China cracks down on reincarnation

  • It’s now ille­gal to rein­car­nate in Tibet with­out Chi­nese autho­riza­tion (Link HERE). I think that’s about as tightly-wound as any gov­ern­ment ever needs to get.

    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.”

    I’d just love to know how they plan on enforc­ing that one. “Sayyy, weren’t you a cock­roach yes­ter­day? I’m writ­ing a big, fat ticket for you, my friend.” Unfor­tu­nately, the rea­son for the move isn’t as big of a laugh.

    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.

    So it’s a bit of check­mate for the Tibetan Bud­dhists. I don’t know where the Dalai Lama goes from here, but accord­ing to the experts, he could go anywhere …

    Bud­dhism schol­ars agree that it will likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread through­out India, Europe and North America.

    Well, almost anywhere …

    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.

    Gee, y’think? I’m kind of sur­prised that that many Chris­tians say they believe in rein­car­na­tion, (maybe they thought they said “THE incar­na­tion”?) but it’s just a shame that we’re out of the run­ning to be the next Dalai Lama. I’d look good in the saf­fron robes!

    mereincarnating.jpg


    Related posts:

    1. Saints of the Boxer Rebellion

    August 21st, 2007 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 08.21.2007

    Amaz­ing.… I used to believe in rein­car­na­tion, but that was in a past life.

  • Grace

    (snort)

    Though I should say I feel a lit­tle guilty about being so glib about this belief. I don’t believe in rein­car­na­tion, of course, and it is an easy one to spoof, but if a Hindu or Bud­dhist were talk­ing of Chris­t­ian beliefs, I’d want them to not always go for the easy laughs.

    The thing I’d like to know is how Chris­tians could ever say they believe in rein­car­na­tion. I’m curi­ous whether it’s some­thing they’ve really thought out, or just some­thing that sounded so cool they didn’t bother to think about whether it was con­sis­tent with ortho­dox (lower case ‘o’) Christianity?

  • Cather­ine K.

    Not long ago I read, some­where, about how many protes­tant denom­i­na­tions appar­ently see no prob­lem at all with rein­car­na­tion and Chris­tian­ity — which really sur­prised me. If I could just remem­ber where I read that — and it may be the source wasn’t reli­able. It is some­times dif­fi­cult to tell when it comes to the inter­net — espe­cially when you can’t remem­ber where you read it :)

  • Greg

    I can’t help but notice you look hap­pier in the saf­fron robe. Is that because the color works on you, or did you have a par­tic­u­larly good time in your stint as a grasshop­per? :)

  • Grace

    As I recall, it was a lit­tle of both. :-)

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