jueves, marzo 11, 2010
Believe it or Not
Bureaucracy of Rebirth
Tuesday March 9, 2010
Almost every time I blog about His Holiness the Dalai Lama I hear from someone who says His Holiness really is a dreadful person and that everything I write about him is a lie. This may be because I sometimes do depart from the Official Chinese Government Version of whatever happened. So, in the interest of fairness, today I will blog about an item taken from Xinhua (official Chinese government news agency) itself.
According to Xinhua -- His Holiness simply cannot reincarnate any way he wants to. This is from Padma Choling, Chinese-appointed governor of the "Tibetan Autonomous Region":
"There have been 14 Dalai Lamas... It is unreasonable to do whatever he wants (about reincarnation) when it comes to the 14th Dalai Lama. There's no way for him to do so," said Padma Choling, adding the 14th Dalai Lama himself was approved by the Nationalist Government, the then central regime of China.
I don't know what he means about His Holiness being "approved" by the Nationalist Government, unless the approval came after the Chinese invasion of 1950-1951, when His Holiness already was a teenager.
It gets better. This is later in the same article:
Qiangba Puncog, chairman of the Standing Committee of Tibet Autonomous Regional People's Congress, the regional legislature, said: "If the religion and the reincarnation issues serve separatists and politics, the Tibetan Buddhism disciples won't agree."
Qiangba Puncog said the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must meet all the traditional requirements in four aspects: irreligious rituals, historical conventions passed on since the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), lot drawing from the Golden Urn in the face of the Buddha Sakyamuni and the approval from the central government.
"Any claimed reincarnation that fails to meet all these requirements will be illegitimate and invalid," he added.
Got that? There will be no rebirthing without government approval. I assume they've got a bureaucrat stationed in the Bardo.
