Is the Lama Selection Process Legit?

[Jeff Strehlow]

Did I correctly understand that you just claimed the idea of reincarnation is contrary to Buddhist doctrine? Wow. You know very little about Buddhism, bro.

Selection process irrelevant?

Wow again. It's only the validity of the process of choosing one of the greatest spiritual teachers on the planet. It only factors a great deal as to the validity of the entire notion of reincarnation.

Your answer is useless. Please leave my thread.
...

You asked for opinions. He gave his opinion. You don't like his opinion, so want him to leave the thread. I guess you don't want any opinion, just certain opinions that are in line with yours.

 

[Jeff Strehlow]

I think it should be Chenrezi.
And so far everybody was about right, except the OP. Reincarnation is a paradox in Buddhism. Personal identity is regarded as an illusion in Buddhism, so what reincarnates is ... eh.. karma, they use to say. So it is truly irrelevant who or what reincarnates, from the logical viewpoint. Which makes Tibetan insisting on recognizing a previous personal incarnation at odds with the strict Buddhist teaching.

It has become clear to me that there are neither things nor the "I" associated with the body. These are only mental constructions and the world is really formless. And the Tathagata makes that very clear in the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra. In that sutra he does speak of an "I", but it's not the same "I" that the world believes in. The worldly "I" supposidly reincarnates, but that "I" is not real.

 

[David T]

So...I was watching a Netflix documentary on the Dalai Lama the other night, which was excellent, btw. And consisted of 10 questions being asked of His Holiness by the interviewer/film-maker, Rick Ray. I am a huge fan of His Holiness and think he is a total delight. By far he is my favorite of all the religious leaders in the world. And the documentary also was sort of a biography of the Lama and traced his childhood and, more to the point of this post, the selection process with which he was chosen to be the 14th reincarnation of the Buddha.

Maybe some of you are familiar with the process. A team of hand-picked holy men set out to scour the country to find the next Lama in line. They are allegedly lead by a sort of divine intuition or guidance, and they are looking for small children, usually in small remote villages. The child is then put through a series of tests to determine if he indeed is the real Buddha incarnate. Such as: he is shown a series of toys or other objects and asked to choose which one was HIS in his previous incarnation. He is also asked to show things and places that pertained to the former lama, and which the child would of course have no way of knowing about were he NOT the Incarnate.

So...my question to you all: what do you think of the validity of this selection process? What I mean is, if it is truly done in an objective manner, and the child is REALLY tested as he should be, with no hinting or prompting, and he DOES choose correctly in all tests, well, I personally feel this is a very compelling argument for the whole idea of Reincarnation.

Or do you fell the test is somehow rigged? Or partial and subjective?

I welcome all thoughts on this issue. Thanks!

it's Legit but so is the Eucharist. Earlier in European history the Eucharist became a philosophical, scientific topic. The question becomes, is the philosophical, scientific musings legit? I can create a box and I can use that box to measure the volume of water. I could say what is defined by that box is real. The problem with that is the water never was not real, it only became unreal when it was defined as a something measured.