The Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk, Tenzin Gyatso, is expected to celebrate his 90th birthday on July 6 with huge crowds in northern India, his base since leaving his homeland fleeing Chinese troops in 1959.
While China condemns him as a rebel and separatist, the internationally recognised Dalai Lama describes himself as a "simple Buddhist monk".
Thupten Jinpa, his translator of nearly four decades, described a man who uses humour to calm, fierce intellect to debate, and combines self-discipline with tolerance of others.
"He's never deluded by being extraordinary," said Jinpa, an eminent Buddhist scholar born in Tibet.
The Dalai Lama treats those he meets in the same manner whether they are a president or a peasant, world leader or Hollywood star.
"When he's getting ready to go and see a president or a prime minister, everybody around him is all getting nervous he's just completely relaxed," said Jinpa, who is now a professor at Montreal's McGill University.
"Once I asked him how is it that he's not nervous, and he said, basically, 'the person I'm meeting is just another human being, just like me!'"
- 'Self-confidence and humility' -
Despite being revered as the 14th reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, a role stretching back more than 600 years, he does not act with a sense of superiority.
"He is one of the most self-confident people I've ever met in my life," Jinpa said.
"Self-confidence and humility generally don't go together that well, but in him, they sit beautifully."
Jinpa highlighted the Dalai Lama's ability to bring people together through his "contagious" sense of humour and famous giggling "individual laugh".
"He uses humour immediately, so he has this ability to make you feel at ease."
But the translator also described a man who applied the rigorous education and skills of philosophical debate learned as a monk to address the challenges of a complex world.
"He's gone through a formal academic training," said Jinpa, who himself studied as a monk and holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge.
"So when he's sitting down with scientists and philosophers and thinkers in deep conversation, his ability to get to the gist, and ask the question that points towards the next challenge, is an amazing display of his focus."
Jinpa described a man who pursues an austere monastic life with "very high discipline".
"He gets up at 3:30 am and has meditation. He doesn't eat after lunch, which is one of the precepts of monastic ethics," he said. "He has always maintained this strictly."
While he was born to a farming family, the Dalai Lama grew up in Lhasa's Potala Palace, a vast building reputed to have 1,000 rooms.
Since then he has spent much of his life in a hilltop monastic complex in India's town of McLeod Ganj.
"His bedroom is actually a small corridor between two large rooms, doors on the two sides, and a three-by-six single bed attached to the wall, and next to it is a shower cubicle -- and that's it," Jinpa said.
"He has got his photographs of his gurus, teachers, above his bed -- very simple."
- 'Non-judgement' -
But the Dalai Lama balances that toughness towards himself with softness for those he meets.
"Generally when people are more pious, more disciplined, more pure, they also tend to be less tolerant," Jinpa said.
"A lot of the intolerance really comes from puritanism in the world, whether it's religious or ideology," he added.
"But again, in him, this understanding and non-judgement towards others -- and expectation of a high standard for himself -- it sits beautifully."
Jinpa added that as the holder of a centuries-old institution, the Dalai Lama places his people before himself.
"In all the negotiations that he has had with China, he has constantly made the point that the issue is not about his return, or his status," he said.
"The issue is about the Tibetan people -- there are over six million of us," said Jinpa.
"Their ability to be self-governing on the Tibetan plateau, which is their historical home, and their ability to exist with dignity as a distinct people within the People's Republic of China."
Auspicious signs: how the Dalai Lama is identified
Mcleod Ganj, India (AFP) June 27, 2025 -
Fourteen Dalai Lamas have guided Tibet's Buddhists for the past six centuries, which believers say are reincarnations of each other, identified in opaque processes ranging from auspicious signs to divination.
China says Tibet is an integral part of the country, and many exiled Tibetans fear Beijing will name a rival successor, bolstering control over a land it poured troops into in 1950.
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was born to a farming family in 1935 and has spent most of his life in exile in India.
He has said that if there is a successor, they will come from the "free world" outside China's control.
Here is how previous reincarnations were identified -- and what the current Dalai Lama says will happen.
- Oracles -
With the Dalai Lama turning 90 on July 6, he has said he will consult Tibetan religious traditions and the Tibetan public to see "if there is a consensus that the Dalai Lama institution should continue".
He has said he will "leave clear written instructions" for the future.
But he has alternatively suggested his successor could be a girl, or an insect, or that his spirit could transfer or "emanate" to an adult.
Responsibility for the recognition lies with the India-based Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The search and recognition of another leader must be "in accordance with past Tibetan Buddhist tradition", he said.
That includes consulting a protector deity, Palden Lhamo, and the oracle of Dorje Drakden, also known as Nechung, who communicates through a medium in a trance.
- Reincarnation recognition -
Tibetan Buddhists believe in all reincarnations of the "Bodhisattva of Compassion", an enlightened being who serves humanity by delaying salvation through another rebirth.
All so far have been men or boys, often identified as toddlers and taking up the role only as teenagers.
The last identification process was held in 1937.
The current Dalai Lama, then aged two, was identified when he passed a test posed by monks by correctly pointing to objects that had belonged to his predecessor.
- Auspicious signs -
Others were revealed by special signs.
The year the eighth Dalai Lama was born, in 1758, was marked by bumper harvests and a rainbow that seemingly touched his mother.
He was finally identified after trying to sit in a lotus meditation position as a toddler.
"Most ordinary beings forget their past lives," the Dalai Lama wrote in 2011.
"We need to use evidence-based logic to prove past and future rebirths to them."
- Golden urn and dough balls -
Divination, including picking names written on paper, has also been used to confirm a candidate is correct.
One method conceals the paper inside balls of dough. Another time, the name was plucked from a golden urn.
That urn is now held by Beijing, and the current Dalai Lama has warned that, when used dishonestly, it lacks "any spiritual quality".
- Tibet and abroad -
Dalai Lamas have come from noble families and nomadic herders.
Most were born in central Tibetan regions, one came from Mongolia, and another was born in India.
The Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, was born in 1682 in Tawang, in India's northeastern Arunachal Pradesh region.
- Secrecy and disguise -
Past decisions have also been kept secret for years.
The Fifth Dalai Lama, Lobsang Gyatso, was born in 1617 and recognised as a toddler.
But his discovery was kept hidden for more than two decades due to a "turbulent political situation", the Dalai Lama's office says.
And, when he died, he told monks to say he was simply on a "long retreat".
When visitors came, an old monk would pose in his place, wearing a "hat and eyeshadow to conceal the fact that he lacked the Dalai Lama's piercing eyes".
It would take 15 years before his successor was announced.
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