Dalai Lama, China at odds over how successor will be chosen

The Herald Scotland

16-07-2025

Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk upon his death is reincarnated in the body of a child, who must be identified and then trained in Buddhist practice. In his declaration, the 90-year-old Dalai Lama said Gaden Phodrang, the foundation he created to uphold the Dalai Lama tradition, will have sole authority to recognize his successor.
"They should accordingly carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition," he said. "No one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter."
Beijing insists that it does.
"The reincarnation and succession of the Dalai Lama is inherently an internal affair of China," said Yu Jing, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in India -- where the Dalai Lama has lived in exile since 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet -- in one of a series of posts about the matter on the social platform X. She described the Nobel Laureate as "a political exile engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion."
Janet Gyatso, a professor of Buddhist studies at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that should China opt to pursue its own selection process, it wouldn't be the first time Buddhism has dealt with a dispute over the identity of the reincarnated Dalai Lama.
"What they (China) will do is not easy to say," Gyatso said. "But the political stakes are much higher than they've ever been."
A decades-old conflict
About 100,000 Tibetans live in exile, the majority of them in India, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C.
Nicole Willock, a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, said China's rebuke of the Dalai Lama's declaration illustrates an ongoing effort to belittle Tibet into irrelevance.
"The current CCP (Chinese Communist Party) policy under Xi Jinping is to isolate the Dalai Lama as he ages, forcing international corporations and anyone who wants to do business with China to forget about Tibet," she said.
As an example, she cited "Ghost of the Mountains," a Disney documentary feature about snow leopards - the national animal of Tibet - which she said makes no mention of Tibet, instead using Chinese terms to refer to it and the Tibetan plateau.
China colonized Tibet in the mid-20th century, at a time when African and Asian nations were gaining independence from colonial powers. In 1959, a failed uprising saw the Dalai Lama flee Tibet for northern India, where he set up a government in exile, which China has since refused to recognize.
Now, both sides are clashing over who gets to choose the Dalai Lama's successor.
"This is a history that the current PRC (People's Republic of China) regime wants the world to ignore," Willock said. "The CCP thinks if they control who the next Dalai Lama is that they will control the narrative on Tibet."
How the Dalai Lama reincarnates
The announcement on July 2 by one of the world's most influential religious figures, whose sway extends far beyond Buddhism, offered relief to those puzzled by his previous public musings over whether the tradition of Dalai Lama leadership should endure or defer to a democratically elected authority.
It also answered the wishes of followers who've held ever more frequent ceremonies wishing him good health and longevity while calling for his reincarnated return.
"Tibetans really want to have a Dalai Lama," Gyatso said.
The 14th Dalai Lama, born in 1935 as Lhamo Dhondup and enthroned in 1940, is a living example of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of recognizing reincarnations of previous Lamas who continue their work in the new reincarnation.
While the faith holds that everyone reincarnates, Gyatso said, only those who are highly enlightened, such as the Dalai Lama, can choose where they will do so.
"They can choose what mother and father they will be born to, in the best conditions to continue their work," she said.
However, once that happens the reincarnation must be pinpointed and recognized as such, a process handled "by highly evolved monks and specialists," she said. "There's a whole bunch of tests and methods done, usually when the child is about 3 or 4 years old."
In his statement, the Dalai Lama said his nonprofit foundation would oversee the succession process in consultation with his closest advisers and leaders of various Tibetan Buddhism traditions.
Jose Cabezon, a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said the declaration marked the first time the Dalai Lama had been so definitive about the certainty of a 15th Dalai Lama and how that person would be chosen. While offering "a great sense of relief" to Tibetans, he said, the statement's specificity was also "a warning to the PRC government not to meddle in this process."
Deciding who the real Dalai Lama is
What could happen, Gyatso said, is that two Dalai Lamas may be raised concurrently - one who becomes head of the Tibetan government in exile, and the other who assumes some as yet undefined role in China, which has said it will oversee selection of the Dalai Lama's successor through a timeworn imperial ritual in which names of possible reincarnations are drawn from a golden urn.
"What we're expecting to happen is that they (China) will conduct their own process," Gyatso said. "The Tibetans and the rest of the world will decide who they think is the real Dalai Lama."
Should such a scenario unfold, she said, most Tibetans outside China would likely follow the Dalai Lama in exile, while Tibetans inside China would be under enormous political pressure to accept the government-endorsed figurehead.
Cabezon said Beijing's insistence on appointing the Dalai Lama's successor is ironic given that the government eschews religion and considers reincarnation to be superstitious.
"Beijing will undoubtedly appoint a 15th Dalai Lama and promote that boy as the 'true' Dalai Lama," Cabezon said. But he believes that choice "will have little legitimacy in the eyes of Tibetans."
Could a split have an upside?
Gyatso said the Tibetan community "is very upset" about the potential dichotomy.
"They don't want the confusion of having two Dalai Lamas," she said.
Nonetheless, she said, such a situation might not be without benefit.
"If the Chinese government wants to recognize its own Dalai Lama, let them give him genuine Buddhist training and upbringing, just like the current Dalai Lama got and the next one will," Gyatso said. "Let him study Buddhist philosophy and ethics. If they can produce a Dalai Lama with wisdom and the ability to reach a lot of people with the important teachings of Buddhism, that would be great."
The challenge for both, she said, will be producing a leader on the scale of the present Dalai Lama, who has been not only an influential Buddhist leader but respected on the world stage as well, addressing issues such as environmentalism and neuroscience.
"Let's see you both train and educate in the best way," Gyatso said. "If they're both great leaders with wisdom, then they won't be in competition; they'll visit and collaborate. That will be the test.... The way we'll know who's really the Dalai Lama is by (seeing) who is able to develop the wisdom and ethical leadership recognized by people all over the world. If we have two of them and they're both great, I'll be happy, because two is better than one."