Panchen Lama
[3] Khedrup Gelek Pelzang, Sönam Choklang and Ensapa Lobsang Döndrup were subsequently recognized as the first to third Panchen Lamas posthumously.
Three days later, the six-year-old Panchen Lama was kidnapped by the government of the People's Republic of China and his family was taken into custody.
Their nomination has been widely rejected by Buddhists in Tibet and abroad, while governments have called for information about and the release of the Panchen Lama.
From the name of this monastery, the Europeans referred to the Panchen Lama as the Tashi-Lama (also spelled Tesho-Lama or Teshu-Lama).
He was the tutor and a close ally of the 5th Dalai Lama,[19] "The Great Fifth", as he is known, pronounced the Panchen to be an incarnation of the celestial buddha Amitābha.
[22] Since then, every incarnation of the Panchen Lama has been the master of Tashilhunpo Monastery[20] and it is there that they have all received their education and their mummified bodies were enshrined.
Traditionally, there were considered to be four Indian and three Tibetan incarnations before Khedrup, starting with Subhuti, one of the original disciples of Gautama Buddha.
[35][36][37] There, he adopted the ideas of Sun Yatsen through revolutionary Pandatsang Rapga of the Tibet Improvement Party.
[40] The Republic of China government, then embroiled in the Chinese Civil War, declared its support for Tseten on June 3, 1949.
[41] Chinese Nationalist governor Ma Bufang allowed Kumbum Monastery to be totally self-governed by Tseten, now called Gyaltsen,[42] while the 14th Dalai Lama's government refused to recognize him.
[43] Radio Beijing broadcast the religious leader's call for Tibet to be "liberated" into the PRC, which created pressure on the Lhasa government to negotiate with the People's Republic.
"[48] However in 1962, he wrote the 70,000 Character Petition detailing abuses of power in Tibet and discussed it with Premier Zhou Enlai.
[51] In 1989, the tenth Panchen Lama died suddenly in Shigatse at the age of 51 shortly after giving a speech criticizing the excesses of the Cultural Revolution in Tibet but praising the reform and opening up of the 1980s.
With this appointment, Lobsang Choekyi Gyaltsen's three previous incarnations were posthumously recognised as Panchen Lamas.
[64] On January 26, 1940, the Regent Reting Rinpoche requested the Central Government to exempt Tenzin Gyatso from lot-drawing process using Golden Urn to become the 14th Dalai Lama.
It is suggested that the Chinese government may give the title of Dalai Lama to the son of a loyal ethnic Tibetan Communist party member and it will pressure Western governments to recognize its boy, and not the boy chosen by Lamas in India, as the head of Tibetan Buddhism.
