"Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders." So runs the first sentence of the following article.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2194682.ece

Now the reason I bring up this article is severalfold. 

Understand that strategywise, in one fell swoop the Chinese can now claim that none of the future masters born into Tibet are individuals of political power (unless they're already controlled by the government). The government has asserted control with this strategy, and in a briliant manner. Whether this is good or bad is not the issue. The issue is for you to understand strategy, and to realize how politics (and even religions) have over time in the course of history  made dogma to control things. Flex your wisdom muscles.

Of course this sort of "banning" is not binding. If a realized master wants to be reborn somewhere to help the people, they will. You can neither ban someone from heaven nor ban them from reincarnation. Silly.

However, what you can do is create a reason for refusing to politically recognize such individuals when they do reincarnate. Why? Control. Political control, religious control.

This has been done over and over again in history, and become part of the dogma of a religion. The problem is that people are sheep and fail to recognize this and throw off the chains that bind them. So I bring up this current story to make you realize it is still happening today and WILL happen in the future. It happens in all fields, including medicine and science. Yes, even the sciences! Science is now politicized, and the truth or facts are crushed/silenced in favor of profits and what people in power want to happen. You just have to flex your wisdom muscles to know how to deal with this and how to guide yourself in life.

In the case of the Dalai Lama, China has been trying to gain control of that position for quite some time. At worst, a realized master will simply reincarnate to help the people, but without the name of Dalai Lama or any other title in the future. They do this all the time. End of the story. Maybe it's even for the best that the position of Dalai ends because of the changing needs of the world, … who knows? Nothing lasts forever, impermanence rules all things. That's how hutuku, or Living Buddhas, operate anyway — they just come, realize enlightenment, and are recognized for their spiritual enlightenment without needing a name or position. It's the karma of the people whether or not they have political power or not. But think of the methodology behind this. This is a methodology for controlling the people, and nothing more.

Now let's switch traditions. People within a religion think that all the decisions in their religion — Roman Catholicism, the Eastern Orthodox Church, Judaism, Protestantism, Episcopalians, and so forth — are blessed by God or the higher powers, or somehow are a reflection of God's will and represent true dogma,  TRUTH. This belief verges on the fanatical.  I have a book by a PHD (I don't remember its name) who came to the crushing conclusion that he could not recognize what the "real" Bible was because of all the translations and editings that have crept in over the years, and therefore had to consider it a compilation by men rather than God.

You needed a PHD to know that? I just laughed at the ignorance. If only people cultivated and got even the littlest amount of samadhi, they'd realize how to sweep aside all sorts of strange, radical notions that are taken as orthodoxy.

Well, this is just another example of what I always say: Open your eyes and wisdom stores and understand how things are done. Don't just believe, but test everything. Cultivate to prove things for yourself. Run your own life based on what you know. Don't break any laws, but don't fall for dogma.

Most things come about through skillful means or expedient means, well explained in the Lotus Sutra. A master comes, sees a problem, and then gives a solution but to make it acceptable, gives it a religious coating in some form so people can accept it. For instance, within families  people tell white lies all the time to smoothen certain situations and circumstances, and this is really the same thing. So if the houses people built are all full of mold that would kill the inhabitants (ex. Israelites), a master provides an injunction not to live in them saying it "comes from God."

See how it works? It came from the individual, but you attribute it to a higher power so that you have compliance. In ancient China, people would sometimes say the book they authored was written by Confucius or Lao Tzu so that the ideas within would be accepted. That's the same sort of thing. Shakyamuni Buddha often talked about how simple it was to cultivate the Tao (enlightenment), but people wanted complicated things so he gave teachings that he compared to  "giving yellow leaves to children, telling them it's gold, in order to stop their crying."

That's expedient means, or skillfulness. Skillfullness can be for the positive or negative, but just recognize that it's skillfullness, not honesty we're discussing here. This is what's used in geopolitics all the time. Wrapping what you want people to do in a lesser truth in order to help them because they're too ignorant to accept the real  truth in the first place.

If you want a war, for instance, you stage a mock invasion or invite an enemy to attack so that you now have justification to rally the people. Many countries have done this and it's still being done.   I remember watching on TV a recent report of "weapons from Iran that were helping the Iraqis." What the handlers forgot was that Iran doesn't use the Roman Numeral system, and all the bombs were plastered with the Western alphabet. Just yesterday I read a newspaper where the reporter — yes the REPORTER — laughingly reported of another false flag operation that was so transparent he couldn't believe it.  So people are aware of these things…. don't think this is just me or craziness. This is standard practice. I'm just trying to teach you wisdom.

This sort of thing is done all the time. In fact, if you cannot do this sort of thing as a ruler, you're probably not qualified to be a leader. The question is whether you have wisdom as to whether your decisions and directions and strategies are right, for just because you can do it doesn't mean it isn't the road to ruin. That's the question — is there a wise wisdom strategy behind this? As to the poor execution of tactics, that's a separate issue.

I cannot comment on the future of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet, nor what it should be. I think only Nan Huai Chin can do that. He once told the Dalai Lama years ago that he should visit China during a certain period of time, and if he didn't he'd lose his chance. Sages were always employed by kings and emperors in the past in order to know what strategy directions would be best for a country, as they can see the future karma of decisions you make. Sages are more valuable than diamonds and gold, and more valuable than other advisors or large armies (because they know how to avert war or conquer without fighting — see my book on Kuan Tzu).  The first emperor of China only became the emperor because one of his five chief advisors was a Taoist master who advised the king on all sorts of secret Taoist strategies that led to his success. 

Now despite this sort of advice, the Dalai listened to his entourage of political advisors rather than an enlightened sage (even though Master Nan actually knows more about Chinese politics, history and strategy than anyone I know, which made it yet another bad decision), so his fate is his own doing from missing that chance. As to what will become in the future of the Esoteric School of Tibetan Buddhism, this is an area of concern whether or not we have this issue come up.  That's an issue for another time.