The Dalai Lama of Tibet, visiting Milan this week, told reporters that the next Dalai Lama could very well be a woman.
"If a woman reveals herself as more useful the lama could very well be reincarnated in this form," the 14th Dalai Lama told reporters in Milan, where he arrived for a private visit on Wednesday.
The 14th Dalai Lama has been living in exile since 1959 because of China's terrorist rule over Tibet. Looks like their power bleeds over into matters of the spirit as well:
China, which has ruled Tibet since 1951 and has violently crushed protests there, recently announced that so-called living Buddhas in Tibet needed permission from the government, officially atheist, to be reincarnated.
Wha??
According to China's communist party, all matters related to religion must be ok'd by them - I have visions of a young child whose body holds the reincarnated soul of the 15th Dalai Lama waiting on an endless line in a windowless, white room much like the Department of Motor Vehicles holding his or her "papers" that need to get signed by some Chinese bureaucrat who doesn't even want to be there:
Bureacrat: Name?
Young child with non-validated soul of Buddha: Uh, I think I'm the 15th Dalai Lama
Bureaucrat: What?
Young child with non-validated soul of Buddha: Some monks visited my family and told us that I was the reincarnation of Buddha and that I must now take up life as the next Dalai Lama.
Bureacrat: Listen, kid. You're nothing until we say you're something AND especially not until you've filled out the proper paperwork, had it stamped and notarized down on the 2nd floor and then brought it back up her for processing.
Young child with non-validated soul of Buddha: But I don't need those papers. I am Tibetan and I have been deemed the next Dalai Lama.
Bureaucrat: You're bupkus until you've got the signed, stamped and processed paperwork from the Chinese communist party that tells you different. No move aside I've got other folks standing on line.
Young child with non-validated soul of Buddha: Thank you, sir.
... So, although successive reincarnations of the Dalai Lama are generally "revealed" to a committee of monks after the current Dalai Lama has died, the Chinese government will continue its oppressive rule over Tibetans infusing even their religious practice.