What happens if HH Dalai Lama were to officially declare that the institution of the Dalai Lama shall cease with his death? He has already hinted strongly that this can happen. "The Dalai Lama institution will cease one day,’’ he told the BBC last year.
In the event that this happens, how can the Chinese Government carry on the legacy of the Dalai Lama institution? Or if the next Dalai Lama were a woman or born in a foreign land?
If the Chinese government chooses to ignore all this, and still appoints its own Dalai Lama and foists it on the Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, will he be accepted as the one to lead Tibetan Buddhism , not only in China but in the rest of the world? But then again, the Dalai Lama has never been exactly accepted by the other non-Gelug lineages - the Nyingma, the Sakya and the Kagyu, despite his many attempts to bring them under his fold.
