Just want to say for the Chinese people answering this - the Dalai Lama didn’t come from any noble family - his parents were small farmers. One of twenty in a small village called Taktser which hadn’t been settled or farmed for long because of the unpredictable weather. They grew barley, buckwheat and potatoes. He was one of seven children. Unusually, two of his brothers were recognized as tulkus before him. He was discovered at age two. So - no, he is not of a “ruling class” at all. The Office of His Holiness The Dalai Lama

As for him believing in communism, he still does, though he makes it clear that he doesn’t mean Maoist Communism. But he does find the ideas of communism admirable. He has said that many times. He also sees a lot of virtue in democracy too and has said that too.

Buddhism is not a political movement. And there’s a lot of exaggeration in the Chinese accounts of old Tibet which are hardly unbiased and by people who didn’t understand the culture - even the Buddhism in China has a different origin from the Buddhism practiced in Tibet with many customs that would be hard to understand until you know how they work - and as for things like the health care and short lifespan - that was normal back then world wide. Much of the population were nomads and of the ones that farmed, many of them owned their own land. And you are talking about the 1950s. The Dalai Lama has never called for Tibet to be restored to the way it was back then.

When you see the Dalai Lama in ceremonial robes - they are not the robes of his office, as he just wears plain monk’s robes as the Dalai Lama. Rather, they are robes to symbolize qualities of the enlightened mind that Buddhists think we all have. It’s a ceremony to transmit the blessing of a quality we already have in ourselves and the robes are to show the value of those qualities we all have. With these blessings, it’s never the idea of transmitting a quality from them to us.

It’s the idea of a blessing to awaken a quality we have already, for instance, compassion. They think that particular words and symbols and images can help to evoke that quality, even iconography of a human looking figure with hands holding various things, maybe a particular gesture or smile - it’s all evoking compassion in its many forms. So then, any Tibetan lama giving the same blessing would wear the same robes - and would wear them only for the ceremony.

When you read

“Thus His Holiness is also believed to be a manifestation of Chenrezig, in fact the seventy-fourth in a lineage that can be traced back to a Brahmin boy who lived in the time of Buddha Shakyamuni.”

It doesn’t mean that he is the only manifestation of compassion. Compassion of course manifests in many forms. Tibetans think the Dalai Lama carries a special inspiration of compassion, that he can transmit a blessing to awaken the compassion we all have in ourselves. Others can have that special inspiration also. If anyone inspired you to compassion - that person was carrying this very same inspiration which we all have.

There’s no need for anyone else to believe that of course, to think that the ceremonies have any significance. But I think it might help to realize how they are understood. There isn’t any elitist sentiment behind this. It’s all grounded in the idea that all of us are capable of the vast boundless compassion of a Buddha. Not only that, not only capable of it. We actually have that compassion already if we can but relate to it and awaken to it.

The only Tibetan religious costume I know of that is specific to a particular person is the black hat of the Karmapa.

I hope this helps!