When the Dalai Lama He traveled to New York in June to undergo knee surgery, his followers worried about his overall health and the future of Tibetan Buddhists without him. Last week he told Reuters there was not much to worry about. «According to my dream, I can live 110 years», said the 89-year-old spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhists when asked about his health and how he was feeling.
The Nobel Prize has been disarming interrogators for years with the same answer. The knee is also improving, he said at his Himalayan residence in the northern Indian city of Dharamshala, after bless more than 300 visitors from India and abroad in a regular audience. “There is no serious problem,” he said after walking carefully with the help of his assistants, although for longer distances they take him in a golf cart.
The 14th Dalai Lama fled to India along with thousands of Tibetans in early 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Beijing insists it will choose his successor, but the Dalai Lama has said his incarnation may be in India and has warned that any successor named by China will not be respected.
The Dalai Lama’s prediction that he will live another two decades is reassuring to his followers, but greater clarity about his succession – including whether and where he will be reincarnated – could come from him when he turns 2. 90 years in July, said Dolma Tsering Teykhang, deputy speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, also based in Dharamshala. “We are nothing more than laymen, we cannot understand his wisdom, so we wait for his clear guidance,” Teykhang told Reuters in his office in Parliament, about two kilometers from the Dalai Lama’s residence.
Teykhang stated that, although even Thinking about the death of the current Dalai Lama makes him cry, There is a system for the Tibetan Government in Exile to continue its political work, while officials from the Dalai Lama’s Gaden Phodrang Foundation would be in charge of searching for and recognizing the next Dalai Lama.
The current Dalai Lama created the Zurich-based foundation in 2015 to “maintain and support the tradition and institution of the Dalai Lama as it relates to the religious and spiritual duties of the Dalai Lama», according to its website. Among its senior officials are monks living in India and Switzerland. “We cannot take it for granted that he will live to be 113 years old,” Teykhang said, referring to the life expectancy the current Dalai Lama had predicted for himself, and noting that The previous Dalai Lama died earlier than expected, at age 58.
knee operation
The knee operation forced the Dalai Lama to avoid hearings for almost three months. He resumed in September and now serves hundreds of people three times a week at his home, a sprawling complex with a temple and an office, surrounded by lush green, snow-capped hills. For his Friday session, he was led into a crowded room by red-robed monks who held his hand and walked alongside him.
Dressed in his usual red and yellow robe, he limped to a platform, where attendants helped him sit on a swivel leather chair in front of numerous Buddha statuettes. People lined up to ask his blessing, one by one, while he remained seated, his chair held by an assistant. The Dalai Lama held the hands of all the visitors, He touched the heads of some with his forehead and chanted mantras. for those who wanted his blessings for specific reasons.
Overwhelmed, several devotees cried as they left. Dalai Lama is the best-known living advocate of Buddhism and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping the Tibetan cause alive. Beijing considers him a dangerous separatist, although he has embraced what he calls a “middle way” of peaceful pursuit of authentic autonomy and religious freedom within China.
Born in 1935, Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old. He may have left clues before he died about where his incarnation would be born and with whom. While a regent previously temporarily took over when a Dalai Lama died, that system no longer exists, he explained. The Dalai Lama last month congratulated Donald Trump on his victory in the US election and Teykhang said the incoming president could be good news for Tibetans “because he was always with Tibet, he was with human rights, he was with the fact that Tibet has not been part of China since ancient times.”
The prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Sikyong Penpa Tserin, has been in the United States this month and has met with officials such as Uzra Zeya, the US special coordinator for Tibetan affairs. “Our Sikyong is there to find out how the changes are happening,” Teykhang said.
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