On July 2, a meeting of the oldest Tibetan religious elders, called lamas, will take place.
The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama, whose official name is Tenzin Gyatso, will deliver a message shortly before his 90th birthday announcing a decision on whether he will have a successor.
This was announced by the Tibetan government in exile, NDTV reports.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk is expected to celebrate his 90th birthday on July 6 with huge crowds in northern India, where he has been since leaving his homeland to escape Chinese troops in 1959.
He said his landmark birthday would also be a time to encourage people to plan for the future without him and decide whether the Tibetan people want to have another Dalai Lama in time.
Tibetan Prime Minister Penpa Tsering, based in the Himalayan town of McLeod Ganj in India, said a meeting of Tibetan religious elders, known as lamas, would take place on July 2.
“There will be a short meeting of all the head lamas, about nine of them, with His Holiness (the Dalai Lama),” Tsering told reporters, adding that they would then open the religious gathering.
He also added that the Dalai Lama will deliver a video message at the opening of the religious conference.
No details were given about what that message would be, but there is widespread support among Tibetans in exile for the Dalai Lama to remain in office.
The Dalai Lama has already stated that if “a consensus is reached on the continuation of the institution of the Dalai Lama,” then the responsibility for recognizing the next leader will be assumed by the Dalai Lama's office in McLeod Ganj.
He also made it clear that any successor would have to be “born in the free world.”
Many Tibetans in exile fear that China will appoint a successor to tighten its grip on the territory it invaded in 1950.
The current Dalai Lama's identity was revealed in 1936 when, at the age of two, he passed a test by pointing to objects that belonged to the previous holder of the post.
He was proclaimed the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and this tradition of passing on spiritual authority goes back more than 600 years.
Let us recall that after the death of Pope Francis, the cardinals in the Vatican elected a new head of the Catholic Church. It was Cardinal Robert Prevost from the USA, who took the name Leo XIV.
