The Chinese accuses the Dalai Lama of blasphemy

The great paradox is that an atheist regime as the Government of the People’s Republic of China, has accused a revered religious figure such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama of blasphemy.

The origin of the dispute is His Holiness’s comments that he may be the last to hold his position as the Tibetans’ spiritual leader.

“What he said is blasphemy against Tibetan Buddhism,” the CPC-appointed governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), Padma Choling who is an ethnic Tibetan, told reporters, speaking on the sidelines of the on-going 10-day session of the National People’s Congress, or Chinese Parliament, in Beijing.

This is absurd because in spite of what this man says, the Dalai Lama can decide if he reincarnates or not and it is not against the Tibetan Buddhism tradition if a senior lama decides not to be  reincarnated in the body of a child on his death.

The comments of Padma Choling underline an unusual situation where the officially atheist CPC is demanding that a centuries-old system of reincarnation continue but what makes things worst is that he is an ethnic Tibetan colaborator of the Chinese regime and thus a traitor to his people.

During the 20th century we have seen traitors such as this one like for example during the invasion of France, Holland etc by the Nazis.

The Dalai Lama has said he is against a continuation of the system merely “for political ends”, suggesting that his title could end with him.

He has also alternatively suggested that his successor may be born outside of China, in an overseas Tibetan community, perhaps in India. The Dalai Lama has said he will make a formal statement on the issue when he turns 90, a decade from now.

China  lies when they say that the Dalai Lama position has historically been appointed in conjunction with rulers in Beijing. The pretense that a communist atheist goverment  should also approve the reincarnation of senior lamas including the Dalai Lama is ludicrous.

His Holiness has reiterated calls for “genuine autonomy” and not outright independence, and protection of Tibetans’ rights under the framework of the Chinese constitution but China is not responding to these overtures but continuosly attack him and by rejecting the memorandum as “disguised independence” for its call for a central administration to guarantee religious, cultural and other rights for Tibetans not just in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) but in Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan where around half of the 6 million Tibetans in China reside.

Over the past few years, Tibetan areas in China have seen a string of self-immolation protests, with more than 100 Tibetans setting themselves on fire and calling for the return of the Dalai Lama. China has accused exiled Tibetan monks in Dharamsala of organising the protests.

The Dalai Lama’s envoys in their resignation letter suggested that China was hardening its stand of late, saying that “one of the key Chinese interlocutors in the dialogue process even advocated abrogation of minority status as stipulated in the Chinese constitution thereby seeming to remove the basis of autonomy”.

As His Holiness becomes eighty next July, it is more neccessary than ever that all the free thinkers of the world and the Western Government force China to grant autonomy to Tibet as per the suggestions of the Dalai Lama. They must undertsand once and for all, that the Dalai Lama is the solution for the Tibetan problem for the Chinese and not the problem. Until then, the Tibetans will be more and more alienated from the occupying forces that in the past five decades have commited genocide and should be held accountable for Human Rights abuses.

The author with His Holiness The Dalai Lama