Now THATS totalitarianism!

[Blotan Hunka]

China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate

Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders. The ban is included in new rules intended to assert Beijing’s authority over Tibet’s restive and deeply Buddhist people.
“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1. .......

WOW! You think the neocons are bad? LOL!

 

[LuzRD]

 

[MBuzzy]

So how do you enforce this??

 

[Kacey]

So how do you enforce this??

Yeah, that was going to be my question...

 

[Blotan Hunka]

Ive never been able to understand how Buddhists are seen as a threat to the Chinese gvt?

 

[Kacey]

Ive never been able to understand how Buddhists are seen as a threat to the Chinese gvt?

Uh... if they reincarnate they might remember previous wrongs, and try to overthrow the government? At least, that sounds like something a totalitarian government might be afraid of... I guess.

 

[Steel Tiger]

It seems to me these days that the Chinese government take a couple of steps forward then twelves steps back with things like this.

They cannot possibly enforce this can they?

I had thought from a communist point of view that they didn't accept the actuality of religion.

 

[theletch1]

It seems to me these days that the Chinese government take a couple of steps forward then twelves steps back with things like this.

They cannot possibly enforce this can they?

I had thought from a communist point of view that they didn't accept the actuality of religion.

While a "true" communist doesn't accept the actuality of religion they do understand the power of religion on the "masses". Anything that can bind a mass of people together for a common cause other than that of the government/regime is a threat.

 

[Empty Hands]

So how do you enforce this??

Arrest and/or kill anyone who calls themselves a "reincarnated Buddha". That is what they need the government permission for - the claiming of a title. This can be best understood as one measure in a long line of measures intended to control the Tibetan people. As we have seen, the Chinese don't like it when people they consider "theirs" don't want to join the party - just ask the Taiwanese.

As for the average Chinese person themselves, they can delude themselves about their character of their government as well as anyone else. A grown Chinese woman of my acquaintance, a successful scientist with a PhD living in the United States, believes that the Tianamen Square massacre never happened. If she can be so deluded, anyone can, and the repressive nature of the Chinese government lives on.

 

[aplonis]

Ive never been able to understand how Buddhists are seen as a threat to the Chinese gvt?

Buddhists aren't, per se. It's cultural. The Han (Mandarin) race views Tibetan Buddhism as a foreign cultural contaminant to traditional Chinese values. Tibetan Buddhism was once very popular in China itself, primarly because of it being preferred over Chinese Buddhism by the Mongols.

That and anything intrinsically Tibetan stands in the way of the Han culture's absurd claim that Tibet itself is naturally and absolutely part of China. It is a case of China looking back to the Mongol Empire and pretending to inherit all of it...never mind that they spoke a different language, were racially different, all of that. Politics does not have to make sense, only to swell pride and fill the purse.

From my point of view, China's natural borders are those they erected themselves, you know, the only man-made object viewable with the naked eye from space. Let the Han close ranks behind those and everybody will get along fine.

Seriously though...it's not just a Chinese mental abberation. Look upon every nation that rose to significant political and economic power. The first thing they generally did was look backwards in time to some point when a single empire spanned all of what they now have...and then some...and claim that as the true and natural size of their nation. They use that as the argument for conquering neighbors. Look at how many tyrants went forth with armies claiming to be the true inheritors of Rome's glory. The Chinese are doing similar now. That's all.

We should repudiate China, by all means. But at the same time we have to repudiate our own varied cultural pasts. It is all the same sort of grandiose delusion, then and now. Some might suggest that the USA does differently. Or is it perhaps that we claim the once mighty British Empire? Or the world? Some nations don't need an excuse. They don't require a Rome in their past if they can be Rome, or Mongols, or whatever. Modern politics, however, seems to require an excuse, at least for some. That way you can at least pretend that aggression is justified historically. Without that, you have to convince yourself that you are doing for their own good. Or, both at once?

 

[CoryKS]

Ive never been able to understand how Buddhists are seen as a threat to the Chinese gvt?

Because communism only "works" when everybody is 100% focused on it, so any other ideology is a distraction. And when I say "works", what I mean is that it's the miserable failure it always is... but nobody notices unless they see someone else is doing something more successful. Hence the control of media that comes with adopting this white elephant of a political system.

Besides, communists have a tendency to kill political opposition... and what's the use of that if they're just going to come back to life? :rofl:

 

[bydand]

At first glance I see a total waste of time and effort to even come up with something like this (I thought our Gov't had a lock on wasting that much.) On second thought I had a chilling thought that this could be used to imprison those young people in the near future who claim to be Buddhist by saying they are obviously a re-incarnated version of a prior Buddhist. Even a way to take the resources away from a Buddhist farming family because who knows their milk cow, or other needed animal, could be somebody who didn't get it "right" the last time around.