You're Looking Swell, Dalai...I Can Tell, Dalai

Tenzin Gyatso may not be a name you're familiar with, but soon it might be. Gyatso is currently serving in the role of the Dalai Lama. He's started to think about the future and in turn has begun to consider a successor for his post.

"If the Tibetan people want to keep the Dalai Lama system, one of the possibilities I have been considering with my aides is to select the next Dalai Lama while I'm alive," he told Japan's Sankei Shimbun in an interview published Tuesday.

The Dalai Lama, a Nobel laureate with a wide global following, keeps a rigorous schedule at age 72, but Tibetans have increasingly voiced worries about what happens when he dies.

This report conflicts with comments that the Dalai Lama made on his Web site. There he claimed:

[If] I were to die today, I think the Tibetan people would choose to have another Dalai Lama. In the future, if the Dalai Lama’s institution is no longer relevant or useful and our present situation changes, then the Dalai Lama’s institution will cease to exist. Personally, I feel the institution of the Dalai Lama has served its purpose.

Perhaps his holiness has spent too much time in flip-flops. It appears to have affected his ability to remain consistent.

[AFP]
[DalaiLama.com]