The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, has given his clearest signal that the 600-year-old institution will continue after his death. He made the announcement during prayer celebrations marking his 90th birthday on Monday.
On June 30, the Dalai Lama joined thousands of Buddhists in prayer celebrations that became a landmark event resonating far beyond the Indian Himalayan town where he has lived for several decades.
“As for the institution of the Dalai Lama, a structure will be created within which we can discuss its continuation,” he said in Tibetan. He said his milestone birthday would also be a time to encourage people to plan for a future without him and decide whether the Tibetan people want to have another Dalai Lama in the future.
The Dalai Lama hinted that traditional rules could be disregarded in order to prevent Beijing from controlling the selection of his successor. He suggested that his successor could be chosen from among Tibetan exiles. There are 140,000 of them, half of who live in India. The Dalai Lama also said that the successor could be an adult, not necessarily a man.
China has a template for how to conduct the succession process in Tibet. After the Panchen Lama, the second highest spiritual leader of the Tibetans, died in 1989, China found and raised its own Panchen Lama, not the one named by the Dalai Lama.
In early June, he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping and declared his loyalty to the Communist Party.
Who will be the next Dalai Lama?
The head of the Tibetan government, Penpa Tsering, based in the Himalayan town of McLeod Ganj in India, said that a meeting of the most senior Tibetan religious leaders, known as lamas, would take place on July 2.
According to Tibetans, the monk, whose official name is Tenzin Gyatso, is the 14th incarnation of the Dalai Lama.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate is expected to celebrate his 90th birthday on July 6 with a huge crowd in northern India, where he has been living since fleeing his homeland from Chinese troops in 1959.
Many Tibetans in exile fear that China will appoint a successor to strengthen its control over the territory it invaded in 1950. The name of the current Dalai Lama was identified in 1936 when, at the age of two, he passed a test by pointing to objects that belonged to his predecessor.
