If you want to know about Tibetan Buddhism as the Tibetans understand it, then he is one of the best qualified people there are. Quoting from his bibliography: “At 23, His Holiness sat for his final examination in Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple, during the annual Monlam (prayer) Festival in 1959. He passed with honors and was awarded the Geshe Lharampa degree, the highest-level degree, equivalent to a doctorate of Buddhist philosophy. “.

Indeed, by 23 he already showed himself to be unusually gifted academically impressing everyone there by his erudite questions and answers in his exam.

It’s actually more demanding than a doctorate. It requires typically around 15 years of intensive study, at least. Geshe Lharampa - Rigpa Wiki (in the video below it says 20 or 30 years typically)

Actually there is a short video here about the examination of the Dalai Lama, when he passed the Geshe Lharumpa degree. As the Dalai Lama, in old Tibet, he had to pass the examination not just once, but four times, in four separate monasteries. The exam is a bit like a viva but rather more dynamic, more like a debate, with many questions back and forth where he has to show his thorough understanding of the material. Unusually they think the ability to ask questions is as important as answering them so the candidate is expected to ask challenging questions of their examiner, and they are assessed not just on how well they answer questions but on how challenging their own questions are as well.

The exam lasted ten hours and he was examined by 50 of the most learned Lamas in Tibet.

Note the commentary of this video, when it gets to Buddhist ideas, has some Western misconceptions. E.g. Buddhists don’t have the idea of an afterlife in the Western sense. There’s the idea of rebirth into very fortunate states sometimes called “god realms” where everything is wonderful, but eventually on very long time scales you die. Tibetan Buddhists also have the idea of an intermediate state between death and rebirth called the Bardo which can last for several weeks (Therevadhans don’t have this). Tibetan Buddhists, like the Japanese also have the idea of rebirth into a “pure land”, a world in which everything has the inspiration of enlightenment, perhaps the closest (again Therevadans don’t have this). But there is nothing directly corresponding to the Western idea of an “afterlife”.

There are very few Westerners who have achieved this qualification. Georges Dreyfus achieved it in 1985, being the first Westerner to achieve it.

The Dalai Lama is also one of the very few Tibetan teachers to be a lineage holder in all four of the Tibetan branches of Buddhism. These are very different from each other. Most Tibetan teachers will specialize in only one or other of them, or sometimes in two of them. So, he is not only expert in the Gelugpa but also the Kagyu, Sakya and Nyingmapa branches of Tibetan Buddhism. He also understands them not only academically. He also practices the meditations of the different schools and has the transmissions of many practices in all the schools.

So - he’s got the academic background of a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner and also the background in meditation too, and has that in all four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Some academics just have the academic understanding and don’t have the experience of using their understanding in meditation and daily life practice. Some practitioners may have a very deep understanding of Buddhist practice, and meditation, but not have an academic understanding. He has both.

So those are his qualifications.

As well as that, for his entire adult life since he has left Tibet and even while in Tibet he has been in constant dialogue with scientists, with religious teachers of many different religions, and so on. He has become fluent with many scientific and philosophical ideas used in the West.

The one thing he doesn’t seem to be so good at for some reason is languages (other than Tibetan of course), or at least, his English is still not that great. He can convey the ideas fine but his grammar is still a bit “broken English”, sometimes he has to ask for a translation into Tibetan of some word when asked a question, and he has a strong Tibetan accent. Other Tibetan teachers have picked up English much faster than he did.

Part of it must be that Tibetan is very different from English. It’s not like e.g. learning German or Norwegian if you speak English. But his English is far better now. A decade or two ago, he used to give public talks in Tibetan with a translator, had audience questions translated into Tibetan, and his English was quite hard to follow when he occasionally spoke in English. Now he normally teaches English speaking audiences in English, fields the questions directly and only has to ask for a translation occasionally. He has also written many books in English now.

His understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, and of the Tibetan language is far better than a guy with a PhD from Stanford is likely to have. Even the best Buddhist scholars in the West generally agree that they don’t have the intimate understanding of the vast scriptures in Pali and Tibetan of the scholars who were brought up in those traditions. They miss some of the subtleties of the language, and they haven’t been able to read all of the sutras, or the commentaries for that matter, in the detail needed to have such an in depth understanding of them as the most learned Buddhist scholars have. It’s sort of a bit like the way that no Western go players can challenge the top Japanese masters. The top Western go champions will get beaten by the top Japanese masters in every single game they play.

Part of the problem is that the Buddhist scriptures (sutras) are just so vast. The Pali Canon is like an encyclopedia, it’s like learning the whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica or something. Far vaster than the Bible. The Tibetan sutras are even vaster than that. And then on top of that they have many commentaries too, written over the years. It’s like poetry. It’s not that hard to get a gist of poetry in another language apparently. And you can enjoy the sound of the words even if you don’t speak the language. But you have to be very fluent indeed to get all the subtlety of a poem in the same way that a native speaker does. So - the sutras in Pali for Therevadhan teachers - and in Sanskrit and then many texts in other languages like Tibetan for the Mahayana teachers - they have a similar subtlety of language to poetry. Like Milton or Keats or Shakespeare or Blake. For a Westerner to get this level of understanding of the Tibetan sutras and the vast literature of the commentaries on them - that is like, say a Japanese speaker, who learnt English as a second language, and who first encountered English as an adult, trying to become an expert on Milton, Keats, Blake etc. Not easy.

The Dalai Lama has this intimate understanding of the Tibetan sutras. Also of the Tibetan language. The Buddhist teachings are integrated into the Tibetan language to such an extent that you need to understand many subtleties of Tibetan Buddhism to properly understand Tibetan.

So, if you are interested in Tibetan Buddhism, and want to hear about it from someone who has an expert understanding of the teachings, you can’t find a much better source than the Dalai Lama. He isn’t the only one. There are several other teachers as expert in Tibetan Buddhism as he is. Also there are many ways of teaching it. If you get a special interest in Tibetan Buddhism, you may well find another teacher who presents it in a way that connects to you more directly for some reason as we all connect in different ways. But it’s generally agreed, I think, that he is one of the top experts on it.

Also, just to add. You don’t need this level of understanding of the sutras to meditate or practice as a Buddhist. Indeed you can do so with only minimal instructions. According to the Pali canon, some of the Buddha’s early disciples got the central point of his teaching before they had even met him, with just a couple of phrases that they were told by hearsay by others who had been to hear him speak and relayed what he had said.

As another example of this sort of thing, in the stories of the lives of the Indian Mahasiddhas again some of them became awakened as a result of following what seem such simple instructions, just a few words, with great dedication. Sometimes in these stories, they meet their main teacher just once, and then practice with great dedication, some instruction that he or she gave them, practicing it for many years, so simple you wonder how it could have so much in it.

But Buddhism has always been a very academic religion, along with at the same time, great simplicity of practice. Some people need only a few words. Some need pages and pages and need to study for decades. And the Dalai Lama has the understanding of those vast teachings for those who need to know about Tibetan Buddhism academically, as well as the background in meditation for the simplicity of practice where needed. So he often says things that seem very simple too. Indeed often you might not realize how erudite he is because of this two aspected nature of the way Buddhist teachers teach. If something can be said simply to whoever is asking the question, they won’t obfuscate it by making it more complex than it needs to be.