Dalai Lama 'may pick successor' (BBC)

The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, says he is considering breaking with centuries of tradition and naming his own successor.

Usually, following the death of a Dalai Lama, senior Tibetan Buddhist officials, guided by dreams and signs, identify a young child to succeed him.

But the Dalai Lama said he feared China would try to influence this process.

He said he was considering whether his successor should be picked by him, or elected by high ranking Buddhist monks.

"If the Tibetan people want to keep the Dalai Lama system, one of the possibilities I have been considering with my aides is to select the next Dalai Lama while I'm alive," he told the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun during a visit to Japan.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7103841.stm

with tradition.

But his concerns are valid - China has basically kidnapped the Panchen Lama.

But I wonder how they'd reconcile his picking a successor with the belief that the Dalai Lamas are all reincarnations of the previous one.

Aren't the Dalai Lamas reincarnations of their predecessors?

You can bet China will subvert the process--they've already meddled with it extensively. I think it's interesting that His Holiness prefaced that with "if the Tibetan people want to keep the system". I think if China tries to pull crap when he dies, they may just abandon the whole thing.

It's nothing less than genocide what China has done to Tibet.

Now that's a successor I could support! Sure beats being the popular wartime preznit!

He's the Hugo Chavez of the East!