It's like we always say at Wisdom Quarterly, Who needs the historical Buddha's instructions when you can have magic and mystery in Tibet and lots of political mumbo jumbo from a corrupt lapsed empire and its pope-king? The Himalayas were like that until Mao's Army crashed in and crushed Lhasa, the Oracle told the leader to get out quick, and ruling elite made a deal with the devils (CIA). Tibet still wields disproportionate influence in the region, now annexed and part of the PRC. Who has time for a tradition akin to American hippies turning their backs on their parents' Christianity to become dirty hippie "Jesus Freaks"? Of course they would want to because who wouldn't want to get back-to-basics and away from corrupt institutions and an out-of-control clergy? If faced with organized religion, do what seekers like Siddhartha have always done: become a shaman (shraman) on a quest for a personally verified experience of ultimate truth. If one has to do it at all, do it right, spiritual exploration over religion rules. Who could possibly choose the holy Roman Empire's version of Catholicism ("Universalism") instead of the direct teachings of an entheogen-consuming, just-back-from-India, dirty, Jewish, Essene, vegetarian Nazarene adept who spent time in a Buddhist monastery and in ashrams and secret initiation site training and preparing for 18 years?
But many will choose the institution, as most of Tibet (a massive region a quarter to half the size of China) did in centuries past. But the real practice of Buddhism involves moving beyond comfortable institutions, rituals, and dogma and onto the mat for purification of heart/mind and view. That's when the real progress begins. Few are probably ready for that, so let's get back to Tibetan politics with the pope-king who is now just "pope" of one Tibetan school or sect, the Gelug Yellow Hats.
With a peaceful expression, the Tibetan deity is depicted seated on a moon disc lotus seat which is encircled by beautiful flowers. This thangka was exquisitely painted by Enlightenment artists utilizing genuine 24K gold and acrylic paints. More: artofit.org
A tulku (Tibetan སྤྲུལ་སྐུ་, Wylie sprul sku, ZWPY Zhügu, also tülku, trulku) is an individual recognized as the "reincarnation" [human rebirth] of a previous spiritual master (lama), and expected to rearise in a particular location or region after death.
The tulku is a distinctive and significant aspect of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism, embodying the concept of "enlightened beings" taking corporeal forms to continue the lineage of specific teachings.
The term "tulku" is a loanword from Tibetan སྤྲུལ་སྐུ (sprul sku), which originally referred to an emperor or ruler taking human form on Earth, signifying a divine incarnation.
Over time, it evolved within Tibetan Buddhism to denote the corporeal existence of certain highly accomplished Buddhist masters whose purpose was to ensure the preservation and transmission of a particular competing lineage.
The tulku system originated in Tibet, particularly associated with the recognition of the second Karmapa in the 13th century. Since then, numerous tulku lineages have been established, with each tulku having a distinctive role in preserving and propagating specific teachings.
Other high-profile examples of tulkus include the fourteen Dalai Lamas, the Panchen Lamas, the Samding Dorje Phagmos, Khyentses, the Zhabdrung Rinpoches, and the Kongtruls.
The process of recognizing tulkus involves a combination of traditional and supernatural methods. When a tulku passes away, a committee of senior lamas convenes to identify the reincarnation.
They may look for signs left by the departed tulku, consult psychic oracles, rely on dreams or visions, and sometimes even observe natural phenomena like rainbows. [Somewhere over the rainbow...]
This process combines mysticism and tradition to pinpoint the successor who will carry forward the teachings of their predecessor. More
Dalai Lama reborn or not? The truth about his successor.
(༄།ནང་ཆོས།། ☸️) Dec. 12, 2025: The 14th Dalai Lama (dalailama.com) discusses his determination to take another human rebirth in this world [as there are many, many human worlds on this human plane]. What is the truth about his successor? Will it be him? Legend has it that it is always Avalokiteshvara taking rebirth out of infinite (boundless, universal) compassion for living beings. #dalailama #buddhistteachings #buddha #teaching #motivation #goodvibes #fypシ
Dalai Lama via ༄།ནང་ཆོས།།, Dec. 12, 2025; CC Liu, Crystal Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly
The reincarnated Lama: The true story that defies logic
(Lei's Looking Glass) Nov. 27, 2025: Some stories challenge everything we think we know about life, death, and what comes after. Across Tibet and beyond, for over a thousand years, people have reported children who remember past lives, masters who choose their next rebirth, and signs that seem too specific to ignore. This episode explores one of the most astonishing cases in modern times — and the ancient system behind it. Whether you're skeptical or simply curious, this journey into reincarnation, destiny, and the mysteries of the human mind will stay with you long after the story ends. #reincarnation#leislookingglass
(Associated Press) Started streaming July 5, 2025 (PST) Watch live as the Dalai Lama celebrates his 90th birthday in Dharamshala, India, high in the Himalayas near China. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual head of one school (Yellow Hats) of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism says he plans to reincarnate yet again after his death, ending years of speculation that he might be the last incarnation to hold the role. Read more: bit.ly/40r31i7 #live #dalailama#religion
"His Holiness" will attend a public program in honor of his 90th birthday organized by the Kashag of the Central Tibetan Administration on behalf of all Tibetan people at the Main Tibetan Temple in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India on July 6, 2025.
