The Dalai Lama signals China should stay out of divine succession process
The Dalai Lama said Wednesday that the former Tibetan Buddhist institution on which he leads will live after his death, ending the speculation that he would be the last person to occupy the role of the intention to reincarnate.
As part of the celebrations marking his 90th anniversary, the Nobel Peace winner also pointed out that China, that Tibetan activists accuse of suppressing their language, their culture and their religion, should remain outside the process of choosing the next Dalai Lama.
The rare remarks of the 14th Dalai Lama came while anxiety rises which will follow him as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.
“I assert that the institution of Dalai Lama will continue,” said Dalai Lama, who spent almost 70 years living in exile in India after fled Tibet, an autonomous Himalayas region in China.
“I reiterate by the present that the Gaden Phodrang Trust has the only power to recognize future reincarnation,” he said, referring to an organization he has founded. “No one else has such authority to interfere in this case.”
The Chinese government responded quickly to the comments, with a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that any succession planning must comply with laws and regulations, according to Reuters.
The Tibetan spiritual leader made these announcements before his 90th anniversary on July 6, after a conference of representatives of the four main traditions of Tibetan Buddhism in the Indian city of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government in exile.
He is unusual for a living Dalai Lama to talk about his successor, the research for those who start only at his death because it implies reincarnation. But as the 14th Dalai Lama is aging, it is increasingly worrying that a gap in leadership can be benefited from the Chinese government.
“I think his holiness feels the need to reassure people by letting them know that he is thinking of the succession,” said Thupten Jinpa, his four decades, last week in a telephone interview in India.
Identified as a baby in 1937, the 14th Dalai Lama was officially recognized two years later. In addition to his role as a spiritual leader, he was a time leader in Tibet from 1950, when he was 15 years old and China began to annex the region.
In 1959, when he was 23 years old, the Dalai Lama and thousands of other Tibetans fled in India after a failed uprising against communist domination, finally settling in Dharamsala.
Since the 1970s, the objective of the movement has gone from Tibetan independence to authentic autonomy in China. In recent years, the Dalai Lama has also left its political role, which is now a democratically elected post.
In March, the Dalai Lama declared in a new book that his successor would have been born in the “free world” outside of China, so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama could continue. According to the central Tibetan administration, there are around 130,000 Tibetan exiles worldwide, mainly in India and Nepal.
The Dalai Lama had previously declared in 2011 that the institution of the Dalai Lama did not necessarily have to continue at all and that it would leave the Tibetan Buddhist community.
Since then, he has received calls from a variety of constituencies, and the “unanimous” response, said Jinpa, there should be a 15th Dalai Lama.
“For the Tibetan people, his name came to symbolize the nation,” said Jinpa, who helped Dalai Lama with a number of books, including the recent “Voice for the Vocalless”.
It is also to be feared that if they will not select a new Dalai Lama, China could name one that is not disputed.
“Unfortunately, the government of the PRC will probably want to play a role, just as it has inserted in the process of recognition of the Panchen Lama,” said Jinpa, referring to the second highest spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism.
In 1995, the Dalai Lama recognized a 6 -year -old boy in Tibet like the 11th Panchen Lama, after the death of the previous six years earlier. The boy forcefully disappeared by the Chinese government three days later, say the rights for the rights, and has not been seen in public since.
China then chose its own Lama Panchen, imposing it on the six million people in Tibet.
The Tibetan government in exile does not recognize the Panchen Lama appointed to Beijing, which rarely appears in public but promised a loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party at a closed meeting last month with President Xi Jinping, the media reported.
If Beijing also tries to appoint a Dalai Lama, “the Tibetans would not be surprised,” said Jinpa. “They would be disappointed and annoyed, but I don’t think they would be surprised.”
The Chinese government says that Tibet has prospered under its reign and that it has improved infrastructure and social conditions and favored economic development. He says that the Dalai Lama is “a political exile engaged in separatist activities under the cover of religion” and that the reincarnation of the Tibetan lamas should be controlled by Beijing.
The reincarnation “must comply with Chinese laws and regulations” and “follow the process that consists of research and identification in China, to destroy from a golden urn and approval of the central government,” said the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mao Ning, in March.
