The Dalai Lama prays with Japanese Buddhist monks during the Buddhist ceremonial service at Zenkoji temple in Nagano on 19 June 2010. The exiled Tibetan leader visited Japan for an 11-day lecture tour.AFP/Getty Images/Toru Yamanaka/Japan
Both the political and spiritual future of Tibet should be decided in a democratic fashion, the Dalai Lama said Saturday during a visit to Japan.
The Dalai Lama arrived in Tokyo on Friday and is scheduled to speak in Nagano, Kanazawa and Yokohama before leaving this country on 28 June.
Asked in an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun if he intended to name a successor as leader of the Tibetan government to continue negotiations with China after his death, the Dalai Lama spoke of the elections held by the Tibetan government-in-exile every five years since 2001. The next election is scheduled for 2011.
“I’m never involved,” the Dalai Lama said as he travelled by Shinkansen bullet train to Nagano. “If I favour one person, then I think many people go that way, so it would not be pure[ly] democratic.”
“It’s entirely up to the Tibetan people,” he said. “Political leadership is quite well established, so it’s not my concern.”
Regarding the spiritual leadership of his country, the Dalai Lama said the Tibetans and other concerned people, such as members of the Himalayan region of Buddhists, should decide whether they want the position of Dalai Lama to continue after his death. “If the majority of them feel the Dalai Lama institution is no longer relevant, then that institution [should] automatically cease, no problem,” he said.
The Dalai Lama said he believed that if he were to pass away within the next few years, most of the people concerned would want the institution to continue. The issue has been discussed at gatherings of Tibetan spiritual leaders over the last two or three years, the Dalai Lama said, but not finalised.
“These spiritual leaders of different Tibetan Buddhist tradition, they all have the responsibility. It cannot be decided by myself.”
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