The beliefs or opinions that are generally held about someone or something. (Oxford Dictionary)
It is a word that is common in everyday discourse and often used without much attention to its complexmeaning.as such, very little effort is invested in verifying the origin or accuracy of a particular reputation.
People make their reputation by good or bad actions they do in their life and one of people who had made a reputation through his actions <the 14th Dalai Lama>.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, describes himself as a simple Buddhist monk. He is the spiritual leader of Tibet. He was born on 6 July 1935, to a farming family, in a small hamlet located in Taktser, Amdo, and northeastern Tibet. At the very …show more content…
The Dalai Lama played social and political roles in the history of Tibet since the 13th century which made the spread of Buddhism in Tibet widely and effectively. Tibet was a fertile land of spreading such a religion because the true meaning of Buddhism was finding true happiness by freeing one-self of hatred, oppression and suffering. Also, Dalai Lama's strong claims of peace and freedom matched with population needs not only in Tibet but with oppressed people worldwide. He declared in his speech of accepting the Noble prize "I accept the prize on behalf of the oppressed everywhere for all those who struggle for freedom and woke for the world peace. “As you know, Tibet has, for forty years, been under foreign occupation. Today, more than a quarter of a million Chinese troops are stationed in Tibet. Some sources estimate the occupation army to be twice this strength. During this time, Tibetans have been deprived of their most basic human rights, including the right to life, movement, speech, worship, only to mention a few." For Tibetans, the Dalai Lama was a living Buddha who holds the message of Buddhism and his role is completing the previous Dalai Lamas before …show more content…
The Chinese portray contemporary Tibet as an area where there is freedom of religion. The Dalai Lama government in exile portrays Tibet as an area where religion has been suppressed. Under these circumstances, the reputation of Dalai Lama himself various widely.
As we have seen, the Dalai Lamas reputation in the west is based largely on his personal qualities rather than on his religious status. He is both helped and hampered by the fact that the west is in the middle of love affair with all things Tibetan based in part on a romantic notion of Tibet, it is religion and its people. The American scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, Donald Lopez, sees the Romantic notion of Tibet as an issue both for scholarship and for the Tibetan peoples themselves.
He expresses that in this way:
“Tibet s complexities and competing histories have been flattened into a stereotype. Stereotype operates through adjectives, which establish chosen characteristics as if they were eternal truths. Tibet is isolated Tibetans are content monks are spiral with sufficient repetition; these adjectives become innate qualities, immune from history. (Lopez, 1998,