I missed this last summer: TimesOnline reported [1] that China passed regulations forbidding Tibetan Bodhisattvas (i.e. living Buddhas) from reincarnating without permission from the Chinese government. This joins the Malaysian prohibition [2] on Christian use of the word Allah in the “implacable force meets immovable object” category of demolition derby.
Of course, as I said when I blogged about Malaysia, without the text of the regulation it’s hard to say how sensible or silly the prohibition actually is. TimesOnline does at least throw quotes around a small portion of text, suggesting that this is how the law reads, in translation at least:
“The so-called reincarnated living Buddha without government approval is illegal and invalid,” according to the order, which comes into effect on September 1.
Trouble is, this doesn’t parse well in English. I guess that it’s not so much the metempsychosis [3] (nifty word, hey?) that’s prohibited as it is the recognition of that shifting of souls.