The Dalai Lama says he plans to reincarnate, ensuring continuity

Ti­betan spir­i­tu­al leader the Dalai Lama on Wednes­day said the cen­turies-old Ti­betan Bud­dhist in­sti­tu­tion will con­tin­ue af­ter his death, end­ing years of spec­u­la­tion that start­ed when he in­di­cat­ed that he might be the last per­son to hold the role.

Speak­ing at prayer cel­e­bra­tions ahead of his 90th birth­day on Sun­day, the No­bel Peace Prize-win­ning spir­i­tu­al head of Ti­betan Bud­dhism said that the next Dalai Lama should be found and recog­nised as per past Bud­dhist tra­di­tions, while sig­nalling that Chi­na should stay away from the process of iden­ti­fy­ing his suc­ces­sor.

The Dalai Lama’s suc­ces­sion plan is po­lit­i­cal­ly con­se­quen­tial for most Ti­betans who op­pose Chi­na’s tight con­trol of Ti­bet and have strug­gled to keep their iden­ti­ty alive, in their home­land or in ex­ile. It is al­so pro­found for Ti­betan Bud­dhists who wor­ship him as a liv­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of Chen­rezig, the Bud­dhist god of com­pas­sion.

The de­ci­sion, how­ev­er, is ex­pect­ed to irk Chi­na, which has re­peat­ed­ly said that it alone has the au­thor­i­ty to ap­prove the next re­li­gious leader. It in­sists the rein­car­nat­ed fig­ure must be found in Chi­na’s Ti­betan ar­eas, giv­ing Com­mu­nist au­thor­i­ties pow­er over who is cho­sen.

Many ob­servers be­lieve there even­tu­al­ly will be ri­val Dalai Lamas — one ap­point­ed by Bei­jing, and one by se­nior monks loy­al to the cur­rent Dalai Lama.

Ten­zin Gy­at­so be­came the 14th rein­car­na­tion of the Dalai Lama in 1940. He fled Ti­bet when Chi­nese troops crushed an up­ris­ing in the Ti­betan cap­i­tal Lhasa in 1959 and has been liv­ing in the town of Dharamsha­la in In­dia since then, help­ing es­tab­lish a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment-in-ex­ile while al­so trav­el­ling the world to ad­vo­cate au­ton­o­my for the Ti­betan peo­ple.

Ti­betan Bud­dhists be­lieve the Dalai Lama can choose the body in­to which he is rein­car­nat­ed, as has hap­pened on 14 oc­ca­sions since the cre­ation of the in­sti­tu­tion in 1587. He has re­it­er­at­ed in the past that his suc­ces­sor would be born out­side Chi­na.

The Dalai Lama laid out his suc­ces­sion plan in a record­ed state­ment that was tele­vised at a re­li­gious gath­er­ing of Bud­dhist monks in Dharamsha­la. He said the process of find­ing and recog­nis­ing his rein­car­na­tion lies sole­ly with the Gaden Pho­drang Trust — a non-prof­it he found­ed in 2015 that over­sees mat­ters re­lat­ed to the spir­i­tu­al leader and the in­sti­tute of the Dalai Lama.

“No one else has any such au­thor­i­ty to in­ter­fere in this mat­ter,” he said, adding that the search for a fu­ture Dalai Lama should be car­ried out in “ac­cor­dance with past tra­di­tion.”

Asked Wednes­day about the Dalai Lama’s an­nounce­ment, Chi­nese For­eign Min­istry spokesper­son Mao Ning at a dai­ly news brief­ing said “the rein­car­na­tion of the Dalai Lama must ad­here to the prin­ci­ples of do­mes­tic search in Chi­na” and “ap­proval by the cen­tral gov­ern­ment.”

Mao said the process must “fol­low re­li­gious rit­u­als and his­tor­i­cal set­tings, and be han­dled in ac­cor­dance with na­tion­al laws and reg­u­la­tions.”

Sep­a­rate­ly, Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al’s Chi­na Di­rec­tor, Sarah Brooks, in a state­ment Wednes­day said the ef­forts by Chi­nese au­thor­i­ties to con­trol the se­lec­tion of the next Dalai Lama was a “di­rect as­sault” on the right to free­dom of re­li­gion.

“Ti­betan Bud­dhists, like all faith com­mu­ni­ties, must be able to choose their spir­i­tu­al lead­ers with­out co­er­cion or in­ter­fer­ence by the au­thor­i­ties,” Brooks said.

The Dalai Lama has of­ten urged his fol­low­ers to re­ject any­one cho­sen by Bei­jing. The self-pro­claimed Ti­betan gov­ern­ment-in-ex­ile he once head­ed be­fore re­lin­quish­ing his po­lit­i­cal role in 2011 al­so sup­ports this stance.

Pen­pa Tser­ing, the pres­i­dent of the gov­ern­ment-in-ex­ile, said Ti­betans from around the world made “an earnest re­quest with sin­gle-mind­ed de­vo­tion” that the po­si­tion of the Dalai Lama should con­tin­ue “for the ben­e­fit of all sen­tient be­ings in gen­er­al and Bud­dhist in par­tic­u­lar.”

“In re­sponse to this over­whelm­ing sup­pli­ca­tion, His Ho­li­ness has shown in­fi­nite com­pas­sion and fi­nal­ly agreed to ac­cept our ap­peal on this spe­cial oc­ca­sion of his 90th birth­day,” he said at a press con­fer­ence.

Tser­ing, how­ev­er, warned Chi­na not to med­dle in the process of the Dalai Lama’s suc­ces­sion, say­ing it is a “unique Ti­betan Bud­dhist tra­di­tion.”

“We not on­ly strong­ly con­demn the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na’s us­age of rein­car­na­tion sub­ject for their po­lit­i­cal gain, and will nev­er ac­cept it,” he said.

The search for a Dalai Lama’s rein­car­na­tion be­gins on­ly up­on the in­cum­bent’s death.

In the past, the suc­ces­sor has been iden­ti­fied by se­nior monas­tic dis­ci­ples, based on spir­i­tu­al signs and vi­sions, and it can take sev­er­al years af­ter the next Dalai Lama is iden­ti­fied as a ba­by and groomed to take the reins.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Christo­pher Bodeen in Taipei, Tai­wan, con­tributed to this re­port.

DHARAMSHA­LA, In­dia (AP) —