The Dalai Lama, who will celebrate his 90th birthday on Sunday, confirmed on Wednesday, July 2, that a successor would be designated when he died to guarantee the continuity of his function of the spiritual leader of the Tibetan community, a highly anticipated decision that sounds like a challenge for China.
“I affirm that the institution of Dalai Lama will be perpetuated,” he said in a message reading during a religious meeting at McLeod Ganj, in northern India, where he lives in exile.
The question of his succession is crucial because Tibetans suspect that China wants to name a successor in his hand.
“Born in the free world”
“The responsibility (of the appointment of a successor, note of the editor) will be based exclusively on the members of the Ganden Phodrang Trust, the Office of Hijosos Dalai Lama,” is specified.
“They will carry out research and recognition procedures (of the successor) according to the last tradition,” he continued, “no one else has the authority required to mix with this question.”
The current Dalai Lama, considered a dangerous separatist by Beijing, had already publicly ruled out the idea that Dalai Lama’s 15 could be designated by the Chinese.
He will necessarily be “born in the free world,” he publicly promised numerous occasions.
Kidnapped child
In 1995, China had eliminated and placed a 6 -year -old child in detention that the Dalai Lama had just designated as Panchen Lama, the other leading Tibetan religious figure. Beijing had designated in the process as such the candidate of his choice, immediately rejected by Tibetans as the “false Panchen”.
Even if in recent years, the Dalai Lama has suggested the idea that it could be the last one, most Tibetans were favorable for the search for the “reincarnation cycle.”
In his message, the many requests of his community reported on Wednesday in favor of the extension of his office. “I have received in particular, by various media, many Tibet Tibet messages that repeat this same call,” he said.
Chosen at the age of 2 years
Born on July 6, 1935, Tenzin Gyatso for civil status became the age of two years the fourteenth spiritual and political leader of Tibetans, duly identified by the Buddhist tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor.
Tibetan Buddhists believe that the Dalai Lama are a reincarnation of the “bodhisattva of compassion”, which made desire reborn to help all living beings, instead of accessing Nirvana. All, to date, were men, recognized when they were children and assumed their duties in adolescence.
Tenzin Gyatso was appointed by three groups of monks in 1936, in particular because he managed to point out the finger to the objects that had belonged to their predecessors.
The Dalai Lama fled the Tibet, under the control of China since 1950, and has spent most of his time in a monastery of McLeod Ganj, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. In 2011, he resigned from the political power of his office, entrusted to a prime minister, chosen by the diaspora and a government in exile.
Winner in 1989 of the Nobel Peace Prize, since then he has embodied the struggle for the freedom of the territory of Himalayas. The organized festivities on the occasion of its 90th anniversary must be pressed until the end of the week.
Source: BFM TV
