How Is the Dalai Lama Chosen?

As the internationally renowned 14th Dalai Lama has aged, speculation about how the future 15th Dalai Lama will be chosen has increased. There were doubts about whether there would be a 15th Dalai Lama until July 2025, when the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, affirmed that after his death there will be a successor to the title of Dalai Lama. The process for locating, identifying, and choosing a new Dalai Lama follows an established pattern in Tibetan Buddhism for identifying reborn lamas. However, there is also historical precedent for the government of China to be involved in the process of lama identification and approval. The 14th Dalai Lama fled Chinese-controlled Tibet for India in 1959 and has had a tense relationship with the Chinese government. The prospect of Chinese involvement in choosing the next Dalai Lama concerns many Tibetans—and some outside observers—who oppose Chinese oversight of what they consider to be their exclusive religious affairs.

Identifying a reborn lama

A lama is a spiritual leader and teacher in Tibetan Buddhism. The word lama in Tibetan is a translation of the Sanskrit word guru, a venerated mentor, and many Tibetan lamas are heads of monasteries. Some lamas are considered reincarnated lamas (tulkus, also spelled sprul-skus)—that is, enlightened beings, sometimes called “living Buddhas,” who take rebirth for humans’ benefit. According to Mahayana Buddhist thought, these enlightened beings create a physical manifestation in the form of a human, called an emanation body or nirmanakaya, which is considered one of the three bodies, or trikaya, of a Buddha or bodhisattva. The Dalai Lama is considered an emanation of Avalokiteshvara—Chenrezig in Tibetan—the bodhisattva of compassion.

Buddhism holds that all sentient beings—including gods, demigods (asuras), humans, animals, hungry ghosts, and those in hell—are stuck in a continual cycle of death and rebirth, called samsara, until such a time as they achieve enlightenment and nirvana, the cessation of suffering in samsara. However, reincarnating lamas, as enlightened beings with emanation bodies, have the unique ability to choose the time, place, and manner of their rebirth, or rather their manifestation in a physical body, which they are thought to do out of kindness and compassion for those still stuck in the painful cycle of samsara.

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Before death a high lama might offer clues about his future rebirth, such as specific objects and places, that might help senior lamas locate the lama in his next birth. After a lama’s death, senior lamas observe omens and signs, such as dreams, the direction smoke blows during the funereal cremation, flowering trees, and other sources of divination. For the Dalai Lama they particularly consult the Nechung oracle for insights. A lama’s rebirth could occur anywhere from days to years after death, and finding the reborn lama takes additional time. For high lamas, senior monks and an interim regent lead the search based on the divined clues.

Once the search party has identified candidates, the senior monks test the children in various ways to ascertain whether the children might be the reincarnated lama. For example, candidates are shown a selection of objects and tasked with recognizing which items belonged to the lama. A child choosing correctly is considered evidence that he is the previous lama reborn. The 14th Dalai Lama accurately identified a drum and a walking stick that had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama. Once selected, a lama undergoes years of intensive monastic religious education while a regent administers in the lama’s place.

The golden urn

The Chinese government has insisted on confirming the next Dalai Lama by drawing lots from a golden urn, a method that was occasionally used in the past to identify the reincarnations of the Dalai Lama, as well as the Panchen Lama (the second highest lama in the Gelukpa school) and the Jebtsundamba Khutugtu (the third highest Gelukpa lama and the head of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia). The emperor Qianlong (1711–99) of the Chinese Qing dynasty (1644–1911/12) instituted the process of using the golden urn in 1792 as a means of exercising oversight of Tibetan administration. In the golden urn selection process candidates are first identified using traditional Tibetan means of locating potential reincarnated lamas through divination. Then candidates’ names are written down and placed in the golden urn, from which one is either drawn or shaken out; the first name taken is the winner.

The golden urn method was not used for choosing the 9th or the 13th Dalai Lamas during the Qing era, nor was it implemented in the identification of the 14th Dalai Lama, who was born after the Qing dynasty’s fall. The process for the 10th Dalai Lama’s identification in 1822 is hotly debated: Tibetans claim that the golden urn was not used (or was merely said to have been used to appease Qing rulers), whereas the modern Chinese government claims that it was used. In 2007 China legally mandated the use of the golden urn for selecting reincarnating “living Buddhas” who have historically been identified in that fashion. The 14th Dalai Lama’s announcement in July 2025 that his successor would be identified by the Gaden Phodrang Trust, which he established in 2011, was quickly countered by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, who insisted that the golden urn would be used. Critics of the practice—particularly Tibetans—consider the selection of lamas by the golden urn to be emblematic of Chinese interference in what they deem to be exclusively Tibetan matters. Tibetans have raised concerns that the golden urn method invites the possibility that succession could be weighted toward Chinese interests and religious control.

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The golden urn was used prominently in 1995 for the selection of the 11th Panchen Lama—an important religious leader in Tibetan Buddhism and considered an incarnation of Amitabha—who is in turn responsible for helping recognize the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. The Chinese government declared the 14th Dalai Lama’s choice, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, invalid because it had not approved the selection. After his identification, the boy and his family were detained by the Chinese government and have since been missing, according to authorities outside China; the Chinese government, however, insists that he and his family are living a normal life in Tibet and do not wish to be disturbed. Later in 1995 the Chinese government used the golden urn to select and appoint Gyancain Norbu as the 11th Panchen Lama. The golden urn was not used, however, in 2016 for the selection of the 10th Jebtsundamba Khutugtu in Mongolia, whom the 14th Dalai Lama publicly introduced in 2023.