The Dalai Lama has announced that he will have a successor after his death, continuing a centuries-old tradition that has become a flashpoint in the struggle with China\u2019s Communist Party over Tibet\u2019s future. <\/p>\n
Tibetan Buddhism\u2019s spiritual leader made the declaration on Wednesday in a video message to religious elders gathering in Dharamshala, India, where the Nobel Peace laureate has lived since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese communist rule in 1959. <\/p>\n
\u201cI am affirming that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,\u201d the Dalai Lama said in the pre-recorded video, citing requests he received over the years from Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhists urging him to do so. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Gaden Phodrang Trust has sole authority to recognize the future reincarnation; no one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter,\u201d he added, using the formal name for the office of the Dalai Lama. <\/p>\n
The office should carry out the procedures of search and recognition of the future dalai lama \u201cin accordance with past tradition,\u201d he said, without revealing further details on the process. <\/p>\n
The Dalai Lama has previously stated that when he is about 90 years old, he will consult the high lamas of Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan public to re-evaluate whether the institution of the dalai lama should continue. <\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s announcement \u2013 delivered days before his 90th birthday this Sunday \u2013 sets the stage for a high-stakes battle over his succession, between Tibetan leaders in exile and China\u2019s atheist Communist Party, which insists it alone holds the authority to approve the next dalai lama. <\/p>\n
In a memoir published in March, the Dalai Lama states that his successor will be born in the \u201cfree world\u201d outside China, urging his followers to reject any candidate selected by Beijing. <\/p>\n
That could lead to the emergence of two rival dalai lamas: one chosen by his predecessor, the other by the Chinese Communist Party, experts say. <\/p>\n
\u201cBoth the Tibetan exile community and the Chinese government want to influence the future of Tibet, and they see the next Dalai Lama as the key to do so,\u201d said Ruth Gamble, an expert in Tibetan history at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. <\/p>\n
Samdhong Rinpoche, a senior official at the Dalai Lama\u2019s office, told reporters on Wednesday that any further information about the procedures or methods of the Dalai Lama\u2019s reincarnation would not be revealed to the public until the succession takes place. <\/p>\n
Over a lifetime in exile, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, has become synonymous with Tibet and its quest for genuine autonomy under Beijing\u2019s tightening grip on the Himalayan region. <\/p>\n
From his adopted hometown of Dharamshala, where he established a government-in-exile, the spiritual leader has unified Tibetans at home and in exile and elevated their plight onto the global stage. <\/p>\n
That has made the Dalai Lama a persistent thorn in the side of Beijing, which denounces him as a dangerous \u201cseparatist\u201d and a \u201cwolf in monk\u2019s robes.\u201d <\/p>\n
Since the 1970s, the Dalai Lama has maintained that he no longer seeks full independence for Tibet, but \u201cmeaningful\u201d autonomy that would allow Tibetans to preserve their distinct culture, religion and identity. His commitment to the nonviolent \u201cmiddle way\u201d approach has earned him international support and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. <\/p>\n
The Dalai Lama has long been wary of Beijing\u2019s attempt to meddle with the reincarnation system of Tibetan Buddhism. <\/p>\n
Tibetan Buddhists believe in the circle of rebirth, and that when an enlightened spiritual master like the Dalai Lama dies, he will be able to choose the place and time of his rebirth through the force of compassion and prayer. <\/p>\n
But the religious tradition has increasingly become a battleground for the control of Tibetan hearts and minds, especially since the contested reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in the religion. <\/p>\n
In 1995, years after the death of the 10th Panchen Lama, Beijing installed its own panchen lama in defiance of the Dalai Lama, whose pick for the role \u2013 a six-year-old boy \u2013 has since vanished from public view. <\/p>\n
Under Tibetan tradition, the dalai lamas and the panchen lamas have long played key roles in recognizing each other\u2019s reincarnations. Experts believe Beijing will seek to interfere in the current Dalai Lama\u2019s succession in a similar way. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a whole series of high-level reincarnated lamas cultivated by the Chinese government to work with it inside Tibet. (Beijing) will call on all of those to help establish the Dalai Lama that they pick inside Tibet,\u201d Gamble said. \u201cThere\u2019s been a long-term plan to work toward this.\u201d <\/p>\n
Beijing has repeatedly said that the reincarnation of all Living Buddhas \u2013 or high-ranking lamas in Tibetan Buddhism \u2013 must comply with Chinese laws and regulations, with search and identification conducted in China and approved by the central government. <\/p>\n
A \u201cresolution of gratitude\u201d statement released by Tibetan Buddhist religious leaders gathering in Dharamshala on Wednesday said they \u201cstrongly condemn the People\u2019s Republic of China\u2019s usage of reincarnation subject for their political gain\u201d and \u201cwill never accept it.\u201d <\/p>\n
For his part, the current Dalai Lama has made clear that any candidate appointed by Beijing will hold no legitimacy in the eyes of Tibetans or followers of Tibetan Buddhism. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is totally inappropriate for Chinese Communists, who explicitly reject religion, including the idea of past and future lives, to meddle in the system of reincarnation of lamas, let alone that of the Dalai Lama,\u201d he writes in his latest memoir, \u201cVoice for the Voiceless.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Dalai Lama has announced that he will have a successor after his death, continuing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/profitalarm.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}