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

 

 

Dalai Lama Teaches Muslims How to Conduct Jihad

Tibetan spiritual leader claims Muslim terrorists have jihad all wrong, holy war 'combats inner destructive emotions.'

By Ari Yashar

First Publish: 9/20/2014, 10:05 PM

Dalai Lama (file)

Flash 90

 

The Dalai Lama on Saturday condemned violence in the name of religion, claiming the Muslim concept of jihad was being misused and misinterpreted by Islamist extremists.

The Nobel Peace prize winner was referring to bloodshed unleashed by the Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria and Iraq where it has conquered large swathes of territory, leaving bloodshed and brutal torture in its wake.

"Killing in the name of faith is unacceptable," he told a meeting of India's religious leaders including a senior Muslim cleric, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Bombay and the head of the Jewish community in Delhi at a two-day conference, reports AFP.

Jihad, the Muslim concept of holy war, should be a fight "to combat our inner destructive emotions", the 79-year-old spiritual leader said. "It (jihad) does not mean harming other people."

Not all share the appraisal that the ever-growing plague of violent jihadist terror is out of line with the Muslim precept of jihad.

Professor Rafi Israeli, an expert on Islam and the Arab world, told Arutz Sheva last Sunday that cruelty is a part of Islam, arguing the religion has a basic disregard for human life. He noted the Koran calls on Muslims to spread terror among their enemies without specifying who those enemies are, hence the internal war between Sunnis and Shi'ites since the start of the religion.

That take on Islam has been played out most recently by ISIS, which lately released videos of its brutal beheadings of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as UK aid worker David Haines.

However, the Dalai Lama said "if we remain indifferent to what is happening around us, it is wrong. The spiritual people can show the world that it can be a happy family (despite) the different faiths."

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, lives in the northern Indian hill station of Dharamsala. He says he supports "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet within China rather than outright independence, but Chinese authorities accuses him of covertly campaigning for Tibet's independence, branding him a "splittist."

Splittist Dog

"I want to meet with the public. [If leaders like U.S. President Barack Obama] are willing to meet me, I'm happy. Otherwise I don't want to create any inconvenience, that's not my purpose. There's no reason for disappointment. My main interest or commitment is promotion of human values."
"It seems that the more accusations from the Chinese government, the more popularity for me. When I visit different places, if the Chinese government remained silent, then the press may not pay much attention. When the Chinese protest, you pay more attention."
"Norway, a smaller country, you can do more. Norway, a smaller (country), can make a significant contribution. This is my view."
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama stands with chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee Thorbjorn Jagland, right, and deputy chairwoman Kaci Kullmann Five from the Nobel Peace Prize committee, in Oslo, Wednesday May 7, 2014. Norway's decision to shun the Dalai Lama during his visit to Oslo this week has left a sour taste for a country that prides itself in being a beacon of human rights in the world. Unlike on his previous visits to Norway, no government officials will meet the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Tibetan spiritual leader, who arrived in Oslo on Wednesday for a three-day stay. (AP Photo/Heiko Junge, NTB Scanpix)

The government of Norway decided to opt for caution rather than to publicly bring notice to themselves honouring the presence in Oslo of the revered Tibetan holy man, the Dalai Lama. The concern was that China would be enraged. And enraging China would not auger well for the sale of North Sea oil to that energy-consumption Colossus. Though China represents Norway's sixth-largest trading partner, evidently Norway is so greedy for trade it doesn't much mind trading morals for money.

Its 'morals', however, come into full display at certain times against certain other countries. Take Israel, for example, whom Norway is in full throttle of slamming with a robustly sanctimonious boycott-divestment program, snubbing its former friendly relations with the Jewish state. And it is past interesting to note that Hanne Nabintu Herland, a noted Norwegian author and historian of religion had this to say about her country:

"The degree of anti-Israelism in Norway today on the state level, in the media, in the trade unions and at the universities, colleges and schools is unprecedented in modern Norwegian history. The powerful individuals that have pushed for these negative and biased attitudes in Norway are today responsible for creating a politically-correct hatred towards Israel that today portrays my country internationally as the most anti-Semitic country in the West."

But setting Israel aside it is at present Norway's treatment of the Dalai Lama that has been placed under the microscope of detecting craven cynicism in the affair of shunning personal contact with the spiritual leader whose self-imposed exile from Tibet was forced upon him by the Chinese authorities who regarded him as a "splittest", intent on sundering that ancient country from the geography of China which had invaded it and claims it as part of China. China values "harmony" and harmonious relations within China its goal, forcefully hammering down protest against its human rights abuses.

When Norway's Nobel committee awarded jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Peace Prize in 2010, China broke off government high-level and diplomatic contacts with Norway, straining trade relations, disrupting salmon exports from Norway and pitting the world's second-largest economy against Western Europe's largest oil exporter. Norway's Foreign Minister Boerge Brenda last month stated that his country needs "to focus on our relationship with China", and accordingly it would become "difficult to normalize our relationship with China", should the government officially recognize the Dalai Lama.

"Normalize" relations with China? Does that then mean that China's aggression toward its South China Sea neighbours, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam should be overlooked? China, after all, has authorized its ships to ram and water-cannon Vietnamese vessels attempting to stop Beijing from setting up a huge oil rig in the South China Sea where Vietnam claims sovereignty. If the government of Norway is agonizing over its Nobel committee's choices over which the government has no control, it might consider returning that privilege to Sweden, and then it would face no further problems with China over the granting of the Peace Prize.

The Dalai Lama's visit to Oslo this week coincided with the 25th anniversary of his having received the Nobel Peace Prize. When jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo became a laureate in 2010 it was in recognition of his struggles for peace within a country whose human rights record was, is, and will remain for the foreseeable future abysmal. The Dalai Lama fled his country to preserve his life. Since then hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have died, resulting from China's anti-human-rights policies. 

Norway is sufficiently venal to overlook such inconveniences in favour of currying a place in China's esteem as a reliable trading partner.

Last year, Zhao Jun, China's ambassador to Norway made it perfectly clear that no headway could be made without Norway back-tracking in its humble support of human rights. China's ambassador stated outright that the Nordic country has a need to proffer the first apologetic move, pledging never to again cross "red policy lines", and then the diplomatic freeze that had been imposed on Norway after the granting of the prize to its jailed dissident would be lifted.

In quietly chiding the newly (2013) elected government of Norway, the Dalai Lama was making allusion to his meeting earlier in 2014 with American President Barack Obama in defiance of the Chinese government's lodging of a formal diplomatic protest, warning that diplomatic relations between the United States and China would be deleteriously impacted. The Dalai Lama pointed out that large country or small, each makes a choice to uphold human rights or to withhold their support for fear of losing financial traction.

Norway has established its hypocritical choice.