Hail Comrades: Reincarnation Does Not Comport with The People's Ideology. The People's Government of China Institutionalizes Licensing for Permission to Reincarnate, In the Best Interests of the State. Praise God!, by Golly!

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The Next Lama: The Dalai Lama says he won't reincarnate in Tibet*

 

By Matthew Philips

Newsweek

 

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd

acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks

in Tibet from reincarnating without government

permission. According to a statement issued by the State

Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes

into effect next month and strictly stipulates the

procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is " an

important move to institutionalize management of

reincarnation. " But beyond the irony lies China's true

motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama,

Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to

quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more

than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan

country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside

China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively

gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next

Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new

human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

 

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959,

is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he

refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under

Chinese control. Assuming he's able to master the feat of

controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have

for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in

which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the

Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. " It will

be a very hot issue, " says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism

scholar at Stanford. " The Dalai Lama has been the prime

symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so

it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be

a lot more important than the others. "

So where in the world will the next Dalai Lama be born?

Harrison and other Buddhism scholars agree that it will

likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread

throughout India, Europe and North America. With an

estimated 8,000 Tibetans living in the United States,

could the next Dalai Lama be American-born? " You'll have

to ask him, " says Harrison. If so, he'll likely be

welcomed into a culture that has increasingly embraced

reincarnation over the years. According to a 2005 Gallup

poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in

reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a

Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter

of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all

born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored

end-of-life view. A non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, experts say,

is probably out of the question.

 

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