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I was intrigued to read over the weekend about the current odds on who will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s likely to be months before we know.
Meanwhile on Sunday the 14th Dalai Lama celebrated his 90th birthday in exile from his Tibetan homeland.

Having suggested earlier that the succession might come to an end he affirmed last week that there would indeed be a next Dalai Lama, appointed by the Dalai Lama Trust. He also said that his successor might come from ‘a free country’. This poses an ongoing dilemma for the Chinese government in its continuing attempt to absorb what remains of Tibetan culture. More teasingly the 90 year old spiritual leader has speculated that the next Dalai Lama could be female, a ‘mischievous blonde woman’. You can’t help suspecting that he wants to keep everyone guessing.

By tradition there is a host of secret tests involved in finding the child who will be recognised as his reincarnation. The Chinese government has suggested that the Chinese Communist Party might choose the next Dalai Lama and is clearly looking for a successor born in China. The official atheism of the regime blends with a degree of tolerance for religious practice. And of course the aim of taking control of the succession would be political, to ensure that Tibetans people have no focus for any aspirations for independence.

But religious tradition has a habit of surviving against the odds. The Dalai Lama is not only the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people he is acknowledged as a figure of spiritual significance for the world. He describes himself, modestly, as a simple Buddhist monk whose life of renunciation is based on Buddhist practice. He has declared this year to be a year of compassion and preached that peace in our troubled world relies on the peace we should all seek within.
The mysterious practice of discerning his successor reminds us that the human spirit craves something which goes beyond pragmatic instincts, whether those come from the Chinese government or the Church of England. We know that our fate does not lie within our own control. For those of us who feel that there is a transcendent dimension to life, there must be more, we even hope there may be guidance from above.

Christians would speak of the work of the Holy Spirit, discerning, preparing, enabling as the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer puts it, ‘a right judgment in all things’. Tibetan Buddhism suggests that its next spiritual leader is already with us, waiting to be discovered by a process beyond the design of worldly governments. I want to hope that this is true and am glad that so many world leaders wished the Dalai Lama a happy birthday.

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