Who is the Dalai Lama? He turns 90 next Sunday, on July 6th, 2025. Only John Oliver (Last Week Tonight) has been able to get to the bottom of it. Why do Americans and most of the world (other than China) love him? He got to the bottom of that. The Dalai Lama is the alleged 14th reincarnation (rebirth) of a transformed Vedic Hindu deity named Avalokiteshvara (manifesting as the female deity Chenrezig, Guanyin, Kwannon, Kwan Yin). It's not that there have been 13 previous Dalai Lamas so much as the same one coming back, but not a Buddhist messiah figure. That messiah is Maitreya, the Buddha of the future.
Past life memories are not so unusual. We can remember
How will the next Dalai Lama be chosen – and who could it be?
(Al Jazeera English) July 2, 2025: The Dalai Lama has told followers that the role, that he embodies, will continue after his death. In a video message to a religious gathering in northern India he added that the search for a future Dalai Lama would be carried out in accordance with tradition. That's at odds with China's assertion it should choose the next Dalai Lama. Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lama is reincarnated into the body of a child. Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride reports on the succession process. Tibetan writer and activist Tenzin Tsundue says the Dalai Lama's statement cuts China out of the process to choose a successor.
Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government. Subscribe to channel: http://bit.ly/AJSubscribe. Follow on X: x.com/ajenglish. Find on Facebook: aljazeera. Website: aljazeera.com. Check out Instagram: aljazeeraenglish. Download AJE mobile app: aje.io/AJEMobile. #DalaiLama #Tibet #Succession #Reincarnation #China #Dharamshala #TibetanBuddhism #Buddhism #Religion #AlJazeeraEnglish
(ReligionForBreakfast) June 19, 2025: As the 14th Dalai Lama turns 90, a global power struggle looms. Who gets to choose his [rebirth] successor? This video explores the battle over reincarnation, politics, Chinese rule, and the future of Tibetan Vajrayana/Bon Buddhism.
Check out earlier video explaining the Dalai Lama: The Dalai Lama Explained: The Last Lama? (now that YouTube has restricted Last Week Tonight with John Oliver'sinterview)
Compare news coverage. Spot media bias. Avoid algorithms. Try Ground News today and get 40% off subscription by going to ground.news/religionforbreakfast.
Drop delusion of self to help everyone. - Psychology highly developed in India: Abhidhamma
Dalai Lama on rebirth and his planned reincarnation: Death isn't end of everything; samsara goes on
(Dechen wangdi 🇨🇦) June 3, 2025: "H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama on his Reincarnation" [Is the 14th Dalai Lama, the former pope-king of a school of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism and a world renown personality, a Buddhist celebrity, planning a trip to Shangri-La or Shambhala, and is this way of hinting he's going? The world will have to wait and see. For many, a better question than his future tulku status might be, "Who is the Dalai Lama?" We all think we know him, or know about him, but as John Oliver showed, few know anything once they are actually asked. Last Week Tonight sought to remedy that with a few good laughs:]
Ratak Puntso may seem like any other 2-year-old, but he has always been destined for an exceptional life. Recognized as the prodigious reincarnation (tulku) of the grand master Kalu Rinpoche, Ratak is already inducted as a grand Lama of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. He will spend his childhood without much contact with peers of his age. Instead, he will be surrounded by monks (lamas), tutors, and servants who all take part in passing down Buddhist Teachings as well as protecting the “precious” child. Documentary: The Lama Child. Directed by Jeanne Mascolo and Bruno Vienne. Producers: Mona Lisa Production.
TULKU (official trailer)
(Chewyguru) Tulku? "Divine birth, ordinary life."
This is the official trailer for Tulku, a documentary film directed by Gesar Mukpo.
Tulku is a documentary film written and directed by Gesar Mukpo. It details the personal experiences of five young Western men who were identified in childhood as being tulkus, or "reincarnated Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist masters."
