BANGKOK, Thailand -- After destroying much of Tibet's Buddhist
religion and causing the Dalai Lama to flee, the Chinese government is
now teaching Tibetan monks that every "living Buddha" must obey the
law while reincarnating.

"Some 100 Tibetan Buddhist monks attended a training session on
reincarnation for a living Buddha in southwest China's Tibet
Autonomous Region, which includes government regulation on management
of the reincarnation system," Beijing's Global Times recently
reported.

Training sessions began August 23 and lasted one week to 10 days in
Lhasa, capital of Tibet. Lessons included "the history and rituals for
the reincarnation of the living Buddha."

About 100 Tibetan Buddhist monks attended the courses, including monks
from the influential, centuries-old Sera and Drepung monasteries near
Lhasa.

A living Buddha is China's terminology for what Tibetans call a
"tulku". They can include the Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, and other
senior lamas who have not achieved enlightenment and the nirvana of a
Buddha which ends their rebirths.

China earlier said it would decide who will be the next reincarnated
Dalai Lama after the current one dies.

The self-exiled, Tibetan-born 14th Dalai Lama is based in Dharamsala,
India. He said he was a Marxist and would accept autonomy for Tibet
with China, but Beijing considers him a subversive "splittist" who
wants independence.

As a result, the Dalai Lama, 83, said he may decide to reincarnate in
India instead of Tibet to avoid China's control, or be the last Dalai
Lama in its six century-long lineage.

Reincarnation is "never a religious-only issue or a living Buddha's
personal right," said Suolang Renzeng, a deputy chief of the Chinese
People's Political Consultative Conference Tibet Autonomous Regional
Committee.

Instead, reincarnation fulfills the Communist Party of China's
strategies and policies in the region, Mr. Suolang told trainees.

Beijing's atheist regime listed "Measures on the Management of
Reincarnation of Living Buddhas of Tibetan Buddhism" in 2007.

Managing people's ability to be reborn was necessary to
institutionalize reincarnation, according to China's State Council
Information Office.

China's Qing Dynasty of 1644-1911 and subsequent Kuomintang government
-- which ended with Mao Zedong's communist victory in 1949 -- also had
regulations on selecting and approving living Buddhas, according to
Chinese officials.

Beijing earlier published a long list of current living Buddhas in
China who were confirmed through official rituals and received
government permits. Dissidents denounce them as "fake living Buddhas."

To downgrade the Dalai Lama's influence over Tibetans, his wealthy
former Potala Palace in Lhasa was turned into a museum for tourists
during the 1980s and also appears in printed Chinese advertisements
for household products, food and other common Tibetan items.

Under the Dalai Lama, Tibetans were taught that a lama can reincarnate
himself as he wishes. A monk can become a lama after years of Buddhist
study.

Everyone else, including monks and non-believers, are reincarnated
according to their deeds and will be reborn as a human or an animal.

In 1987, experts from Columbia and Berkeley universities and elsewhere
spent one week with the Dalai Lama to ask about the possibility of
living in corpses and other seemingly inconceivable behavior.

The Dalai Lama told them: "Through Tantric technique, the mediator is
able to transfer his consciousness into a dead body. Because the
mediator hasn't actualized the clear light state of death -- meaning
he hasn't gone through the process of death -- he is able to retain
the knowledge gathered during his lifetime.

"Memory is not brain. Anyway, it's a mere hypothesis from the Buddhist
point of view. So it has to be experimented with," the Dalai Lama, a
1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said, laughing.

But no one achieves immortality by invading a dead body even though it
becomes revitalized.

"A total change of the [dead] physical body takes place, but the
lifespan of the [living] person is said to be the same," the Dalai
Lama told group.

Participants in the spirited dialogue included Columbia University's
computer sciences professor Dr. Newcomb Greenleaf, plus Berkeley
University's cognitive scientist Eleanor Rosch, and San Diego
University's brain development expert Dr. Robert Livingston. Naropa
Institute's Dr. Jeremy Hawyard, along with French neurobiologist Dr.
Francisco Varela of the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, also attended.

Alternatively, some lamas who die can keep "very subtle consciousness"
in their own corpse, to temporarily stop their body disintegrating.

"As a result, the body doesn't decompose while the self is in the
clear light [of] final dissolution," the Dalai Lama said.

"Some people can remain in that state for a week or more. For example,
the late Kyabjey Ling Rinpoche, my tutor, remained in the state of
clear light for 13 days, and his body remained very fresh."

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz and
published in 1927, purportedly describes reincarnation.

"Thou wilt see visions of males and females in union. Remember to
withhold thyself from going between them," until you know who they
are.  Otherwise, you may be conceived by people who you do not want as
parents.

"Do not enter into any sort of womb which may come by. In selecting
the womb-door thus, there is a possibility of error: through the
influence of karma, good wombs may appear bad, and bad wombs may
appear good."

Gorgeous visual lures displayed by wombs may be sinister tricks and
not really belong to a human mother.

If you choose one of those, the ancient teachings predict:

"Encased in oval form, in the embryonic state, and upon emerging from
the womb and opening its [your] eyes, it may find itself transformed
into a young dog. Formerly it had been a human being, but now, if it
has become a dog, it findeth itself undergoing sufferings in a dog's
kennel.

"Or perhaps a pig in a pigsty, or as an ant in an ant-hill."