The Ego Trick (baggini, Julian) / quote 218 of 254
Reincarnated lamas are just Tibetan culture
Ringu says that the whole idea of reincarnation is ‘just Tibetan culture’. As he explains, the idea of lines of reincarnated lamas is not something that goes back more than two millennia to the life of the Buddha, but one that actually only started in the twelfth century with the Karmapa lama (nearly two centuries, incidentally, before the first Dalai Lama). ‘The first Karmapa, when he died, said, “I have to come back, because my teacher asked me to build this monastery.” So after some time a boy came and said “I am Karmapa.”’