[Jesus Christ, known as St. Issa in Tibetan Buddhism, may have also been a tulku reborn far to the west of Ladakh and Kashmir, where he returned as a youth to study at Hemis Gompa and remember his divine mission of attempting to save others as a Maitreya or Messiah.]
For over 700 years, tulkus have been sought out as highly revered leaders and teachers of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.
Beginning in the 1970s, several tulkus have been identified as having incarnated in the West. These new, Western-born, very modern tulkus lead lives prone to East-West culture clash and identity confusion.
Background
Gesar Mukpo, who wrote and directed Tulku, was born in 1973, the son of world-renowned Tibetan Buddhist master [scandal ridden sex guru] Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his [underage] British wife Diana.
At the age of 3, Mukpo was identified by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche as the reincarnation of the late Shechen Kongtrul Rinpoche (the Jamgon Kongtrul of Shechen), one of his own father's teachers in Tibet [2, 3].
Three-year-old Gesar Mukpo was then "enthroned" as a tulku in radical Sixties town Berkeley, California, across the Bay from San Francisco. More
(victress108) Produced by Chariot Videos (chariotvideos.com). Blessings tells the story of 3,000 nuns who live in the remote nomadic region of Nangchen in Eastern Tibet. They practice an ancient yogic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Despite near extinction during the destruction of the Cultural Revolution, these remarkable practitioners have emerged to rebuild their monasteries by hand...stone by stone. Now, their wisdom tradition is once again vital and growing. In 2005, Tsoknyi Rinpoche III led a small group of western students to meet these amazing women. Narrated by Richard Gere, with music by Ani Choying Drolma and Steve Tibbetts, Blessings is the story of this extraordinary journey.
There are too many names to thank here, but suffice it to say that this film would never have happened without the belief, trust, patience, and extra hours of so many contributors. Thanks, everyone!
Finally, scientists accept Hinduism's reincarnation! Not to be believed
(Curious Plus) Nov. 24, 2024: There is no reincarnation in Buddhism. But there is a whole lotta rebirth (patisandhi, reappearance, rearising), that is, the relinking or reunion of consciousness from one life to the next. There is a lot of reincarnation in Hinduism. So what is the difference? It's a minor detail, one that cannot be comprehended by ordinary people without insight or purified vision (vipassana). It's just that in Buddhism there is no self (no soul, no ego, no eternal being). If there were, as there is in Hinduism, Christianity, and many religions, that soul could go into flesh again and be re-incarnated.
But since this is not what is really happening, Buddhism says no to reincarnation. (Mahayana Buddhism is almost exactly Hinduism in different terms, so that it should use the terms "reincarnation" and "rebirth" interchangeably is not a surprise). Not only is there not a "soul" (atman) to merge with God (Brahma) or GOD (Brahman, the Godhead, the reality behind all illusion/maya).
I know, I know, of course there's a "self." How could there not be? Look here, it's talking. Look there, it's reading. The Buddha does not deny the obvious. He talks about the subtle and totally unobvious: that ALL things, in an ultimate sense, are impersonal.
And this is very hard to see and almost to accept until it is known-and-seen. But why would anyone want to know-and-see such an ultimate truth? It is the key to what the Buddha called enlightenment and liberation. What Hinduism and other post-Vedic teachers taught about a soul endlessly wandering on through samsara.
Fast forward through all the commonplace questions that people ask when they learn of this (anatta principle) and we are left with just one important question: "Well, if there isn't a self, what is there? What is all this?" The answer is Dependent Origination. If one saw that, understood that, there would be no confusion. There would be no question what all this is. ALL that comes to be comes to be through Dependent Origination. It all originates dependent on causes and condition. It co-arises with them. They are not there and then the thing; they are the thing. When this is, that comes to be; when this arises, that arises. When it is not, that is not.
The Hindu question is often this: "But isn't consciousness (the stream or bhavanga) the thing that carries on and therefore the soul, the self, the atman?" The answer is no, because consciousness does not "carry on." It is constantly broken. At death it breaks again, as before, but now is met with a new substrate (created by karma), and the impersonal process continues. It is not right to say that things are what they seem, that consciousness goes from life to life as if it were the same consciousness going.
This is the way it SEEMS, but it is not ultimately true. What is true, what can be seen with the development of mental purity (visuddhi) through samadhi then vipassana (the development of mindfulness-based "insight" or "clear seeing"). The Buddha did not teach this directly to laypeople, nor even to new monastics, because not only can they not see it, not accept it, they can't even fathom it ever being true. But when they see directly, when they understand, it becomes self-evident and they are freed from ignorance. Until then, we may as well talk about an invisible soul going from life to life, changing suits, doing all these things, bearing all of these results, suffering, and dying, and being reincarnated again (or reappearing in fleshless light bodies, kaya, a lot of the time). So never mind.
