By Matthew Philips
Newsweek

Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd
acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks
in Tibet from reincarnating without government
permission. According to a statement issued by the State
Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes
into effect next month and strictly stipulates the
procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an
important move to institutionalize management of
reincarnation." But beyond the irony lies China's true
motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama,
Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to
quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more
than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan
country. By barring any Buddhist monk living outside
China from seeking reincarnation, the law effectively
gives Chinese authorities the power to choose the next
Dalai Lama, whose soul, by tradition, is reborn as a new
human to continue the work of relieving suffering.

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959,
is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he
refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under
Chinese control. Assuming he's able to master the feat of
controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have
for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in
which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the
Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. "It will
be a very hot issue," says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism
scholar at Stanford. "The Dalai Lama has been the prime
symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so
it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be
a lot more important than the others."
So where in the world will the next Dalai Lama be born?
Harrison and other Buddhism scholars agree that it will
likely be from within the 130,000 Tibetan exiles spread
throughout India, Europe and North America. With an
estimated 8,000 Tibetans living in the United States,
could the next Dalai Lama be American-born? "You'll have
to ask him," says Harrison. If so, he'll likely be
welcomed into a culture that has increasingly embraced
reincarnation over the years. According to a 2005 Gallup
poll, 20 percent of all U.S. adults believe in
reincarnation. Recent surveys by the Barna Group, a
Christian research nonprofit, have found that a quarter
of U.S. Christians, including 10 percent of all
born-again Christians, embrace it as their favored
end-of-life view. A non-Tibetan Dalai Lama, experts say,
is probably out of the question.