Dalai Lama has been tireless advocate for Tibet and its people

DHARAMSHALA, India (Reuters) -The Dalai Lama, the spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism, has often called himself a simple monk, but for more than 60 years armed with little more than charm and conviction, he has managed to keep the cause of his people in the international spotlight.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled into exile in India in 1959 with thousands of other Tibetans after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Since then, he has advocated for a non-violent "Middle Way" to seeking autonomy and religious freedom for Tibetan people, gaining the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.

He has met with scores of world leaders, while inspiring millions with his cheerful disposition and views on life such as "Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible."

But his popularity irks China which views him as a dangerous separatist, with one former Communist Party boss describing him as "a jackal" and having "the heart of a beast".

The Dalai Lama turns 90 on Sunday, a particularly important birthday as he has flagged that he may say more about a potential successor around then. Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child upon his death.

In a book, "Voices for the Voiceless", published earlier this year, he said Tibetans worldwide want the institution of the Dalai Lama to continue after his death and specified that his successor would be born in the "free world", which he described as outside China.

The statements were his strongest yet about the likelihood of a successor. In previous years, he has also said that his successor might be a girl and it is possible that there might be no successor at all.

He has, however, stated that any successor chosen by China, which has piled pressure on foreign governments to shun him, will not be respected.

FLIGHT INTO EXILE

The Dalai Lama was born Lhamo Dhondup in 1935 to a family of buckwheat and barley farmers in what is now the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai. At the age of two, he was deemed by a search party to be the 14th reincarnation of Tibet's spiritual and temporal leader after identifying several of his predecessor's possessions.

China took control of Tibet in 1950 in what it called "a peaceful liberation" and the teenage Dalai Lama assumed a political role shortly after, travelling to Beijing to meet Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders. Nine years later, fears that the Dalai Lama could be kidnapped fuelled a major rebellion. 

The subsequent crackdown by the Chinese army forced him to escape disguised as a common soldier from the palace in Lhasa where his predecessors had held absolute power.

The Dalai Lama fled to India, settling in Dharamshala, a Himalayan town where he lives in a compound next to a temple ringed by green hills and snow-capped mountains. There, he opened up his government-in-exile to ordinary Tibetans with an elected parliament.

    Disillusioned with how little he had gained from his efforts to engage with Beijing, he announced in 1988 that he had given up on seeking full independence from China, and instead would be seeking cultural and religious autonomy within China. 

In 2011, the Dalai Lama announced he would relinquish his political role, handing over those responsibilities to an elected leader for the Tibetan government-in-exile.

But he remains active and these days, the Dalai Lama, clad in his customary maroon and saffron robes, continues to receive a constant stream of visitors.

He has had a number of health problems, including knee surgery and walks with difficulty. Despite that, he expects to live for a long time yet.

"According to my dream, I may live 110 years," he told Reuters in December.

(Reporting by Krishna Das; Additional reporting by Tanvi Mehta; Writing by Edwina Gibbs; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)