Exerpt from "The Search For The Penchen Lama" ~ Isabel Hilton (Penquin Books)

Buddhism's erstwhile patrons, the Mongols, the brilliance of their Chinese empire shattered, had been driven north-eastwards and had fragmented into rival groups. A hundred years later another Mongol prince, Altan Khan (1543-83), was to play a part in Tibet's destiny.

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Altan Khan was a western Mongol who was converted to Buddhism by two Buddhist lamas whom he had won as part of his booty after a battle. At the time Altan Khan was at the apogee of his power: he had neutralized his enemies, the Oirat Mongols, and established a relationship of respect, if not equality, with China. The Mongols had all but forgotten their ancestors' interest in Buddhism, but Altan Khan was receptive to new ideas. Three years after Altan Khan's conversion to Buddhism, his nephew, Setsen Khungtaiji, suggested to him that he could consolidate his spiritual destiny by inviting an eminent holy man to establish a 'special relationship' with him, much as the emperor Kublai had done centuries before with the lama Phagpa-lha.

The monk he proposed was a Tibetan by the name of Sonam Gyatso, the son of a minor aristocrat in the Tibetan province of U who was a celebrated Buddhist teacher and the leader of Tsongkhapa's Gelugpa sect. In 1576 Altan Khan sent a mission to Tibet to invite Sonam Gyatso to Qinghai. The monk duly reached Qinghai in May 1578, after a seven-month journey from the Drepung monastery, near Lhasa.

The two men met in the Yanghua temple and sealed a pact that was to bring important benefits to each. Integral to their agreement was a central doctrine of Tibetan Buddhism, which supplied the key to legitimizing their respective religious and political powers. The doctrine was that of reincarnation.

In Western philosophical and religious traditions, the notion of reincarnation has retreated to the eccentric fringe. But the idea of successive lives has a long history and was, at one time, more widely espoused in European thought. Plato and Pythagoras both believed in it and spread the idea through their teachings. The Nestorians, part of a Neoplatonic revival in the fifth century, believed and taught it to Muhammad. The ancient Jewish sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, held that the spiritual power of holy men had been honed through successive rebirths. The Zoroastrians also believed in it, and Julius Caesar records it as
belief of the Celts: 'They wish to inculcate this as one of their leading tenets, that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from 9ne body to another, and they think that men by this tenet are in a great degree excited to valour, the fear of death being disregarded.

Most religions at some time paid attention or gave some credence to a concept that was to take such firm hold in Tibetan Buddhism:that sentient beings must return to earthly life many times, caught in a cycle of death and rebirth, until they reach a spiritual plane that releases them from the sufferings of the world.

In Eastern thought the belief in reincarnation remains both widespread and deeply held. Gautama's teachings, from which the beliefs of the Tibetan schools of Buddhism derived, began with the idea of the Brahma, the metaphysical absolute from which all things come and to which all return. In Hindu philosophy the true self of every human being is identical with Brahma and the goal of the spiritual quest is the revelation of that self. It is a long, hard road and demands many rebirths before an individual is freed from the cravings that bind him to the material world. In Buddhist belief all sentient beings, including animals and insects, are part of this cycle.

Most sentient beings are reborn into the world through their failure to overcome their attachment to it. But the rebirth in the world of a highly realized spiritual being is a voluntary act, an act of sacrifice undertaken to help others along the path to enlightenment. As successive generations developed and added to the teachings of the Buddha, there grew up in Tibet a practice that remains peculiar to the Tibetan schools: the search for and identification of reincarnated individuals.

The search has a spiritual justification. A highly realized being who is prepared to postpone nirvana to return to earth in the service of all sentient beings is clearly worth locating. But the importance of the doctrine in Tibetan society was, to put it no more strongly, highly reinforced by the development of Buddhism as a central social and political force. Monasteries - and the men who led them - held wealth and power. The selection and training of those men was more than a purely spiritual matter.

As the monastic network expanded rapidly in the tenth century, Tibet's monasteries became wealthy and powerful. The reputation of a monastery, and therefore the flow of donations it received, rested on the renown of its leading teachers. When such a teacher died, the question of succession naturally arose. Most of tibetan sects, by now, were nominally celibate. The question was,.then, how to legitimize the successor of a respected teacher.

The Sakya sect, who had ruled Tibet under Mongol patronage had adopted a system of inheritance from uncle to nephew. A major sect, the Karma Kagyupa, invented the system that become central to Tibetan political and religious life. After the death of the leader of the Karma Kagyupa in 1283, his disciples decreed that their master had been reincarnated in the person of an infant boy, Rangjung Dorje, whom they duly recognized second ruling lama. The practice gradually spread to other When the Gelugpa sect was founded by Tsongkhapa more than a hundred years later they, too, adopted it.

Tsongkhapa's last disciple, Gedun Drub, became one of Gelugpa's most important spiritual and political leaders.. founded the monastery of Tashllhunpo in Shigatse, in which, a thousand years later, the drama of the eleventh Panchen was to be played out. When Gedun Drub died, his reincarnation was recognized first in Gedun Gyatso and, on liis death, infant Sonam Gyatso, the man who now sat in the Yanghua temple with Altan Khan, laying the foundations of a new politico-re power structure.

For Altan Khan, who dreamed of a revival of the glory his people had enjoyed under Genghis Khan, legitimacy lay in demonstrating a linear connection with the legendary Mongol emperor, would boost his own claim to leadership. Sonam Gyatso who already a respected spiritual master and teacher, legitimized from childhood by his recognition as the third reincarnation of a line of Gelugna masters.

Both men emerged from the meeting strengthened hy reciprocal endorsement and by some judicious backdating: Altan Khag bestowed on Sonam Gyatso the title of 'Ocean of Wisdom, oi Dalal Lama. Sonam Gyatso applied his new title retroactively ~ his two previous incarnations, numbering himself the third Dalai Lama. In honour, perhaps, of his new Mongol patron, Sonam Gyatso also proclaimed himself the reincarnation of Phagpa~~ Kublai Khan's spiritual adviser and a key player in the earlier version of this politico-spintual alliance.

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