By Tenzin Lekhden
DHARAMSHALA, Dec. 16: China is preparing for the “post-Dalai” era by restricting and imposing regulations regarding reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist lamas. Last November, a Chinese local state official visited three towns in the county of Sog, in Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), which has a history of resistance to state restrictions on religion. Human Rights Watch said the goal was to ensure the local Tibetans comply and endorse state policies and regulations on recognition of Tibetan Buddhist incarnations.
These sessions were reportedly attended by over 120 individuals with professions that exert a certain influence, large or subtle, over the local population. These include township officials, staff of monastery management committees, village-based cadres, village officials, local police, and schoolteachers. Participants “unanimously declared their willingness to follow laws and regulations concerning Tibetan Buddhist incarnation affairs,” according to state media.
China has an extensive history of meddling with the reincarnations of Tibetan Buddhist lamas; the case of the 11th Panchen Lama is the typical example of such meddling. The global superpower has been asserting its claim on the next Dalai Lama but has been met with diplomatic opposition from the United States last year with the revised Tibet policy that declared that only Tibetans have the right to select the next Dalai Lama.
CCP authorities, from 2007, have imposed regulations limiting the recognition of reincarnate lamas. The party mandated that high-ranking incarnations can only be selected using the “Golden Urn”, which is an 18th-century Chinese lottery system, sinicizing the traditional Tibetan Buddhist culture. These regulations, Human Rights Watch, writes “are widely understood as preparation for what officials call the ‘post-Dalai era.’ They are the legal groundwork for the Party’s plan to capitalize on the future death of the current Dalai Lama, who is 86 and in exile, by appointing their choice as the next one.”
The local meetings that were held in the reported three counties in Tibet Autonomous Region are the implementation of policies that were made years ago. These policies are made required for senior monks to study and declare allegiance. Since 2018, all monastics, particularly those with teaching or official duties, have been required to meet “Four Standards,” including “political reliability” and “being dependable at critical moments. Both are believed to involve support for the Chinese government’s choice of the next Dalai Lama and any other reincarnate lama.” the US-based Human Rights advocacy group writes.
One Response
Monks and nuns are the educated class among the Tibetans in independent Tibet and have had strong influence among the Tibetan people. Today, it is doubtful if they are well educated like they were in the days when Tibet was a free nation because the heathen Communists killed most of the high ranking Lamas and Geshes and discouraged studying Buddhism ever since the illegal occupation. Since they are anti-Buddhism and anti-religion, they have destroyed the cream of Tibetan Buddhist academics. The monasteries are now just for tourist attraction and to give a semblance of religious freedom in Tibet for propaganda purposes but otherwise they are run by communists to get the donations from the public to line their own pockets! Study of the great five treatises are discouraged and monks are made to do hard labour rather than study.
The greatest loss of course is the murder of the highest ranking Lamas and the most scholarly Geshes by the evil Chinese communists. The monasteries were emptied and plundered and the holy statues and relics smashed and turned into rubble!
Today, after seventy years of illegal, oppressive occupation, they have not succeeded in snuffing out Tibetan spirit and resistance. So, now they have changed their tactic by wooing the Buddhist clergy to use them as tools to rule Tibet. The monks and nuns they choose are those that are loyal and compliant to the CCP dictatorship to fulfil the CCP’s game of squelching out any resistance to Chinese occupation and ultimate destruction of Tibetan Buddhism in Tibet.
The reincarnated Lama’s are another target to fulfil this evil design. However, as long as the Dalai Lama is alive, the Tibetan monks and nuns will always look to the Dalai Lama as their spiritual guide no matter what the evil CCP does to indoctrinate them. After all, the Dalai Lama is a holy man who follows the faith they have espoused while the CCP thugs are the destroyers of the faith they hold dear to their hearts. Tibetans regard the barbaric CCP as the enemy of the faith and this is the absolute truth.