Dearest Friends @ CAS,   On behalf of Mr Jinpa-la, our friend and a devout Tibetan Buddhist friend in-exile, we will like to invite all our friends to a short and simple Light Offering Prayer session this Sunday, 23 March 2008.   The Prayer Session, to be led by many Tibetan sangha in Singapore, will be held at a local Buddhist centre at 221 I, Geylang Lorong 19, at 6 pm.   The prayer will be dedicated to peace and happiness of all beings, especially with regard to the recent brutal Tibetan suppression, both the perpetrators and the victims.     Requesting your dedications, prayers and support,   "Namo Amituofo."   bb & friends    ______________________________________________________________________________________________________   Some intriguing news for sharing with our friends:   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- REINCARNATION RED TAPE (Editorial, The Telegraph) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Editorial, The Telegraph, Calcutta   Sunday, August 5, 2007, Calcutta   Totalitarian states can be cruel and comic at the same time. The latest Chinese restriction on Tibetan Buddhism would appear to come straight from the theatre of the absurd. Come September, and Tibet's "living Buddhas" would have to queue up before religious affairs officials, application forms in hand, waiting to receive official permission to be reincarnated. The official explanation for the new restriction is that it is ""an important move to institutionalize the management of reincarnation of living Buddhas". The official version itself gives away the government's lie. It must be a bizarre system that seeks not only to manage the religious affairs of its people but also to institutionalize them. But this is not the real import of the new regulation because China's "management" of Tibetan Buddhism and of all other aspects of life in Tibet began soon after it had taken control of Lhasa in 1951. The real target of the new law is none other than the Dalai Lama. An important provision of the 14-part regulation bars any Buddhist monk living outside China from seeking reincarnation for himself or recognizing a "living Buddha" Thus the law effectively marks the end of a tradition sustained by the Dalai Lama and the "living Buddhas" who dominated life and culture in Tibet in his name. The Chinese had earlier tried this endgame by propping up a puppet Panchen Lama, the second most important religious leader of the Tibetans. Now they want to foist their own "living Buddhas" on the Tibetans.   But totalitarian regimes are also known to do silly things out of fear. After nearly half a century of repressive measures, China has not quite succeeded in killing the soul of Tibetan Buddhism. Despite five decades of living in exile, the Dalai Lama remains the most important influence in Tibetan life. China fears that the "living Buddhas" may do at home what the exiled leader cannot. This Chinese fear is clearly born of a failure. Despite five decades of bitter campaigns against the "feudal and splittist" Dalai Lama and the "obscurantism" of Tibetan Buddhism, China has failed to wean the Tibetans away from either their spiritual leader or from their religion. Worse, the communist state is never free from the fear of Tibetan revolts. Historically, the State and religion have an uneasy relationship.   The latest Chinese attempt may therefore be defeated by its own irony. It may help tighten the State's control over the lamas and the monasteries, but it may further erode China's authority over what the writer, Patrick French, called : the Tibet of the mind? Another impact of the law may be more immediate and direct. It is likely to further cloud the talks between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama's representatives on the issue of Tibet's autonomy.   ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- China tells living Buddhas to obtain permission before they reincarnate (Times) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jane Macartney in Beijing The Times (UK) August 4, 2007   The rules effectively exclude the Dali Lama from any role in recognising a living Buddha     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' 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, 2007.   The 14-part regulation issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs is aimed at limiting the influence of Tibet's exiled god-king, the Dalai Lama, and at preventing the re-incarnation of the 72-year-old monk without approval from Beijing.   It is the latest in a series of measures by the Communist authorities to tighten their grip over Tibet. Reincarnate lamas, known as tulkus, often lead religious communities and oversee the training of monks, giving them enormous influence over religious life in the Himalayan region. Anyone outside China is banned from taking part in the process of seeking and recognising a living Buddha, effectively excluding the Dalai Lama, who traditionally can play an important role in giving recognition to candidate reincarnates.   For the first time China has given the Government the power to ensure that no new living Buddha can be identified, sounding a possible death knell to a mystical system that dates back at least as far as the 12th century.   China already insists that only the Government can approve the appointments of Tibet's two most important monks, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. The Dalai Lama's announcement in May 1995 that a search inside Tibet and with the co- operation of a prominent abbot had identified the 11th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, who died in 1989, enraged Beijing. That prompted the Communist authorities to restart the search and to send a senior Politburo member to Lhasa to oversee the final choice. This resulted in top Communist officials presiding over a ceremony at the main Jokhang temple in Lhasa in which names of three boys inscribed on ivory sticks were placed inside a golden urn and a lot was then drawn to find the true reincarnation.   The boy chosen by the Dalai Lama has disappeared. The abbot who worked with the Dalai Lama was jailed and has since vanished. Several sets of rules on seeking out "soul boys" were promulgated in 1995, but were effectively in abeyance and hundreds of living Buddhas are now believed to live inside and outside China.   All Tibetans believe in reincarnation, but only the holiest or most outstanding individuals are believed to be recognisable a tulku, or apparent body. One Tibetan monk told The Times: " In the past there was no such regulation. The management of living Buddhas is becoming more strict."   The search for a reincarnation is a mystical process involving clues left by the deceased and visions among leading monks on where to look. The current Dalai Lama, the fourteenth of the line, was identified in 1937 when monks came to his village.   China has long insisted that it must have the final say over the appointment of the most senior lamas. Tibet experts said that the new regulations may also be aimed at limiting the influence of new lamas.