` :Hi , good to hear from you after a long while. As usual, you have posed a good and interesting question and I am happy to address it, even though I am not the keeper of this article and I am not even sure it was myself who posted either of these statements, although I might well have been party to discussions which resulted in these wordings being commonly agreed upon. Nevertheless, I feel happy and flattered that you feel it appropriate to take it up with myself. :So, I have checked the article. I could not find anywhere that it says, as you wrote, ``The 14th Dalai Lama is merely an important Gelug Lama``. What I did find was a vaguely similar-sounding (but different) assertion in the first paragraph, that says ``Dalai Lamas are important monks of the Gelug school``. That is a generalisation, referring to all the Dalai Lamas, and I see nothing demeaning or belittling about it to justify the additional word ``merely`` as you have presumed to insert. Now, surveying the history of all the various Dalai Lamas, we find that some of them could be said to have had 'full political control over Tibet', while other Dalai Lamas wielded no political power over anything. That they were all important monks of the Gelug school, however, this is self-evident, and, indeed, fairly incontrovertible, would you agree? This is the one thing that all the Dalai Lamas do all have in common, apart from being male; they are not even all Tibetans, since the fourth was Mongolian by birth; neither did he wield political power, in Tibet or elsewhere. So, that the 14th, like all his predecessors, is definitely an ``important Gelugpa monk`` - in the sense that, though very, even extremely important, he still is not by definition the head of the Gelugpa lineage (a position held by the Ganden Tripa) - can be taken as a given, right? :Then I looked for where it says ``he had full political control over Tibet`` and in the following paragraph I found another similar-sounding assertion where it says he ``assumed full temporal (political) power over Tibet on 17 November 1950, at the age of 15, after China's invasion of Tibet`` (is this the one you refer to?). Come to think of it, this assertion in itself sounds somewhat contradictory to me: how could he have had 'full political power over Tibet', if China had gone and invaded it? Obviously, the Chinese were not under his power if they had just invaded his country, therefore his political power could not be described as ``full``, could it? Perhaps we should correct that. :But this is not your question, is it? You are asking whether assertion #2 contradicts the fact that like all Dalai Lamas he is ``an important Gelugpa monk``. Well, taking it one word at a time, he is evidently very important; he is certainly a member of the Gelugpa; and he is by all accounts a monk. In view of the above I do not see how whether that fact that he has political power or not over all or part of Tibet, or anywhere else, invalidates any part of this assertion, nor the assertion as a whole. In other words, if he held power over Tibet, it would not stop him being an important Gelugpa monk, and vice-versa. :This being the case, if you would kindly wish to clarify your statement as to how, exactly, you feel that the two assertions in the text (not your rendition of them in Talk) are contradictory, taking on board the above analysis, and, if you can kindly show how that it is indeed the case, then what kind of revision you would propose in order to remove the supposed contradiction, I would be very grateful and appreciative. I look forward to reading your response after due consideration, and further detailed discussion of the issue; if warranted.  `