Succession planning as the Dalai Lama turns 90

The Dalai Lama will mark his 90th birthday this week by revealing the long-awaited plans for his succession.

The choice of a new spiritual leader for Tibetan Buddhists is "a matter of riveting interest not only for followers of his religion, but also China, India, and the United States, for strategic reasons", said Reuters.

How is the Dalai Lama chosen?

Finding a new Dalai Lama means "recognising the leader's reincarnated form", a process "shrouded in mysticism and little understood outside closed religious circles", said The Sunday Times.

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By Tibetan tradition, after a Dalai Lama's death senior monks begin the search for the infant they believe to be his reincarnation. This process involves "dream interpretation, inference from omens and ancient rituals, and pilgrimages to sacred sites".

The current Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso, was discovered in 1937 at the age of two after a senior monk saw his house in a vision. The toddler was apparently able to correctly identify artefacts that had belonged to the previous Dalai Lama.

The problem is this search "can take years", said The Diplomat, "often leaving a spiritual and leadership vacuum" for Tibetan Buddhists.

That is why the 14th Dalai Lama is "rewriting the script". He has indicated he may "emanate" to another person while still alive, and that that person could be adult and not necessarily a man.

He has also said that they are likely to have been born outside of Chinese-controlled Tibet, among the roughly 140,000 Tibetan exiles, half of whom live across the border in India.

"Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world," he wrote in his recent book, "Voice of the Voiceless".

What role could China play?

All this appears "part of an apparent strategy to throw off the Chinese and avoid a vacuum that Beijing can exploit as it seeks to control Tibetan Buddhism", said The New York Times.

"China is determined to shape the narrative around this succession, to prevent the erosion of its grip on Tibet," said Bloomberg, which it annexed in the 1950s. The Chinese Communist Party "wants to win the hearts and minds of Tibetans as well as their political allegiance – which is why choosing the next Dalai Lama is so important".

The CCP is expected to try to hijack the succession, as it did in 1995 when it put up its own candidate for Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama's choice, six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, was detained by Chinese officials and has not been seen since.

But "there are significant risks for China, too", said The Economist. Despite denouncing the current Dalai Lama as a separatist "wolf in monk's robes”, Beijing has in recent years tried to "revive back-channel talks" and persuade him to return to Tibet. "Without him, the Tibetan movement could fragment and embrace a more radical drive for complete independence." This is "unlikely to succeed in the near term", but "it could still undermine China's image abroad as well as its efforts to enforce ethnic unity at home".

"They're worried," said Penpa Tsering, leader of the Tibetan government-in-exile. "If there's one thing China can't handle, it's unpredictability."

As for Tibetans, the Dalai Lama's succession plan "will illuminate the real challenge ahead: how to preserve their identity after the man who embodies it is gone".