died a subterfuge that ended up annoying both Tibetans and their foreign friends The main problem however was that the maturing 6th Dalai Lama didn t seem up to the job Uninterested in either the administration of his kingdom or the proper conduct of religious affairs his main interests were wine women and song of which the following composition of his concerning an unrequited love is an example 6 The young shoots of last year s planting have become this year s trusses of straw A young man grows old and his body is stiffer than our southern bamboo O that the one who has entered my heart might be my lifelong companion It would be like gaining a precious gem from the very depths of the ocean The lass with the sweet perfumed body was my friend by the way I travelled T was as though I had found a white tortoise and cast it aside straight away When I recall the fine complexion of that great official s daughter It seems like the ripe dropping fruit at the top of a tall peach tree My thoughts are so set on the matter that sleep eludes me at night By day my hopes go unrealized How weary so weary my mind And so on finishing with I went to seek instruction at the feet of my worthy lama But my thoughts could not be kept there They escaped to my beloved Though called to mind my lama s face does not rise in my thoughts Lobsang Gyatso the 5th Dalai Lama in audience with the Chinese Emperor Shunzhi The great 5th Dalai Lama 1617 1682 left in this depiction combined religious and temporal power in Tibet and succeeded in breaking the country s habitual isolation He travelled to Beijing with 3 000 men meeting the fourteenyear old Emperor in 1653 Qing Dynasty wall painting in the Potala Palace Lhasa using gold silver and mineral pigments The Picture Art Collection Alamy Stock Photo Not called to mind my loved one s face gently pervades my thoughts As the 6th Dalai Lama ambled through the Potala Palace in his blue silk robe sporting long black locks abundant jewellery and carrying a bow and quiver the Manchu Emperor Kangxi became increasingly alarmed at the deteriorating situation in his neighbour s 6 Yu Dawchyan Love Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama Peiping 1930

56 A Different Type of Reality patch and gambled on a power play He persuaded the current Mongol overseer Lajang Khan the grandson of Gushri Khan to take Lhasa murder the Regent and spirit the young libertine away for safekeeping in China Kangxi s plan worked and as a reward the Manchu emperor installed Lajang Khan as his vassal in Tibet For the first time Tibet was totally beholden to China The new arrangement didn t last In a sort of Central Asian ping pong game yet another Mongol faction launched a counter attack on Lhasa murdering Lajang Khan and appeared for a while to succeed in compromising the Chinese hegemony But they hadn t reckoned on the determination of Kangxi Dispatching a 7000 strong army to take Tibet Kangxi held the ultimate trump card when it came to subduing a country as fervently Buddhist as Tibet After the death of the 6th Dalai Lama he successfully nurtured a reincarnation in a monastery in eastern Tibet The 7th Dalai Lama was therefore his to parade and sure enough a diminutive twelve year old boy was rapturously received in Lhasa This time Kangxi made sure Tibet remained firmly under his control formalizing the new relationship in a lengthy decree dated 1721 The Tibetans attached little importance to the Chinese verbiage To them it merely articulated a continuation of the historic Patron andPriest relationship established in Genghis Khan s time If they had taken it a little more seriously the enduring misunderstandings between China and Tibet might well have taken a different turn more on this later in Controlling the Margins The Potala Palace in Lhasa One of the great wonders of the world the Potala Palace was built by the great 5th Dalai Lama Lobsang Gyatso beginning in 1645 It was completed in 1694 twelve years after he died The palace is named for the Potala hill on Cape Comorin at the southern tip of India a rocky point there being considered sacred to Avalokitesvara or Chenrezig the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion Wikimedia Commons User Coolmanjackey CC BY SA 3 0 57