Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Recognized at age two as the reincarnation of his predecessor, enthroned at four, and given full political authority at fifteen as Chinese troops were entering Tibet. In 1959 he fled across the Himalayas on foot and established a government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, where he has lived ever since. He has spent more than sixty years teaching that compassion is not a soft virtue but the most practical force a person can cultivate — in dialogue with neuroscientists, Christian and Jewish leaders, and millions of ordinary readers through books like The Art of Happiness and Ethics for the New Millennium. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his nonviolent struggle for Tibet.