The Dalai Lama Succession for Tibetan Buddhists

The Dalai Lama at the main Tibetan temple in Dharamsala, India, in September 2024 Credit: The New York Times/Redux

 

"Both the Dalai and Panchen Lamas are believed to be reincarnations of different aspects of the Buddha. In a relationship likened to the sun and the moon, over the centuries each has acted as mentor to the other, and often, but not always, played a key role in affirming the identification of the other’s reincarnation."

"...Following the regent’s instructions, a search party, travelling more than 400 miles on horseback, eventually came to the home of a young child named Lhamo Dondrub."

"The child was given a traditional test of being presented with a number of items, including a bowl and prayer beads, that had belonged to his predecessor, along with similar items that had not. In every case, the child correctly identified those belonging to the 13th Dalai Lama, saying “It’s mine. It’s mine…”."

"He was taken to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and installed in the Potala palace, the complex where the Dalai Lamas resided for centuries. He was just 15 when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950 and he formally assumed the role as the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people."

Mick Brown, The Telegraph 

A painting by Kanwal Krishna of Tenzin Gyatso as a young boy, circa late 1930s Credit: Kanwal Krishna/AFP via Getty Images

 

 It has been close to seven decades since the Dalai Lama led tens of thousands of his faithful followers on a journey out of Tibet, their ancestral home, following its invasion and absorption by China, to establish a nation in exile, in India. In the Indian Himalaya, as the spiritual and political leader of Tibetan Buddhists, the Dalai Lama established his democracy, including a parliament and a bureaucracy encouraging a culture of service within his retinue of a scattered people.

 

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama (centre, white horse), fled Tibet for India after the Chinese invasion of 1959 Credit: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group Editorial

  

Across India, the administration the Dalai Lama established operates Tibetan schools, clinics, monasteries, agricultural cooperatives and old-age homes. Exiled Tibetan face the anxiety of uncertainty in their stateless nation as they contemplate the future beyond the presence of the now-90-year-old Dalai Lama who is becoming increasingly frail. He had doubtless hoped to return his people to their homeland within his lifetime, a desire that remains far from the potential of realization. 

 

China remains determined to crush whatever remains of the Tibetan movement for autonomy. "We are  hoping for the best but preparing for the worst", Tsering Yangchen, a member of Tibet's parliament in exile said in exasperated resignation. The Dalai Lama has promised to reveal a plan to decide on his successor, by July 6, his birth-date. A plan that faces its own bedevilling complexity in the face of China's attempts to control the process.

 

Tibetan tradition has it that the search for a reincarnated Dalai Lama to become the current one's successor, begins only when the incumbent passes away. Once the successor Dalai Lama is identified as an infant, a gap of close to two decades can occur until he is groomed and prepared to fill his destined position of divine authority. The Dalai Lama has decided his successor will be one born in a free country, among Tibetan exiles, numbering some 140,000, half residing in India. To add to the mystery, he alludes his successor could be an adult, not necessarily male.

 

At the age of six, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognised by the Dalai Lama as the 11th incarnation of the Panchen Lama in 1995. He and his parents were seized days later Credit: Pictures from History/Universal Images Group Editorial

 

China has its own ideas of how to proceed. After the 10th Panchen Lama -- the second highest spiritual figure in Tibet Buddhism died in 1989, the boy the Dalai Lama recognized as the successor was kidnapped in Tibet at age six, and never since seen nor heard of. China selected and promoted its own Panchen Lama; that Lama met with Xi Jinping earlier this month, reaffirming his allegiance to the Communist Party of China.

 

Following the 13th Dalai Lama's death in 1933, a search committee began the process of identifying a child to become the new spiritual leader of Tibet. Two years of searching resulted in the boy's discovery and he was moved to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. His education, his assumption of political leadership, was swiftly accomplished in recognition of the Chinese government tightening its grip around the autonomous region. When the inevitable occurred, the  young Dalai Lama led his followers in a long caravan of exile.

 

Tibetan activist and poet Tenzin Tsundue, warned that Chinese interference in the succession of the current Dalai Lama would run the risk of provoking unrest among the six million people within Tibet.

"The Dalai Lama has been out of his house and country for 65 years, and that has already created a great sense of pain, anger, frustration and disappointment among the Tibetans inside Tibet."

"This will, you know, burst into [a] volcano." 

 

Almost 90 years old, the Dalai Lama is transported in a golf cart (pictured attending a prayer offering ceremony in McLeod Ganj, near Dharamsala in June 2025) Credit: Sanjay Baid/AFP via Getty Images