Published by World Tibet Network News - Sunday, December 03, 1995

BEIJING, December 3, 1995, (The New York Times) - Of the many secrets enveloping Tibet, that mountainous desert of a land, perhaps none is as mysterious as the time-honored search for the reincarnated spirit of a deceased leader, or lama.

Over the centuries, elderly red-robed monks have divined prophecies while sitting beside a holy lake, then they have traveled the Tibetan countryside on horseback to find a young boy with the celestial markings of a lama. And if they could not agree on one, they would pick an ivory lot from a golden urn to force a decision.

The selection of Tibetan religious leaders, a mystical process that by its nature is open to wide interpretation and manipulation, has not always been free from earthly interference. Although worshipers have generally accepted the word of their elders, a skeptic could easily see that the criteria for finding the right boy have usually been spelled out only after he was found.

However, recent efforts to locate the whereabouts of the soul of the panchen lama, the second most important position in Tibet after the dalai lama, must be one of the most bizarre episodes to occur in modern religious history.

In 1989, the panchen lama died at the age of 50, and China authorized a search committee to find a boy who was born that same year and who was supposed to have inherited the panchen lama's spirit. The committee found Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, a child who was born in the Lhari district in Nagqu, a Tibetan village, four months after the Panchen Lama had died.

Initially, China approved the boy. But Chinese leaders were incensed when they discovered that members of the committee had secretly conferred with the dalai lama, who announced his endorsement of the boy last May, before China did.

The boy was placed under house arrest, and the head of the search committee was denounced as a traitor.

Then last week, Chinese leaders, declaring themselves the sole arbiters of Tibetan custom, supervised a ceremony to choose another 6-year-old, Gyaincain Norbu, creating a rival panchen lama.

For the ceremony, the boy, the son of a yak-herder who was described by his father as a loner drawn to Buddhist icons, wore yellow silk pajamas and placed a scarf on a Communist official's neck.

It was as if, after the College of Cardinals chose a pope, the Italian prime minister announced that he would not accept their candidate but would install his own, arguing that he was the final authority of Catholic divination.

Over the centuries, when a Chinese emperor has asserted sovereignty over Tibet, he has sometimes been asked to approve a new dalai lama or panchen lama, but that was typically a formality performed after the actual selection. The real selection was made by Tibetan Buddhist clerics. And the dalai lama and the panchen lama, who head different branches of Tibetan Buddhism, would approve the selection of the other.

But all that changed after Communist Chinese troops entered Tibet in 1950 and then seized full control when the dalai lama fled to India in 1959. China tried to promote the panchen lama, then just 20 years old, as the sole religious leader. At the same time, it unleashed nearly two decades of religious persecution, killing most senior lamas and destroying thousands of temples. Searches for reincarnated spirits, needless to say, completely stopped.

The death of the most recent panchen lama, in 1989, marked the first time that one of Tibet's top two positions would be chosen under the rule of Communist China, an officially atheist regime that had by that time adopted a modicum of religious tolerance.

The panchen lama who was to be replaced was an enormous man with a voice that could range from the deepest rumble to a high-pitched squeal in a single sentence. Though often derided as a ``quisling'' for taking a seat in China's rubber-stamp parliament, in 1964 he was accused of being a traitor to China and spent 14 years in captivity. He never denounced the dalai lama, despite intense pressure from Beijing.

Indeed, in the months before he died he spoke out so stridently against Communist rule in Tibet that after his death, rumors surfaced that he had been poisoned for his remarks (though his gluttony make the official account of heart failure plausible).

When the panchen lama died, Chinese leaders worried that the dalai lama might choose a Tibetan boy living in exile. They were also determined to set a precedent for when the dalai lama, who is 60 years old, is replaced.

The search committee appointed by the Chinese government spent months combing the Tibetan countryside in search of a boy who showed signs of having inherited the panchen lama's soul. The group made repeated trips to Lhamo Latso, a sacred lake where clerics seek spiritual guidance, and eventually they found 28 boys with enough preternatural wisdom and distinguishing marks to be considered candidates.

(Theoretically, a reincarnated lama proves his status through a series of tests, such as identifying various objects belonging to the previous lama.)

The head of the search committee, Chatral Rinpoche, settled on one of the 28 boys, but whether he chose this boy because of a vision, because of some intuition or because of some less noble reason, remains as mysterious as the reasons his forebears chose dalai lamas and panchen lamas of centuries past.

But when Chinese leaders found out that Chatral Rinpoche had been conferring with the dalai lama, they interpreted this as a sign of anti-Chinese collusion and decided not to honor that choice. They accused the boy of having once drowned a dog, and so declared him unsuitable.

Then they supervised a new ceremony in Tibet in which a name on an ivory lot was chosen out of a golden urn. (China's propaganda machine has insisted that lot-drawing has always been the way panchen lamas are chosen, though historically it has been used only when competing Tibetan clerics cannot agree on a choice.)

It can only be a matter for speculation whether either of the two rival six-year-old panchen lamas - one supported by the dalai lama and the other by the chinese government - inherits the former panchen lama's spirit as well as his soul.