China to Tibet: no reincarnating without governmental consent

[jrtom]

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/22/china_to_tibetan_bud.html

In such cases one really needs to wonder if there was an agente provocateur with Tibetan sympathies inside the Chinese government, who suggested this course of action. I mean, seriously, there are three groups of people for this purpose:

(1) Chinese citizens who believe everything that their government tells them, that will believe the government when it announces that the new reincarnation of the Dalai Lama has been born inside China proper.

(2) Tibetan nationalists that won't accept the Chinese government's party line, and will probably take the Dalai Lama's word for what's going to happen with his reincarnation.

(3) The rest of the world, who is looking upon this spectacle with a bemused expression, thinking "what the _hell_?" and/or laughing their asses off.

So you're playing to the home gallery and you don't care who else believes you, fine. Do you really think it's going to make a difference, and is it worth the increased reputation as the place to go for really thorough totalitarianism?

Comments

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

It's really about trying to undermine the legitimacy of succession within Tibetan Buddhism.

The Chinese have been trying to wipe out the native religion there since they invaded. Test were burned and monks tortured and gruesomely murdered. Resistance to the Chinese government within Tibet has traditionally centered around religion as the monestaries and convents were not only part of the government there, but a deeply and embedded part of the culture and way of life. Tibetan Buddhism is deeply threaded through Tibetan identity.

Anyway, the real point is, they can't stamp out the religion, so are trying to assert state control over it.

[jrtom.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand what they're trying to accomplish. This is just a specific case of the general principle, however, that making laws regarding things that are completely outside the control of the government in question just makes the government look stupid and ineffectual. It's King Canute (Knut) all over again.

Now, I could imagine a law that punishes _claiming_ that one has been reincarnated, if one hasn't governmental approval for such claim. Still draconian, still oppressive, but it doesn't make the government sound stupid. And this may in fact be the law that was passed, but the article sure makes it sound like they're trying to criminalize the reincarnation _itself_.

it is indeed perversely amusing

[amnesiadust.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, it might be too easy for us to dismiss the importance of such a pronouncement, in terms of, as you say, mind control. In other words, for practical purposes the government may well be trying to criminalize the reincarnation itself. Keep in mind that we are looking at this from a point of view the position of which, AFAIK, is that reincarnation is a residual superstition from the "bad old days" which, though harmless, isn't worth making laws about. The law can only seem sensible from within a point of view that believes reincarnation can in fact occur, through whatever processes might be available, whether those processes are controlled by the government or not.

I think most Buddhists would believe that reincarnation occurs through processes of cause and effect which have little to do with the desires of the government. But I think they also do believe that it occurs, and that if the government punishes an unlawful reincarnation of a bodhisattva, they are indeed punishing the reincarnation of that bodhisattva, rather than a human monk with only one unlucky life who has been chosen for punishment through some bizarre and unlikely cousin of hereditary succession. And thus they are probably more inclined to take this pronouncement seriously than the abovementioned "rest of the world".