Ageing Dalai Lama sets up chilling clash with enemy China as he reveals succession plan in defiance of communist regime
Xi Jinping's communist regime has warned only they will get the final say over who takes over as the next Buddhist leader.
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The announcement from the Dalai Lama on Wednesday put an end to decades of uncertainty over the future of the Tibetan spiritual religion.
In recent years, speculation had grown that the 14th Dalai Lama currently in power could be the final one.
Just four days before his 90th birthday, the head of the religion announced: "I am affirming that the institution will continue."
Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child upon his death.
It often takes years to identify the child who is said to be the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
His recorded video message also appeared to take aim at China as he said: "No one else has any such authority to interfere in this matter."
The Chinese have tried to muscle their way into conversations around the Dalai Lama across the past few decades.
Beijing sees the spiritual leader as a 'separatist' who is seeking independence from Tibet - therefore weakening China's grip on the region.
The Chinese army first invaded Tibet to bring them under the control of the Communist Party in 1959.
Since then, the 14th Dalai Lama, born Tenzin Gyatso, has been living in exile in Dharamsala, a Himalayan town in Himachal Pradesh in northern India.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Buddhist leader has traveled the world to advocate for nonviolence and the 'true' autonomy and cultural and religious freedom of Tibetans.
Angered by the Dalai Lama's comments, China has been trying to bring elements of the Tibetan religious institution under state control.
They also want to absorb the people into one nation around the Communist Party.
The Chinese government has reportedly assumed they will select the next Dalai Lama.
Beijing insists the next Dalai Lama needs government approval before being declared with the best way of deciding being through a lot-drawing system.
But Beijing's hopes appear to have been dashed as the sitting leader gathered senior Tibetan Buddhist monks in Dharamsala today and said his office has the 'sole authority' over the next reincarnation.
He said he consulted with the heads of Tibetan Buddhist traditions and other religious leaders to search for and recognize a successor as per the traditions.
He has said in the past that his successor would be born in a 'free country', indicating that the next spiritual head could come from Tibetan exiles.
How is the Dalai Lama chosen?
APPOINTING the Dalai Lama has been a centuries-old tradition upheld by Tibetan buddhists.
Believers say the next leader is always reincarnated once the previous one passes away.
Senior monks are tasked with discovering who the holy successor is by searching for them far and wide.
Many believe the chosen one harbours the soul of his predecessor.
The current Dalai Lama, the 14th ever, was identified when he was just two years old.
The sitting Dalai Lama has set up the Gaden Phodrang Foundation to help maintain and support all religious duties - including his successor.
The group's senior officers, which include his aides, will carry out the procedures of search and recognition in accordance with past tradition, according to his website.
The successor has always been a male child from Tibet but in recent years speculation has grown that the future pick could not be male.
The Dalai Lama himself has even admitted his successor will not be from Tibet or China due to the growing number of believers living outside of the region.
Of the 140,000 Tibetan exiles, half live in India.
He has also expressed being open to a successor who isn't a child, or not a man, in a break with centuries of tradition.
The Dalai Lama was born Lhamo Dhondup in 1935 to a family of buckwheat and barley farmers in what is now the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai.
At the age of two, he was deemed by a search party to be the 14th reincarnation of Tibet's spiritual and temporal leader after identifying several of his predecessor's possessions.
Nine years after he assumed his position, fears grew that the Dalai Lama could be kidnapped by Beijing.
A subsequent crackdown by the Chinese army forced him to escape disguised as a common soldier from the palace in Lhasa, where his predecessors had held absolute power.
In 2011, he announced he would relinquish his political role, handing over those responsibilities to an elected leader for the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Penpa Tsering was appointed as he said today 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."
He said in a statement: "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."
Tsering also warned China not to meddle in the decision-making process of the successor due to it being a unique Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
"We strongly condemn the Peoples Republic of China's usage of reincarnation subject for their political gain, and will never accept it," he added.
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