Mar 21st 2015
The Dalai Lama, who is nearly 80, has been denounced by Chinese officials and media for daring to suggest that he might not be reincarnated after his death. A European-based follower of the Tibetan leader, who knows him well, explains the position thus: "If there is no useful role for him to play spiritually, educationally, culturally, then there is no point in [his] coming back as the 15th Dalai Lama." Such statements have been dismissed as "nonsense" in China, where it is presumably hoped that a manageable successor to the exiled leader will emerge, on Chinese territory.
The trouble, from the state's point of view, is that you can monitor and channel religions as much as you want, but you can never be sure which direction the current will flow. Religious traditions, if they are worth the name, can suddenly produce charismatic figures, mystical movements, prophets, seers, new incarnations and indeed all manner of things that no bureaucrat ever dreamed of. The state can respond to such phenomena but it cannot micro-manage them. Whatever happens after the end of the current Dalai Lama's life (or, as some would say, the end of the Dalai Lama's current life), that will surely be true of Tibetan Buddhism.
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