This would allow the Dalai Lama to “emanate” into another person before his death, thereby expressly choosing his successor. Briefly, this involves the concept that superior Bodhisattvas can manifest themselves into multiple bodies simultaneously, and can thus “manifest an emanation” while still alive. Even though the Dalai Lama voluntarily devolved his authority as a temporal leader to the elected Tibetan government in exile in 2011, his status as Tibetan Buddhists’ spiritual authority remains unchanged-and, indeed, is the source of Beijing’s continued frustration with and fear of him.Īs one possible way to avoid the interregnum problem, the Dalai Lama issued a statement in 2011 that offered an alternative to reincarnation as the mechanism to determine a successor. This historically tense interregnum period promises to be even more fractious under the current circumstances, with the Dalai Lama exiled in India and Beijing asserting that it alone has the final say in anointing his successor. Regents appointed to rule during the interregnum period often lacked authority among the people, and a suspicious number of Dalai Lamas died at young ages as various individuals vied for power and influence. (Martin Scorsese dramatized this tradition in his 1997 film Kundun.) An inherent political weakness in this process was the interregnum-the time between the previous Dalai Lama’s death and the eventual maturity of his successor. Tibetan masters recognized each successive Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of his predecessors after a Dalai Lama’s death, they searched for his reincarnation among recently-born children, interpreting various signs and clues to do so. The process of selecting the Dalai Lama has often been fraught with intrigue and violence. policy on religion? And, of no small consequence given the central importance of the institution of the Dalai Lama to Tibetan Buddhists, how and when will the successor to the Dalai Lama be chosen? How will this process inflame or forestall tensions on the Tibetan plateau, and, more broadly, between China, India, and the United States? His departure exposed the rift between the Tibetan faithful and the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), one which has not closed in the six decades since-and which threatens to become even deeper once the current Dalai Lama, 83-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, passes on.įor the Tibetan community inside and outside of China, the prospect raises painful but unavoidable questions: How will Tibetans within the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) be allowed to mourn a religious leader that Beijing has previously demonized as a “wolf in monk’s robes”? Will Tibetans remain largely non-violent (at least toward bodies other than their own) in expressing their resistance to P.R.C. This month marks the 60th anniversary of the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet.
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