part uno:

I just finished reading a book at the bookstore called The Secret Lives of the Dalai Lama. It's not meant to be a comprehensive, academic, scholarly investigation into the institution of the Dalai Lama, but it's well-researched and annotated and written in an anecdotal manner that makes it an easy and fascinating read.

It traces through all the information and history the author could find related to all the past Dalai Lamas, and also goes into pre-Dalai Lama Tibetan tradition that laid the foundation for the creation or discovery of the institution.

I'm not a literary type, so I think that's the extent I can pretend to say anything about the book as a book. But it's a great book for anyone interested in Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism or the Dalai Lama. It will help demystify the Dalai Lama and a lot of misconceptions Westerners may have about what he is.

There's plenty of room for skepticism surrounding finding reincarnations of a particular person, even if it's purportedly a highly realized person, especially when it's in a country or region that undergoes as much political strife and turmoil as anywhere else in the world.

It had me wondering where I fit into the Dalai Lama institution. That thought popped into my head as a joke, but part of me sensed that I was serious. It wasn't just a thought, but also a feeling. Where do I fit into the Dalai Lama institution?

If I believe in these teachings or this philosophy, then I believe in reincarnation, so there must be certain mechanics behind it in the natural world for why it happens. It has to be explained as something naturally occurring, or else it's just religious dogma. It shouldn't be explained or understood as some mystical, magical occurrence.

And as a natural phenomena, albeit one that can't be directly observed, it must happen to everyone. With stories of high profile reincarnations like the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama, etc., there may be a little bit of feeling that it happens only to them, or rather that it's only important in regard to highly realized people like them.

But for ordinary people like me, it doesn't matter, it's like it doesn't happen. No one's going to look for my reincarnation and I will have no idea who I was, so why bother. Just develop good karma and hope for a good rebirth.

I don't think that way, I've always tried to intuit how certain aspects of the way I am now may be sourced in past life karmic resonances, even if I'll never know anything about a past incarnation. As a person, I'm as far away from who I was in a past incarnation as I am from, say, my next door neighbor or someone in Lithuania.

Completely different people. If I could meet a past life incarnation, I'd be interested in talking to him or her to try to get some insight into me now, but as a person, I might not even like the person.

Other possibly helpful anecdotes are that there are countless highly realized lamas whose reincarnations aren't sought after or found. They just continue on their spiritual path without being identified with whatever great lama in the past.

Also the 6th Dalai Lama, following the "Great Fifth", rebelled against his station and never fully ordained as a monk and famously spent much time drinking and singing and spending nights in brothels. Tibetans never doubted he was the Dalai Lama, but in no way did he live a spiritual life.

Under the theory of reincarnation, however, he still carried the karma, and many people will argue that many of his songs and poems about love are in fact spiritual references (much like in the poetry of Rumi).

Personally, it sounds to me like one of two possibilities. One is that the Great Fifth intended to take a break and live and enjoy a secular life next before resuming his work, and indeed the seventh Dalai Lama is one of the most highly regarded.

Or the behavior of the sixth may be accountable by how he was found and raised. The fifth wanted his death to be kept secret for something like 14 years in order for the construction of the Potala Palace to be completed.

So the sixth was found in secret and kept in isolation for much of his childhood. He and his family weren't even told that he had been identified as the next Dalai Lama, much less entered into a prestigious monastery for spiritual training expected for the Dalai Lama.

So by the time the cat was let out of the bag, his personality was already formed and it hadn't been inculcated into him from an early age that he was the Dalai Lama, and if it were today, I imagine him being slightly bemused and saying, "Dude, cool."

Finally, I read somewhere that a Tibetan lama had identified Steven Seagal as the reincarnation of some high-ranking lama. He clarified that it doesn't mean Seagal is anyone special aside from a major action movie star because he hadn't spent his life dedicated to study and meditation, but he was, in fact, the reincarnation of so-and-so lama, for whatever that is worth, which is likely not much.

So all this, I gather, is why I wonder where I fit into the Dalai Lama institution. Maybe because, if you believe this stuff, we all are part of the "Dalai Lama institution", because it's not the Dalai Lama institution. It's just the natural process of reincarnation.