No, he is neither of these things. He was a political leader, but never a king. From a young child, he was expected to become a monk, and whether he did or not, there was no possibility of a royal dynasty. The young Dalai Lama was chosen as a child of a small farmer in rural Tibet in a tiny village of twenty farmers making a precarious living growing barley, potatoes and buckwheat, as well as produce from yaks, hens and sheep.

So the process of choosing a new Dalai Lama didn’t favour high ranking officials either. He was expected to study and become deeply immersed in the Buddhist teachings which emphasize compassion and openness to others.

I see nothing wrong with a king myself, kings can be good. Especially in the past. But even now, then I think that any society is bound to have the trappings of royalty. And perhaps there is something to be said for having Kings or Queens that are above all that. If not, then the billionaires and presidents end up having those trappings instead - is that better?

But the Dalai Lama was not a king. He was a political leader. And he also had some of the trappings of a king or leader such as presidents also have and royal families, whether he wanted them or not.

ITEM OVERVIEW - Potala palace by F. M. Bailey on Younghusband Mission to Tibet, 1903-4 - the Dalai Lama grew up in this building. But as a young child he was a son of a small farmer in a tiny rural village of twenty families.

This is about his early childhood

“His Holiness the Dalai Lama was born on 6 July 1935, and named Lhamo Thondup, to a Tibetan farming family in the small village of Taktser, located in the province of Amdo. The name, Lhamo Thondup, literally means ‘Wish-Fulfilling Goddess’. Taktser (Roaring Tiger) was a small village that stood on a hill overlooking a broad valley. Its pastures had not been settled or farmed for long, only grazed by nomads. The reason for this was the unpredictability of the weather in that area, His Holiness writes in his autobiography, “During my early childhood, my family was one of twenty or so making a precarious living from the land there”.

“His Holiness' parents were small farmers who mostly grew barley, buckwheat and potatoes. His father was a man of medium height with a very quick temper. “I remember pulling at his moustache once and being hit hard for my trouble”, recalls His Holiness. “Yet he was a kind man too and he never bore grudges”. His Holiness recalls his mother as undoubtedly one of the kindest people he has ever known. She had a total of sixteen children, of whom seven lived.

“…One thing that I remember enjoying particularly as a very young boy was going into the chicken coop to collect the eggs with my mother and then staying behind. I liked to sit in the hens' nest and make clucking noises. Another favorite occupation of mine as an infant was to pack things in a bag as if I was about to go on a long journey. I'm going to Lhasa, I'm going to Lhasa, I would say. This, coupled with my insistence that I be allowed always to sit at the head of the table, was later said to be an indication that I must have known that I was destined for greater things”.
 Birth to Exile

He has also now resigned all of his political roles in the “government in exile” and so is no longer a political leader either.

As for a God, no Buddhists don’t think in terms of gods at all. They are non theists. There is n need to take any position at all, whether theist, atheist, agnostic, on whether there is a God. What are sometimes translated as gods are

• Beings with good fortune and very long lives. We have a lot of variation here on Earth of course, some beings that have short lives full of suffering and others with long lives mainly filled with happiness (those are not necessarily the wealthiest people in a material sense).
  
  Some Buddhists believe that there may be beings with lifetimes measured in billions or trillions of years or more who experience only good fortune and happiness for their entire lifetime. It’s rather similar to modern ideas of extra terrestrials and advanced extra terrestrial civilizations, who in some visions with advanced technology might have extremely long lives and experience nothing but happiness. If you think that this could be one of many lives, then we may not be limited to imagining what could happen in this universe alone. Perhaps there are possibilities for long life and happiness far in advance of anything that’s even possible in the observable universe. Buddhist speculations on this matter include the idea of beings in realms of pure thought, not even with the inconvenience of bodies of any sort at all. Just experiencing pure happiness or states more refined than happiness in the ordinary sense. Yet this is not the objective of Buddhist path because such lives eventually come to an end according to Buddhist teaching, and so in that sense are seen as ultimately not entirely optimal or satisfactory and the suffering of returning even to conditions like our own at the end of such a long life of happiness could be vast.
• Qualities such as compassion and wisdom that we also experience in ourselves as well as others. It’s hard to appreciate such things as qualities we could have as we think of ourselves as limited. So sometimes it’s helpful to think of it as a living quality that transcends us. Not in the sense of an external deity, but in the sense of a quality of compassion so vast and transcending that we can hardly believe it could be something we are capable of ourselves. So we may be able to relate to it as external first, as something that is indeed in a way external to our limited ways of thinking about ourselves

Many Tibetan Buddhists think that the Dalai Lama embodies compassion, shows it in some sense, its vast boundless quality. So - not as something that is intrinsic to him and nobody else. It’s rather as a blessing, a quality we all have, but sometimes you can see it more easily in others than in yourself.

He isn’t however a pope figure. Buddhists don’t reocognize anyone as an overall authority figure for all of Buddhism, or even over a branch of Buddhism. Indeed they can’t even alter the nuns or monks; vows, set out by Buddha, although many of them now seem archaic and maybe not what he would have come up with teaching in our present times.

Buddhist teachers can advise their own students who come to them for advice, and make suggestions in talks. But the Dalai Lama would not expect Buddhists to follow his advice - even Tibetans. He was also a political leader, but is so no longer, in that sense he is a bit like a king who abdicates though he never was a king exactly.

When Buddhists listen to a Buddhist teacher in the main sutra traditions, they don’t listen to them as one might to a pope. They expect to make up their own minds and the very idea that you might have to do something because the Dalai Lama told you to do it would seem absurd, LOL. It’s not an “anything goes” approach, they follow the path in consultation with their own best understanding assisted by advice from people they consider to be wise, of course. But as Buddhists, who we choose to ask for advice there is up to us, and Buddha’s path is a path of openness to teachings from anyone we find inspiring and helpful, in any tradition or religion or none

So he is neither a God in the sense of an authority figure, nor in the sense of having eternal life, nor in the sense of having miraculous powers, nor in the sense of having unusually fortunate situations (he can become ill and die like anyone else). He is just an ordinary person like anyone else. But to many Tibetans then he carries a blessing or connection with compassion. They think that listening to him, and meeting him too, helps them to connect more directly with their own compassion. But not in any exclusive way. You can come to seem many beings as “Chenrezig”. Indeed the path of the Bodhisattva leads towards eventually seeing the compassionate heart of all beings.

Here he is talking to Piers Morgan in the UK recently. Piers Morgan is a former judge on “Britain’s got Talent” and “America’s got Talent”. You could hardly find someone with a more different approach to life, which is part of what makes the interview so interesting.

Piers Morgan asks him many times in different ways if he is a special person, e.g. is he able to heal others, one of the first questions he asks, or can he pray to help a football club win, towards the end. So have a listen to his answers.