Chinese Chutzpah
Beijing seems to be redefining the term. Via Reuters:
Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, does not have a right to choose his successor any way he wants and must follow the historical and religious tradition of reincarnation, a Chinese official said on Monday.
It is unclear how the 76-year-old Dalai Lama, who lives in India and is revered by many Tibetans, plans to pick his successor. He has said that the succession process could break with tradition — either by being hand-picked by him or through democratic elections.
But Padma Choling, the Chinese-appointed governor of Tibet, said that the Dalai Lama had no right to abolish the institution of reincarnation, underscoring China’s hardline stance on one of the most sensitive issues for the restless and remote region.
“I don’t think this is appropriate. It’s impossible, that’s what I think,” he said on the sidelines of the annual meeting of China’s parliament, when asked about the Dalai Lama’s suggestion that his successor may not be his reincarnation.
“We must respect the historical institutions and religious rituals of Tibetan Buddhism,” said Padma Choling, a Tibetan and a former soldier in the People’s Liberation Army. “I am afraid it is not up to anyone whether to abolish the reincarnation institution or not.”
I can certainly understand why the current Dalai Lama would want to find a way to guarantee that the Chinese government would not be directly or indirectly involved in the selection of his successor, but I thought that all of the Dalai Lama’s to date (14 I think), except maybe the first, were selected through a search for the boy in which the most recent Dalai Lama had been reincarnated. (Scorcese’s “Kundun” vividly captured the reincarnation selection process for the current Dalai Lama.) I believe I heard the present Dalai Lama say he would not be reincarnated in Tibet while it is under Chinese control, but I don’t understand enough about Buddhism to know whether the theology allows for geographic restrictions on where successor Dalai Lamas can be reincarnated.
I dunno, David. Consider the life of drastic changes that Mr. Choling have endured. Somehow I find his defense of tradition very touching. Poor man.
(I also wonder what has happened to the Dalai Lama’s old beliefs.)
I’m confused: is the Dali Lama revising the belief in reincarnation, or the process by which the reincarnated one is discovered? At least theoretically, they’re different things.
Whether the Dalai Lama can indeed change the rules of succession, given their mystical orientation, is an interesting question, and one he seems refreshingly open to exploring. I wonder how it would work — like having two popes at the same time?!
The point of my post, however, was Beijing protesting that it was preserving religious tradition when in fact it has been exploiting and subverting religious tradition and freedom most terribly for decades. Whatever one thinks of reincarnation as a means of succession, or the pope’s authority to appoint bishops, for that matter, it is a question of religious freedom and autonomy, not government control.
Beijing has done horrific things to the Tibetan culture (which is an inherently religious culture) and it rejected Tibetan religious tradition when it rejected the Dalai Lama’s divination of a young child as the Panchen Lama, and named another boy, who has been under house arrest since he was a small child and trotted out on occassion to make pro-China, anti-Dalai lama statements. So the state is the arbiter of religious tradition?
The classic definition of chutzpah is the son who kills his parents and then argues for leniency in the courts because he is an orphan.
If you read mysteries or are thinking of taking mystery reading up for Lent, I recommend a series by Eliot Pattison, about mostly Buddhist peasants in Tibet. The basic set up is that our hero is a Chinese investigator who spent years in a prison camp after uncovering some dirt on an influential party boss in Beijing. While in prison, he came under the influence of holy Buddhist monks who were imprisoned for resisting the Chinese takeover of Tibet. Now he’s a sort of Buddhist vagabond in the mountains, where he investigates on behalf of the peasants, usually to save them from Chinese retribution. The Buddhism in these books is full of sky gods and mountain gods and lots of ritual you wouldn’t imagine if all you knew was what you read in the Dalai Lama’s books.
Since I’ve been reading these mysteries, I went and also read a book by Richard Horsley, a professor at UMass, who writes about how Imperial power affects religions. As I understand it, his point is that Europeans have long had this need for Buddhism to be a particular kind of religion: a ritual-free, monastic philosophy derived from their reading of Buddhist texts, not from experience of Buddhist people: “an agnostic, rationalist, ethical individualism grounded in philosophical reflection.”
“In his promotion of Buddhist compassion for the cause of Tibetan independence, the Dalai Lama described Tibet much as certain Europeans described it in the nineteenth century, as a preserve of wisdom. What is enduring about Tibet, therefore, is Buddhism. But Buddhism. which was brought to Tibet by the great Mahayana masters from India, now means mainly the practice of compassion. The Dalai Lama is thus offering to the West what it has long projected and coveted, hoping to get his country back in the bargain.” [Religion and Empire, p17]
Cathleen Kaveny — whether or not the DL is revising earlier beliefs, it now appears (I can’t give you the exact source) that no reincarnation is permitted without the approval of Beijing ( think it’s the Ministry of the Interior that has to give its blessing, if that’s the word). And when the question of succession comes up, they will certainly make their will felt.
On the whole question of Tibet in the western imagination, there are two very interesting books: Peter Bishop’s The Myth of Shangi-la (U. of Cal. Press, 1989), and Donald Lopez, Prisoners of Shangri-la (U. of Chicago Press, 1998). Tibetan history is in some respects not particularly salubrious, and the present Dalai Lama and his illustrious predecessor have been somewhat the exceptions in being allowed. despite Lhasa’s internal politics) to survive into adulthood.