'Din' from 'The DEN' -- CHINA, ‘The GOD’s Father’

China - ‘The GOD’s Father’

China, a communist country, trying to engineer a succession plan to the Dalai Lama is anathema to its professed ideology.  But it is in the process of usurping the right to have a dominant say.  Though on paper it does not interfere in citizens belief or religious practices it tries to determine the reincarnation of the 14^th Dalai Lama.

Tibetan tradition has it that the next Dalai Lama would be found by seeking the previous leader’s reincarnation.   The present 14^th Dalai Lama recently speculated that he will not reincarnate and will not have an afterlife.  It is an intricate process by which the successor is identified and incarnated.  It can take two to three years to complete the process.  According to Wikipedia, the Dalai Lama said he would not be reborn in a country controlled by the People’s Republic of China or any other country which is not free.  This throws up the possibility that the future Dalai Lama could be from any other country where Buddhism is practiced and followed.  The Dalai Lama speculated then that the future Dala Lama could be a woman.  The fact that the present Dalai Lama who exiled himself from Tibet / China and fled to India in 1959 and established a government in exile in India, aggravates unease of the Chinese Government.  That government still functions from Dharmasala, Himachal Predesh, India.  He is still the most reverered and venerated amongst Tibetan Buddhists.

Hence the present speculation that the 14^th Dalai Lama would not reincarnate makes China jittery for they would not have any say in the reincarnation of Dalai Lama or leverage in the affairs of Tibetan Buddhists.  The Chinese government fear losing grip on Tibetan affairs.  Appointing a friendly and pliant Lama who accepts China’s presence, policies and supremacy in Tibet would become impossibility.  China terms this as a betrayal of the succession of Dalai Lamas in Tibetan Buddhism.  The government seems to be bent on managing all aspects of Buddhist affairs in respect of Tibet, including the rituals of succession, to ensure total control of Tibet.

But Dalai Lama by speculating that there would not by reincarnation of himself put all efforts of China’s efforts to naught and in disarray.   Perhaps Dalai Lama does not want a repetition of Chinese government meddling in the affairs of selection of a successor as it did in the case of Panchan Lama in nineties.  The possibility of no reincarnation would make Chinese Government irrelevant.  This insult, the China is unlikely to digest and hence an attempt to run the rituals to identify to the person as incarnate.

Hence we now see the parody of Marxists, atheists by ideology, trying to fix reincarnation and after life in the true spirits of an oldest religion!