6th Dalai Lama

Tsangyang Gyatso (T. tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho ཚངས་དབྱངས་རྒྱ་མཚོ།) (1683-1706) was the sixth Dalai Lama of Tibet. He was was born at Urgelling Monastery in the northwestern part of present-day Arunachal Pradesh.

The popular image of the Sixth Dalai Lama is of a poet and libertine, fond of alcohol and of the brothels in the village of Shol (shol) to the south of the Potala. Poems ascribed to him were collected into two texts, of which the shorter (tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho'i mgu glu) has been frequently translated into English. Both this text and the longer text (tshangs dbyangs rgya mtsho'i gsung mgur) consist of brief popular lyrics (gzhas) on the themes of love, the natural world and spiritual life. There is, however, no firm evidence for the ascription of these poems to Tsangyang Gyatso.

He disappeared near Qinghai, on his way to Beijing in 1706.

Further reading

• Simon Wickham-Smith  (2012), The Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso], Treasury of Lives

• "Short Biographies of the Previous Dalai Lamas". DalaiLama.com. 
• 6th Dalai Lama (Wikipedia)
• Mullin, Glenn H. (2001). The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation, pp. 238–271. Clear Light Publishers. Santa Fe, New Mexico. ISBN 1-57416-092-3.
• Dargyé, Ngawang Lhundrup. The Hidden Life of the Sixth Dalai Lama (Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture), Lexington, 2011
• Dhondup, K. "Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama", Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1981. Bilingual, Tibetan and English. [ISBN: 81-85102-11-2]
• Rick Fields, Brian Cutillo & Mayumi Oda, The Turquoise Bee: The Lovesongs of the Sixth Dalai Lama, Harpercollins, 1994.
• Geoffrey Waters, White Crane: Love Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama, White Pine Press, 2007
• Paul D. Williams, Songs of Love, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama, I.B. Taurus, 2005. [ISBN: 1 85043 479 4]
• Michael Aris, Hidden Treasures & Secret Lives: A Study of Pemalingpa (1450-1521) and The Sixth Dalai Lama (1683-1706), Routledge, 2016. [ISBN: 978-1138992191]