4 Year Old Boy Chosen by Lama in Tibet

The 11th Panchen Lama, who is being projected by China as the successor to the exiled Dalai Lama, led the tonsuring ceremony of a 4-year-old Tibetan boy chosen as the sixth 'Living Buddha', officials said on Monday.
The Lama, Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, tonsured Losang Doje, the reincarnation of the fifth Living Buddha Dezhub, in the Tibetan capital Lhasa yesterday according to Buddhist rituals, officials in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region said.
The tonsure ceremony was held at the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa following a lot-drawing ceremony that selected the boy with the secular name as the sixth Living Buddha Dezhub.
Before the tonsure ceremony, Losang Jigme, Tibet's top official in-charge of religious affairs, read out the regional government's approval of the reincarnation, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported from Lhasa.
Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, the Chinese Government-appointed 11th Panchen Lama, who is also vice president of the Buddhist Association of China, then cut a lock of the boy's hair and gave him the religious name Dezhub Jamyang Sherab Palden.
The 20-year-old Panchen Lama himself was chosen in a similar fashion 15 years ago. The Panchen Lama is regarded as second-in-command in Tibetan Buddhism after the Dalai Lama, who is the political and spiritual head.
Tibetan officials in the past have defended the appointment of 11th Panchen Lama, who is now being projected by China as a successor to the 14th Dalai Lama to take over as the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Panchen Lama, who lives mostly in Beijing, had made his political "debut" by addressing for the first time a congregation recently at Tashilhunpo Monastery in Tibet.