The elderly Dalai Lama assured the supporters on Wednesday that his death, he would be reincarnated as the next spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism and would state a succession process which sets up a renewed confrontation with China.
The highly anticipated statement made a few days before the Winner of frail Nobel Peace was 90 years old, set up, was launched by the Dalai Lama itself, so that it is the last of the spiritual leaders of Tibet, ending a line which dates back to centuries.
Speaking for a week of celebrations in the city of Dharamshala, in the north of India, to mark his birthday, the Dalai Lama declared that a non -profit institution that he created will have the unique power to identify his reincarnation, against the insistence of China to choose his successor.
Beijing reiterated Wednesday that it was to approve the reincarnation and that it should be done in China by a secular ritual. A spokesperson for the US State Department said that he would continue to call on China to stop interference in the succession and to respect the freedom of religion.
Beijing considers the Dalai Lama, who fled to Tibet India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese domination, as a separatist. The Dalai Lama said that his successor was born outside China and urged his disciples to reject any person chosen by Beijing. In previous years, he also said that it was possible that there was no successor at all.
“I assert that the institution of the Dalai Lama will continue,” said Dalai Lama in a video message, triggering applause and cheers of more than 100 monks in brown dresses that had gathered in a library in Dharamshala.
The event attended journalists from around the world and an audience of longtime supporters, including Hollywood star, Richard Gere, seated in a room whose walls displayed paintings ornate of the Buddha and photographs of the Dalai Lama.
The Dalai Lama added that the Gaden Phodrang Trust, the non -profit organization he created to maintain and support the tradition and the institution of the Dalai Lama, has the only power to recognize his reincarnation in consultation with the heads of Tibetan Buddhist traditions.
“They should therefore carry out research and recognition procedures in accordance with previous tradition … No one else has authority to interfere in this case,” he said.
Tibetan tradition argues that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child at his death.
Born under the name of Lhamo Dhondup on July 6, 1935 to an agricultural family in what is now the province of Qinghai, the 14th Dalai Lama was identified as such reincarnation at the age of two by a research part based on several signs, as a vision revealed to a senior monk, according to the site of the Dalai Lama.
He is now considered one of the most influential religious figures in the world, with a next extending far beyond Buddhism, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
‘Open to the visit of Tibet’
The Dalai Lama was in good health and has not yet given written instructions on the succession, said Samdhong Rinpoche, a senior official of the Gaden Phodrang Trust.
He told journalists that the successor can be of any sex and that their nationality would not be limited to Tibet
Penpa Tsering, head of the Central Tibetan administration, the Tibetan government in exile in India, said that the Dalai Lama would be open to Tibet visit if his health allowed it and if there were no restrictions on China. It would be his first visit to the country since 1959.
“It depends entirely on China and the Chinese government,” he said, adding that Beijing had put a condition that if the Dalai Lama visits, he should stay.
“His holiness’s answer is’ if I can go to Tibet and China, I will go, but I will not live there, because there is no freedom there.
The spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that China had the right to approve the successor to the Dalai Lama, as a legacy of the imperial era, and that Beijing practices a policy of freedom of religious belief.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said that he would continue to call on China to resume direct dialogue with Dalai Lama, its representatives, or democratically elected Tibetan leaders, without precondition, “to obtain significant autonomy for Tibetans”.
“We will also continue to invoke China to stop ceasing its interference in the succession of Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist lamas and to respect the freedom of religion or belief of individuals of all confessions,” said the spokesman.
Tzering, head of government in exile, said that the United States had raised certain restrictions on Tibetan funds in exile and that the Tibetan government also sought alternative sources of funding.
A selection ritual, in which the names of possible reincarnations are taken from a golden urn, dates from 1793, during the Qing dynasty.
“The reincarnation of the child of a major of Buddha living like the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama must be identified by the Lot period of a golden urn and the approval of the central government,” said Mao at a regular press conference.
