Milinda’s Questions

Kevin Kim offers a juicy bit of dharma gossip I hadn’t heard before:

Rumor has long had it that the current Dalai Lama might simply announce that he is the last incarnation of his lineage. I think this is a clever political move (the metaphysics don’t concern me much, as I don’t subscribe to the doctrine of rebirth any more than I subscribe to the idea that one’s immortal soul literally goes to heaven or hell); it would break spiritual ties with the Chinese-dominated Tibetan community and allow the Buddhist presence in Dharamsala to, effectively, begin again on its own: a Tibetan tradition not at all beholden to Old Tibet. Old Tibet is, after all, dead– murdered by China.

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