“We may be the only people in the world who were handed democracy [by the Dalai Lama] top-down… We never asked for it…” a Tibetan scholar and former Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) official once told me, spotlighting how, for centuries, Tibetan society has been guided by the leadership of the Dalai Lama.
Considered a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, the patron saint of Tibet, he exercises unparalleled political and spiritual power within Tibet; indeed, today’s Tibetan society in exile and their movement at large remain dependent on the revered leader in a myriad of ways.
But as the current Dalai Lama nears the end of his time in the material world, a strongly perceptible sense of uncertainty hangs over the entire community as it ponders what might happen after he is gone. Will the community, for example, remain united after he has left this world? What challenges might it face? And could democracy ever replace divinity as the instrument of government in the future?
