90 years ago, in a family of buckwheat and barley farmers in the current Chinese province of Qinghai, a boy named Lhamo Dhondup was born. When he was two years old, a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks showed up at his house. They explained to the parents that during the mummification of the thirteenth Dalai Lama in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, the head of the deceased suddenly turned to the northeast, pointing in the direction where his reincarnation would be found.
Then, the monks consumed star-shaped mushrooms that illuminated the path they should follow, projecting visions of the place where the new spiritual leader would be found in their dreams. They arrived at the child's house, also carrying several objects - a Buddhist rosary, a staff, and a drum - that belonged to the deceased Dalai Lama. "They are mine! They are mine!" exclaimed the child, identifying the objects as if they had belonged to him in another life. At that moment, the monks recognized him as the fourteenth reincarnation.
At four years old, that child became Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Tenzin Gyatso (holy lord, gentle glory, eloquence, reincarnation of compassion, enlightened defender of the faith, ocean of wisdom), the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of six million Tibetans. A man of peace from a feudal culture that ended in exile, idolized by his followers and repudiated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), of which he was a part when he was young, but now they consider him a dangerous separatist.
Who is Tenzin Gyatso really? "He is the global leader of non-violence, a reference for peace in this turbulent world. Tibetans consider him a reincarnation of a series of spiritual leaders that date back over 600 years. His followers call him Kundun, which means presence, and that is precisely what I perceived when I met him in 1998. In a way, he has a commanding presence. On the one hand, he maintains a youthful spirit and likes to make many jokes. But when you are by his side, you also feel a great solemnity," describes the Argentine photojournalist Ángel López Soto, who has shared many private audiences with the Dalai Lama since the end of the last century, when he began to portray the Tibetan exile around the world.
Gyatso turns 90 this Sunday after promising this week that he will not be the last leader of Tibetan Buddhism. "He himself had opened up the possibility that maybe a new Dalai Lama was not necessary after his death. In the end, he has confirmed that there will indeed be a reincarnation," explains Soto. The Dalai Lama revealed that it will be a non-profit organization that he himself founded, the Gaden Phodrang Trust, who will have the sole authority to recognize his future reincarnation, rejecting any role in the selection by China, where they state that Gyatso has no right to represent the Tibetan people.
When Gyatso passes away, members of this organization, advised by various high-ranking figures in Tibetan Buddhism, the senior lamas, must begin the search for a successor baby (outside of China this time, as the spiritual leader has insisted) and recognize them according to tradition, through rituals and signs.
But in China, in recent days, many authoritative voices are already beginning to suggest that it will be the CCP ruler who will oversee the selection of their own Dalai Lama under the "golden urn" selection system, introduced during the Qing dynasty in the 18th century, to select reincarnations by drawing names from a golden receptacle located in Beijing. "Can someone explain to me how the Dalai Lama intends to ensure his reincarnation outside the modern borders of China? Does his soul have GPS or something like that? The Dalai Lama is nothing more than a politicized theocratic institution," pointed out a regular commentator in Chinese state media.
"Tibetan Buddhism has to adapt to socialism and Chinese conditions," President Xi Jinping has stated on more than one occasion. From the Tibetan diaspora, they accuse China of forcibly sinicizing (cultural or linguistic assimilation of Chinese elements by other groups or societies) the ancient Buddhist monarchy of Tibet, which Chinese officials now refer to as Xizang, the romanization of the name in Mandarin. They denounce, for example, that Chinese authorities send children to state boarding schools to erase their Tibetan identity and mitigate any future generation of opposition to the CCP government.
From Beijing, they defend a visible reality, which is the considerable improvement in the standard of living in the region and the success of policies to end extreme poverty. "The GDP of Xizang maintains an average annual growth rate of 8.6%, one of the highest in China, and 5G networks now cover all major counties and municipalities in the region. In addition to the improvement in life and infrastructure, the local population is fully guaranteed freedom of religious belief," states a recent note published in the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the CCP.
In 1950, a year after the communist victory in the civil war led to the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Chinese army entered Tibet after defeating Tibetan forces. The following year, Mao Zedong's government signed a 17-point agreement with local political elites promising autonomy for the region and a commitment to preserve its political system and cultural and religious practices, including maintaining the Dalai Lama as the spiritual and political leader.
Gyatso, at 19 years old, spent five months in Beijing studying Marxism. There, historians say, he met Mao and forged a close relationship with another then high-ranking CCP official, Xi Zhongxun, the father of the current Chinese president Xi Jinping. He mingled for a time with the Chinese political elite, even participating in their most important meetings.
But relations broke down in 1959, when the Chinese army suppressed an armed uprising in Tibet and decided to take full control of the territory. It was then that the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetans fled to India, where they were given land in Dharamshala, in the north of the country, to establish their exile administration. It is estimated that over 150,000 refugees make up the Tibetan diaspora. The vast majority settled in India, under the protection of their nonagenarian spiritual leader.