I want to revisit the recently-released statement by His Holiness the Dalai Lama that he, not the government of China, will determine his rebirth. I wrote about this recently in "The Dalai Lama and the Golden Urn."
Didi Tatlow in the New York Times brought up a point I had overlooked, which is that His Holiness has said future Dalai Lamas could be emanations and not reincarnations. The advantage to emanations is that he would be able to choose his successor while still alive.
Now, if this leaves you scratching your head, you are not alone. I'm struggling to understand it myself.
The Tibetan understanding of rebirth is somewhat different from Zen, and as a Zen student I don't feel entirely comfortable trying to explain the Tibetan view. This is not so much because I disagree with it but that I'm not sure I understand it. It has been patiently explained to me, but the explanations don't stick.
People have also tried to explain calculus to me, to no avail. I'm a bit thick about some things.
Anyway -- an emanation is something that radiates or is emitted. I can "see" individuals as emanations of the dharmadatu, for example. But I can sorta kinda see rebirth in the same way. I would be grateful for any clarifications.
BTW, my series on the lives of Dalai Lamas continues with a biography of the 7th Dalai Lama. Actually it's not so much about the Seventh as about the slice of Tibetan history he inhabited and the role he played in it. Soon I hope to go on to the Eighth and Thirteenth, although I need a short break from Tibet. I need to write about soft and fluffy things for a while.
UPDATE: If you have tried to comment and the comment won't post, please leave your comment here --
Frankly, because he is an intelligent and perceptive scholar of Buddha-dharma, I suspect that the Dalai Lama is fully aware that whether it is reincarnation or emanation, it is outside of the core teachings about rebirth, especially in the context of paticcasamuppada. If China were not using the issue as a way to undercut the Dalai Lama’s authority, I’m willing to bet Tenzin Gyatso would at sometime issue a clarifying statement that would debunk the whole emanation/reincarnation notion. But I could be completely wrong about that.
In any case, I think the real issue is China, who needs to be told by as many people as possible to mind their own business and to get out of Tibet and leave its people and religion alone. If enough people did that it might actually have an effect. It’s a far better use of our time to try to comprehend and/or explain something that in the end isn’t really Buddhism.
I wonder if the butterfly remembers her previous life as a caterpillar?
Do butterflies become caterpillars? Does firewood become ash?
Do butterflies become caterpillars? Does firewood become ash?
Only if the me-of-today becomes the me-of-tomorrow.
Butterflies don’t seem too bright- I’m not sure a butterfly remembers the last flower it landed on. When the mind is liberated from the small conceptual box, however, I see no problem remembering the earlier perambulations of this mindstream river.
From a transcript of a talk by Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche on the Eight Manifestations Of Guru Padmasambhava:
“In the mundane sense, Guru Padmasambhava’s activities are called “miraculous,” but from the viewpoint of absolute reality, these are not unusual phenomena. They are the natural, spontaneous activity of the true nature. From the perspective of realization, our normal, everyday activities are somewhat odd and unnatural. In this sense, we are great magicians, conjuring up something totally unreal.”
I found the first part of this talk to be quite useful in its description of the notion of “emanation” in the Tibetan tradition.
Machig — I actually understand “emanation” in the context of the Trikaya. What I don’t understand is how rebirth is different from that.
Yeah, I’m not entirely clear about it either. It seems that the terms are used in a number of different ways, in different contexts. My general sense is that their meanings are not mutually-exclusive but rather overlapping:
“Emanation” – as you mentioned in your post – points to the understanding that all appearances (including the appearance of a human being) emerge from emptiness. This is the emptiness/dependent-origination equivalence.
A Buddha or Bodhisattva’s ability to consciously produce emanation bodies is an extension of the skill cultivated, in Tibetan visualization practice, to create mental images that appear to be “real” but are (in a very obvious way) products only of emptiness. A yogi who attains this level of mental discipline/capacity can consciously influence the process of rebirth.
So “rebirth” in this more general sense points to the process as perceived within space/time — in which the emanation-bodies appear sequentially, rather than simultaneously.
Anyway, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten with it …..
Although committed to Buddhism as a philosophical/psychological perspective and a helpful mechanism for leading a “good” life, I struggle when it comes to ostensibly religious concepts such as rebirth. I am a firm adherent to the concept that the more outlandish the claim, the stronger the evidence must be, and I just don’t see any evidence for rebirth. Frankly, I don’t understand why Buddha’s response to the question of rebirth would not be the same as his response to questions about God — to paraphrase, “who cares, how does it affect your striving for enlightenment one way or another.” I think that when Buddhism bogs down on questions of rebirth and reincarnation it begins to sound a lot like Christians in the Dark Ages debating how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
RE: “I am a firm adherent to the concept that the more outlandish the claim, the stronger the evidence must be, and I just don’t see any evidence for rebirth.”
Replace “rebirth” with “a heliocentric cosmology” and you’ll have a statement that I imagine was frequently posed to Copernicus, in the 16th century.
Someone making the claim, a mere 150 years ago, that a human being could in fact walk on the moon, would have likely been committed to an insane asylum.
There’s actually quite a bit of evidence for rebirth, not the least of which is the fact that each of the Karmapa’s has, before they have passed away, left a prediction letter detailing the specifics of their next incarnation.
And all kinds of cases of seemingly ordinary people remembering details from their previous lifetimes — which they couldn’t possibly have known, given the circumstances of their current lifetime, but which nevertheless were corroborated as being absolutely true. If you haven’t come across these cases, you haven’t been looking very hard.
I may be wrong: an Emanation could be in the billions of bodies of any particular sentient being. An Emanation can be invoked, for example, in my friend Pam, and for an hour or so, Machig Labdron “uses” her body.
A Reincarnation is the continuity of a mindstream, moving from life to death to bardo. A Reincarnated Being (Rinpoche, Tulku) is one who has reached Enlightenment and chosen to return to bodily form in samsara in order to bring all others to Enlightenment.
Just letting you know I featured this post and your blog on my list of best buddhism blogs: http://www.allconsidering.com/2011/best-buddhist-blogs/
Hallo everybody
Perhaps one should distinguish to points which are relevant here. I just tried to elaborate on this a bit on my blog.
One topic in this discussion is about politics. The problem is that reincarnation, rebirth, emanation – the other topic – is used here in the sphere of politics. So both topics are fuzzily intermingeld.
It would be good in the West when the political background of this would be more clear to sort out with what motivation the Declaration of Independent Reincarnation of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is made.
Kind regards
Of course, but it’s obvious that His Holiness’s first priority is the integrity of Tibetan Buddhism. To Tibetans unbroken lineage of lamas is essential to transmitting the dharma to new generations, and for this reason the identification of tulkus must be left to Tibetan Buddhism, not the government of Beijing.
There is no question that Beijing will choose a 15th Dalai Lama when the 14th is gone. His Holiness the 14th is making it clear that Beijing’s choice will be illegitimate. However, if by some chance the Gelug school does not agree on a choice and splits as the Kagyu school split over the karmapa, then Beijing’s choice will be in a stronger position. His Holiness the 14th is considering options to prevent that. Again, this is obvious. Looking for other “political” motivations is so much thumb-twiddling.
H.H.Dalai Lama has mentioned his willingness to keep Tibet under Chinese political rule until Tibetans are esteemed and offered independence. Controlling and dictating governments will go to illogical periods of both harm and lying to try to maintain their control.Controlling types are rigid and inflexible. 7 chakras Meditation
Matt — You are confused. His Holiness has tried to negotiate with Beijing for meaningful autonomy, meaning allowing Tibet to remain a territory of China but with more self-rule, sort of like Hong Kong. It’s his “middle way” policy.