Dharamshala: The Dalai Lama has proclaimed a Mongolian boy born in US as the reincarnation of the third most important spiritual leader in Tibetan Buddhism.
The eight-year-old boy was pictured with the Dalai Lama at a ceremony that took place in Dharamshala in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
The 14th Dalai Lama is a frail 87 year old who believes that he will live up to the biological age of 113 and has no immediate plans to announce his reincarnation as head of influential Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Communist Party of China hates him and calls him a “splittist” as President Xi Jinping pursues his Sinicization of Tibet policy with Beijing abrogating the power of official reincarnations of high lamas of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet at this advanced age, the cancer survivor managed to bowl a googly to Beijing and clean bowled Xi Jinping regime by announcing the reincarnation of the third most senior lama or spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and the head of the Gelugpa school in land-locked nation of Mongolia.
The tenth Khalkha Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoche was anointed by the 14th Dalai Lama in a ceremony attended by some 600 Mongolians who travelled to Dharamshala to attend an event that has huge ramifications in this running battle between the Dalai Lama and the CPC and for survival of Tibetan Buddhism.
Mongolian media reports suggest the child is one of a pair of twin boys named Aguidai and Achiltai Altannar, sons of Altannar Chinchuluun and Monkhnasan Narmandakh, a university mathematics professor and a national resources conglomerate executive, respectively.
The boy’s grandmother, Garamjav Tseden, is meanwhile a former member of parliament.
The move to acknowledge him as the rebirth of Buddhism’s spiritual leader in Mongolia is likely to anger China, which has previously insisted it will only recognise Buddhist leaders who its own special government-approved appointees have chosen.
China has, on more than one occasion, clarified that it will only recognise Buddhist leaders who its own government-approved appointees have chosen.