Dalai Lama’s surgery successful but followers anxious for future

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is resting after successful surgery to remove gallstones.  The Tibetan spiritual leader has reportedly suffered from gallstone pain for over a decade, but it was during a recent checkup in New Dehli that doctors decided it would be best to finally have them removed. The Nobel Prize-winning Buddhist elder was hospitalized in New Delhi on Thursday.

The surgery will not affect the Dalai Lama of traveling several months a year, as he plans to continue at the end of the month, educating people on the tenets of Buddhism and the Tibetan struggle.

In August, the Nobel Prize-winning Buddhist elder was admitted to a hospital in Mumbai for abdominal pains. He was released in good condition, but advised to cancel a trip to Europe on account of exhaustion. While the exiled Tibetan community grows increasingly divided on pacifist versus active action against China, the Dalai Lama remains deeply revered and a focal point for their hope. At 73-years-old and this recent health scare, followers wonder what the inevitable death of the Dalai Lama will mean.