A famous enlightened Buddhist monk (Venerable Nagasena) of the past tried to explain it to ancient Greek King Menander I(King Milinda in Buddhist records known as the Pali canon):
"Now, Ven. Nāgasena, the one who is reborn, is he the same as the one who has died, or is he another?"
"Neither the same, nor another" (na ca so na ca añño).
"Give me an example."
"What do you think, O king: Are you now, as a grown-up person, the same that you had been as a young, little, and tender babe?"
"No, venerable sir. Another person was the young, little, and tender babe, but quite a different person am I now as a grown-up man.". . .
"...Is perhaps, in the first part of the night, one lamp burning, another one in the middle part, and again another one in the last part?"
"No, venerable sir. The light during the whole night depends on one and the same lamp.''
"Just so, O king, is the chain of phenomena (causation) linked together. One phenomenon arises, another vanishes, yet all are linked together, one after the other, without interruption. In this way one reaches the final state of consciousness neither as the same person nor as another person.''
Here the great German Theravada Buddhist monk Ven. Nyanatiloka explains the unacceptable sentence "All things are impersonal" in a rational and direct way by defining anatta as "not-self," "non-ego," "egolessness [soullessness]," "impersonality." It is the last of the Three Characteristics of Existence.
The anattā doctrine teaches that neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them, can be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a self-existing real ego-entity, soul, or any other abiding substance. More.
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Alan Watts (alanwatts.org); CuriousPlus, 11/24/24; Ven. Nyantiloka, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly
(The Other Side NDE) ⭐ Nurse Penny Wittbrodt encountered death, or what we think of as "death" judging from this side. From the other side, the afterlife, it looks very different. The mystics were right. Seers through the ages have really been seeing something we will all eventually see when it is too late to make use of the knowledge. If only we had come to believe and understand while living, the next phase (lives after lives without end) could have been comforting rather than our worst nightmare of annihilation and obliteration, which many scientific types look forward to because it would mean nothing was ever going to come of ill-done and well-done deeds in this and countless previous lives. When Wittbrodt had a near-death experience (NDE), it taught her about life. That was the most amazing thing. We do not die in any final sense. We may lose loved one, this body, this situation, and all that we hold dear, but there is continuation, reappearance elsewhere (blissful or dreadful or not completely unlike here). She saw her death from her own and then a disembodied perspective, which gave purpose to all the moments she had had here on Earth, the good, the bad, the ugly, and precious few lofty moments. The story of crossing over is mind-bending, glimpsing our potential to reappear in a heaven (one of many) or in any of 31 Planes of Existence in countless worlds. Stories come in from around the globe 🌍 ➡️ tinyurl.com/helptheothersidende🙏 See more of Penny Wittbrodt and her NDE here ▶️ witthealthcoaching.com. #nde#neardeathexperiences
The "soul" (self) is not immortal. It dies from moment to moment in life whether we notice or not. The process continues after "death." So we are neither immortal nor do we end by death.
.
Science finally uncovers what really happens
What happens after we die? While many scientists believe that death is the end, quantum physics suggests that it might not be as simple as we think.
This new scientific idea challenges everything we know about life and "death." By looking at concepts like the interconnectedness of all things and the nature of consciousness, here’s to a whole new perspective on life after death.
Biocentrism challenges our understanding of death and life
I tried to do my part for predictive programming, showing that there was no Death (T-Swift)
Before this, Dr. Lanza focused on researching embryonic stem cells and cloning, working with both animals and humans. [Illegal human cloning?] He is also an adjunct professor at Wake Forest UniversitySchool of Medicine in North Carolina.
I'll reappear in another place in another body?
According to biocentrism, death might not be what we think it is. Instead of seeing death as the end of life, this theory suggests it could be an illusion, something created by the way we perceive the world.
The idea is that time and space, as we understand them, are not fixed. Our awareness of these concepts might shape what we experience as life and death.
The theory doesn’t deny that our physical bodies die, but it suggests that our experience of death might not be the final event we think it is.
By studying stem cells and regenerative medicine, Dr. Lanza is working to explore how life can be extended or even renewed [as happens anyway according to the science-friendly Eastern traditions, in a recycling modality known as samsara].
Why lately has science been promoting suicide euthanasia, abortion, infertility, LGBTQIA+?
His research into cloning and stem cells shows that the boundaries of life might not be as clear-cut as we once believed.
If we can manipulate biological processes, it suggests that life—at least the biological part of it—could be much more flexible than we realize. More:
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