How the Dalai Lama Became a Monk

Event details

April 22, 6 PM

Location: Somers

This event is free and open to the public

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Unrecorded Tibetan artist, Chenrézik, The Embodiment of Compassion, detail, 18th or 19th century, Distemper in cloth, 58 x 34 ½ inches, Tang Teaching Museum Collection, The Jack Shear Collection of Tibetan Art, a partnership between the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, The Frances Lehman Lob Art Center, Vassar College, and The Williams College Museum of Art, 2023.31.2

Join us Wednesday, April 22, for an evening focused on Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lama, bringing together students and the renowned scholar Donald S. Lopez Jr.

At 5 pm, students in Associate Professor Ben Bogin’s Asian Studies seminar “The Dalai Lama: Buddhism, Politics, and Global Celebrity“ will share their research in a talk in the Winter Gallery called “Six Previous Incarnations of the Dalai Lama.” The students’ presentations will be in front of thangka paintings on view in the gallery for one night.

At 6 pm, Lopez will deliver a lecture titled “How the Dalai Lama Became a Monk,” which will reflect on a photographic portrait of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, on the occasion of his monastic ordination in 1944.

Both events are free and open to the public.

About About Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Donald S. Lopez Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He specializes in late Indian Mahayana Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, and is the author of numerous books, including A Study of Svātantrika, The Heart Sutra Explained: Indian and Tibetan Commentaries, and Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra.