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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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