Does the Dalai Lama have family?

His Holiness  Tenzin Gyatso, the XIVth Dalai Lama, is the Tibetan people’s spiritual and temporal leader.

His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso was born as Lhamo Thondup on July 6, 1935, to a farming and horse trading family in Taktser or Chija Tagtser, a small hamlet on the outskirts of the traditional Tibetan region of Amdo in Qinghai Province.

He was one of seven siblings who survived childhood, as well as one of three reincarnated Rinpoches in the same family. Tsering Dolma, his eldest sister, was sixteen years his senior and served as a midwife to his mother during his birth. She would accompany him into exile, where she would establish Tibetan Children’s Villages.

His eldest brother, Thupten Jigme Norbu, was recognised as the reincarnation of the high Lama, the 6th Taktser Rinpoche, by the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of three.

Tendzin Choegyal, his fifth brother, had been designated as the 16th Ngari Rinpoche. Jetsun Pema, his sister, spent the majority of her adult life working on the Tibetan Children’s Villages project.

His Holiness  Tenzin Gyatso, was selected as the tulku of the 13th Dalai Lama in 1937 and formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in a public declaration near the town of Bumchen in 1939.

In 1950, at 16, His Holiness was called upon to assume full political power as Head of State and Government when Tibet was threatened by the might of China.