New Chinese rules on Dalai Lama

New rules are coming into force in China giving the government more influence over how Tibetan monks select their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Most Tibetans believe Dalai Lamas are reincarnated after their deaths.

But the new regulations mean future reincarnations must be approved by China's Communist government.

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Gus: Is China coming to APEC? Have we got a FTA with China? Are we selling Uranium to China? Is the Chinese government for real? Approval of reincarnations? Has the world gone totally bonkers or have I gone into a weirdo parallel world? 

In a speech that underscored the pressures he has had to bear during his life serving as both a spiritual and political leader, the Dalai Lama has said there is no need for his successor to perform the two roles.

In a video clip shown to hundreds of monks, nuns and lay people gathered in the mountain town of Dharamsala, the 73-year-old said it was essential that the Tibetan community in exile embraced democracy if it were to keep step with the wider world.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has confirmed she will not meet the Dalai Lama on his tour of Australia.

A spokesman for Julia Gillard says previous prime ministers have not met the Dalai Lama and given the frequency of the his trips to Australia, the current Government arrangements are appropriate.

The spokesman said a member of the Government would meet him privately.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott confirmed last week he would meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Greens Leader Bob Brown, who will also meet the Dalai Lama, has slammed the Prime Minister's decision.

He says that politics can be a spiritual "dead zone".

"[Politics] needs a good dose of long-sighted compassion and who better than Tibet's Nobel peace prize winner to provide it," he said.

...

The Dalai Lama says he is not disappointed the Prime Minister has decided not to meet him because he is focussing on promoting religious harmony on his trip.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/13/3242827.htm?section=justin

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One can be compassionate without having to be religious... the sentence above is ambiguous... Is the Lama not disappointed because he's focussing on religious harmony or has Julia decided not to meet the Lama because he is promoting religious harmony?... Spirituality is a dead zone anyway... Spirituality is an imaginary inflation of our self-importance beyond what we really are. See toon at top...

Gillard will not meet the Dalai Lama today, and neither will her foreign affairs minister. She plans to make a public statement of welcome to him in the Parliament and then to delegate a junior minister to meet him as a courtesy. This is the correct choice. There is less reason for a prime minister to meet him than ever before.

Not only is the Tibetan government-in-exile a government without a country, the Dalai Lama no longer represents even this resistance movement.

When asked at a press conference if he was disappointed that he hadn't been able to get a commitment to a meeting with Gillard: "No. If I had some agenda to discuss with the prime minister, I would be disappointed. But I have nothing."

Now that the Dalai Lama is a spiritual leader without political responsibility, a prime minister who chose to meet him would be doing so chiefly as a gesture of defiance to Beijing.

Australia should not do the "pre-emptive kowtow" to China, but neither should it offer gratuitous offence.

Karl Stefanovic appears to be a TV presenter with a low, very low intellect .... Well, he's not a joketeller... or he is a stupid joketeller... Well, the joke might make some people laugh but it's a joke for drunken mates at the pub (it would not work in a piano bar), not does it work for the laughing philosopher who, by the way, can laugh at anything except a Karl Stefanovic joke...

Conclusion: Karl Stefanovic could be a joke... Is a joke? It appears the silly shock-jocks are winning... Turn the TV off.

see toon at top...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13782645

YOU will recall the minor kerfuffle after Karl Stefanovic's joke to the man himself, about how ''the Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, 'Can you make me one, with everything …' 'Make me one,' get it? Do you know what I mean? 'One' … get it?''

He didn't get it. Well, a reader has sent me the last part of the joke. For you see, the Dalai Lama then hands the pizza guy a $50 note. And waits. And waits and waits. Finally, he says, ''What about my change?''

The pizza guy says, ''Your holiness, change must come from within.''