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Finally, he saw a small house with strangely shaped guttering. These were followed by the image of a three-storied monastery with a turquoise and gold roof and a path running from it to a hill. Looking into the waters of the sacred lake, Lhamoi Lhatso, in southern Tibet, he clearly saw the Tibetan letters Ah, Ka and Ma float into view. Shortly after that the Regent, himself a senior lama, had a vision. During the mummification process, the head was discovered to have turned from facing south to the northeast. One of these concerned the embalmed body of his predecessor, Thupten Gyatso, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who had died aged fifty-seven in 1933. It had been led there by a number of signs. When Lhamo Thondup was two years old, a search party that had been sent out by the Tibetan government to find the new incarnation of the Dalai Lama arrived at Kumbum monastery. But as a fifty-six year old, when I consider my experience during this present life, and given my Buddhist beliefs, I have no difficulty accepting that I am spiritually connected both to the thirteen previous Dalai Lamas, to Chenrezig and to the Buddha himself”. “I am often asked whether I truly believe this.

Thus, His Holiness is also believed to be a manifestation of Chenrezig, in fact the seventy-fourth in a lineage that is traced back to a Brahmin boy who lived in the time of Buddha Shakyamuni. His Holiness is considered to be the present incarnation of the previous thirteen Dalai Lamas of Tibet (the first having been born in 1391 CE), who are in turn considered to be manifestations of Avalokiteshvara, or Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, holder of the White Lotus. This, coupled with my insistence that I be allowed always to sit at the head of the table, was later said to be an indication that I must have known that I was destined for greater things”. I'm going to Lhasa, I'm going to Lhasa, I would say. Another favourite occupation of mine as an infant was to pack things in a bag as if I was about to go on a long journey. I liked to sit in the hens' nest and make clucking noises. “One thing that I remember enjoying particularly as a very young boy was going into the chicken coop to collect the eggs with my mother and then staying behind. My earliest memories were very ordinary.” His Holiness recollects, among his earliest memories, observing a group of children fighting and running to join the weaker side. “I myself likewise had no particular intimation of what lay ahead. Although His Holiness’s father’s remarkable recovery from critical illness at the time of His Holiness’s birth was auspicious, it was not taken to be of great significance. It was almost unthinkable that more than one tulku (reincarnate lama) could be born into the same family and certainly my parents had no idea that I would be proclaimed Dalai Lama”, His Holiness writes.

“Of course, no one had any idea that I might be anything other than an ordinary baby. The youngest brother, Tenzin Choegyal was also recognized as the reincarnation of another high lama, Ngari Rinpoche. He had three elder brothers: Thubten Jigme Norbu - the eldest, who was recognized as the reincarnation of a high lama, Taktser Rinpoche - Gyalo Thondup and Lobsang Samden. Without hesitation she put her thumb on the reluctant lid and forced it wide fortunately without any ill effect”, narrates His Holiness. “When she delivered me, she noticed that one of my eyes was not properly open. At the time of His Holiness’s birth she helped his mother run the house and acted as the midwife. Tsering Dolma, the eldest child, was eighteen years older than His Holiness. His Holiness had two sisters and four brothers.

She gave birth to sixteen children, of whom seven survived.

His Holiness recalls his mother as undoubtedly one of the kindest people he has ever known. “Yet he was a kind man too and he never bore grudges”. “I remember pulling at his moustache once and being hit hard for my trouble”, recalls His Holiness. His father was a man of medium height with a very quick temper. His Holiness’s parents were small farmers who mostly grew barley, buckwheat and potatoes. His Holiness writes in his autobiography, “During my early childhood, my family was one of twenty or so making a precarious living from the land there”. The reason for this was the unpredictability of the weather in that area. Its pastures had not been settled or farmed for long, only grazed by nomads. Taktser (Roaring Tiger) was a small village that stood on a hill overlooking a broad valley. He was named Lhamo Thondup, which literally means ‘Wish-Fulfilling Goddess’. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was born on 6 July 1935 to a Tibetan farming family in the small village of Taktser, located in the province of Amdo.