Saturday 4 August 2007

"Do you have a permit for that, sir?"

I see that the Chinese government has banned Tibetan Buddhist lamas from reincarnating without government permission. According to the order issued by the communist regime:
The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid.
Quite how they're going to stop anyone from being reincarnated, should the Buddhists turn out to be right about that after all, is anyone's guess. Of course, the actual aim of the Chinese government is to reduce the influence of the Dalai Lama over Tibet, and, particularly, over the selection of his successor.

Incidentally, the "actor" Steven Seagal is among those living people who is, supposedly, a "reincarnated living Buddha". Of course, so long as he stays out of China and Tibet, he is presumably free to reincarnate - preferably in a country devoid of film-making technology - whenever he pleases.

1 comment:

NatDeFreitas said...

My friend overheard this in Beijing today: "Now Dalai Lama is getting old. So of course he is thinking about his next life, the next Dalai Lama. He wants to select his next one. Of course he cannot select where he will live. He knows when he passes, maybe without the permission of central government of China, maybe he cannot get re-life"

She took some video of the exchange, as well, which you can see at: http://beijingwideopen.org/2007/08/05/video-from-the-lama-temple/