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When the Dalai Lama went to New York in June for knee surgery, his followers worried about his overall health and the future of Tibetan Buddhists without him.
Asked about his health and how he way feeling, the 89-year-old spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhists said: "According to my dream, I may live 110 years.
The knee too is improving, the Nobel laureate said at his Himalayan residence in Dharamshala town in northern India after blessing more than 300 visitors from India and overseas at a regular audience. "Not much serious problem," he said after walking gingerly with the help of aides, although for longer distances he is taken around in a golf cart.
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The 14th Dalai Lama fled to India along with thousands of Tibetans in early 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Beijing insists it will choose his successor, but the Dalai Lama has said it was possible his incarnation could be found in India and warned that any other successor named by China would not be respected.
Tibetan Buddhists believe that learned monastics are reincarnated after death as newborns.
The Dalai Lama's prediction of living for another two decades is reassuring for his followers, but more clarity on his succession - including if and where he will be reincarnated - could come from him when he turns 90 in July, said Dolma Tsering Teykhang, the deputy speaker of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile, also based in Dharamshala.
Teykhang said that although even thinking of the current Dalai Lama's demise brings tears to her eyes, there is a system in place for the Tibetan-government-in-exile to continue its political work while officers of the Dalai Lama's Gaden Phodrang Foundation would be responsible for searching and recognising the next Dalai Lama.
The current Dalai Lama set up the Zurich-based foundation in 2015 to "maintain and support the tradition and institution of the Dalai Lama with regard to the religious and spiritual duties of the Dalai Lama", according to its website.
Its senior officers include monks living in India and Switzerland.
"We can't take it for granted that he is going to live 113 years," said Teykhang, referring to a lifespan the current Dalai Lama had earlier predicted for himself, and pointing out that the previous Dalai Lama died earlier than expected at 58.
"Without His Holiness, the struggle of Tibet, I don't know where it will go. But then I put my hope in the administration that he has built in 60 years from nothing to this level."
The knee surgery meant the Dalai Lama had to avoid audiences for nearly three months. He resumed in September and now sees hundreds of people three times a week at his home, a sprawling complex that has a temple and an office, surrounded by lush green and snow-topped hills.
The Dalai Lama is the best-known living proponent of Buddhism and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping alive the Tibetan cause. Beijing sees him as a dangerous separatist, although he has embraced what he calls a "Middle Way" of peacefully seeking genuine autonomy and religious freedom within China.
Born in 1935, the Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two years old. It is possible he will leave clues before he dies about where his incarnation would be born and to whom, said Teykhang.
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