NP: Dalai Lama calling off reincarnation

[David Casseres]

If you haven't heard about this, you can find a ton of commentary by
googling, and it mostly looks like really weird political theater.

I managed to find the Dalai Lama's own statement. It's bit lengthy, but
much of the length is a detailed history of the doctrine of reincarnation
of the Dalai Lama; I skimmed that, as the point seemed to be only that such
a history exists. The institution is neither eternal nor made out of whole
cloth.

What I draw from the statement is a concrete plan for depriving the Chinese
government of any legitimacy (from the Tibetan point of view) if it tries
to decide for itself who will be the next Dalai Lama (which it says it will
do). This Dalai Lama proposes that he will be the last one, to be followed
by a democratic movement. If it sounds like whistling in the dark,, well,
he's using about the only personal leverage he possesses.

It's a very odd moment in history.
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