Thread:CantoneseDragon/@comment-31674709-20180910140716/@comment-33706373-20180911022115

The Dalai Lama is the leader of the Tibetan Buddhist, far from be the leader of all Buddhists. I recognize him as a Buddhist but he has no religious authority over me, he is a Vajrayana while I'm Mahayana.

If you heard once in some media vehicle that the Dalai Lama is the leader of all Buddhists of this world, it's just a political bia to portray him as the oppressed leader of an entire religious group, thus supporting his political cause.

Truth is that the Dalai Lama leads the smaller Buddhist branch, his followers are concentrated only in Tibet, Bhutan and Mongolia. While the rest of the Buddhists, in Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka, China, Korea and Japan have simply nothing to do with the Dalai Lama religious views.

Now talking about history, sorry I can't give you an answer without quoting the political context of it:

In Tibet historically, the Dalai had more political power as the leader of both the regime and the religion. The influence of Panchen was more or less limited to few areas.

Regardless, they have pretty much the same religious influence over people since they are high ranking monks in Tibetan Buddhism, and what happened in the beginning of the last century was that people began to follow the way of the Panchem in a both a political religious social way than the one of the 13th Dalai Lama, that was at that time infamous for being an arrogant feudal leader.

The 13th Dalai prohibited the followers of the 9th Panchem from holding any office in the Tibetan government and imprisoned them in Lhasa, then the Panchem fled to China, Dalai even confiscated Panchem estate. The Panchem in China adopted the ideas of Sun Yat Sen and became an anti Feudal revolutionary in Tibet. All of that began again, because of the last Dalai arrogance toward a reform in Tibetan society.

Since the death of the 13th Dalai Lama, the Panchem gained strength, but guess what? He died in 1937, then here more problems come, because two simultaneous searches for the new Panchem Lama produced two competing candidates, with the former officials of the 13th Dalai Lama selecting a boy from some rural village, and the former officials of the 9th Panchem Lama officials picking the guy that later became the 10th Panchem Lama. And here we can see that we are having a break in the correct form of the lineage, because according to Tibetan tradition, the confirmation of the Dalai or Panchem needs to be mutually recognized, so that shit started long before the current nomination.

ROC government, then supported the 10th Panchem Lama, that founded pretty much a government in a monastery next to Qinghai. Then the 14th Dalai Lama was elected by the officials of the former 13th Dalai, the same ones that refused to recognize the 10th Panchem following the old quarrel, and here is where the 14th Dalai Lama that is famous now around the world enters. Now it will all depend on which political side of this mess you want to stay, in a reformist pro China or in a feudalist isolated one.

Man, the thing became so serious that the 10th Panchen Lama sought revenge on the 14th Dalai Lama in 1949 that was just a boy that time by leading an army of his Tibetan loyalists against him, he initially would do it together with ROC, so you see the plan of an invasion of Tibet by an anti-Dalai Lama front is something that comes long before the famous Chinese invasion of 1950, that's because the Panchem Lama wanted it and he asked for, China didn't simply invade it without reason. The Panchem had an agreement with ROC but since ROC began to lose the war, the Panchem that wanted to still take control of Tibet, allied with communists from PRC and abandomned ROC.

So as you can see here, the invasion was supported by the Panchen Lama that initially also supported the communist reform policies for Tibet. A thing we need to see here is that Tibet would be invaded by China in anyway, no matter if ROC had won the war Tibet would be invaded at the orders of the Panchem Lama support.

The Panchem Lama even made long speeches in radio calling for Tibetan national liberation toward PRC and for the purge of the traitors allied with the corrupt Dalai Lama, calling Tibetans to support the PRC.

However later of course, PRC began to abuse its powers on Tibet and so far not even the Panchem Lama agreed with it anymore since the main objective that was a national liberation for Tibet was forgotten and it became basically China enforcing its own rule on the region. So he protested and ended up geting arrested, but he never sided with the Dalai Lama during this time, so if some lineage here is wrong and the rule of this has been broke, it happened long before the nomination of the current Panchem Lama.

After the end of Maoism, he was realeased and China oficially reopened relations with him, having his support once more. But here is where the problem will come again, and here I will try to finally answer your main question. Did we have a broke in the Tibetan tradition of lineage? Technically we had long before the nomination after the death of the 10th Panchem Lama, where both him and the Dalai had a break, if now the supporters of then Panchem Lama plus the Chinese government are electing a new Panchem, the supporters of the Dalai Lama are electing a new one just like they were in 1937 to have this political control, and they had no formal recognition for a while. And they will continue like that until they come to a conclusion.

I see nothing of religious lineage happening here since the beginning of the 20th century, just political quarrels happening, if the Lamas side based in PRC nominated backed by the government a Panchem Lama that differed from the one picked by the Dalai in an exiled government following this context, I frankly don’t know which one will follow originally the tradition, having in account that historically the traditions says since Qing times that the sovereign of China (that time the emperor) would have a decisive approbation in the nominations of those Lamas, and since know we have no empires anymore, the sovereign of China is technically the central government in Beijing.

Later Dalai Lama became more flexiable toward all this situation, he stated that he has no problem with Tibet being part of China as long as Chinese government respects Tibetan regional and cultural authonomy, China did change it image and attitudes toward Tibet but meh it's still hard to swallow if you are a proud Tibetan, I do understand this shit. Dalai even declared "were instances in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, of a reincarnated lama taking more than one manifestation". So maybe we are having a solution for all this conflict soon, well only time will answer this issue.