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from
"Tibet's Quiet Revolution" by Pico Iyer
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/mar/19/tibets-quiet-revolution/
block quote start
Democracy, as the Dalai Lama sees it, is perfectly in tune with the Buddha’s central principles of self-rule and responsibility; it is one of the features of the wider world that long-isolated Tibet can and should now learn from; and it only stands to reason that the voices of all Tibetans be more important than that of just one—a logic that appeals to the scientist and the natural Everyman in him. Besides, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama will be 76 this July and the Dalai Lama institution cannot function as it did now that Tibet’s exiled leaders are separated from the 98 percent of Tibetans—some six million people—who live within the People’s Republic of China in circumstances of general repression and deprivation of political rights. Beijing has already “banned” reincarnations without government approval and all but announced that the finding of a “Fifteenth Dalai Lama” will lie under its jurisdiction as soon as the current, fourteenth, Dalai Lama dies.
block quote end
Aside from the fact that my mind instantly coined the slogan "No reincarnation without representation!" I'm now expecting the 15th Dalai Lama to be a six-year-old Canadian Buddhist with a Facebook page who likes to quote "You can't stop the signal."
"Tibet's Quiet Revolution" by Pico Iyer
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/mar/19/tibets-quiet-revolution/
block quote start
Democracy, as the Dalai Lama sees it, is perfectly in tune with the Buddha’s central principles of self-rule and responsibility; it is one of the features of the wider world that long-isolated Tibet can and should now learn from; and it only stands to reason that the voices of all Tibetans be more important than that of just one—a logic that appeals to the scientist and the natural Everyman in him. Besides, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama will be 76 this July and the Dalai Lama institution cannot function as it did now that Tibet’s exiled leaders are separated from the 98 percent of Tibetans—some six million people—who live within the People’s Republic of China in circumstances of general repression and deprivation of political rights. Beijing has already “banned” reincarnations without government approval and all but announced that the finding of a “Fifteenth Dalai Lama” will lie under its jurisdiction as soon as the current, fourteenth, Dalai Lama dies.
block quote end
Aside from the fact that my mind instantly coined the slogan "No reincarnation without representation!" I'm now expecting the 15th Dalai Lama to be a six-year-old Canadian Buddhist with a Facebook page who likes to quote "You can't stop the signal."
