I have found that if you start looking into things Tibetan that complexity soon arrives.
Today I came upon ma ’das sprul sku for the first time.
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Abstract: A ma ’das sprul sku is a non-hereditary reincarnate lama (sprul sku) who assumes his or her predecessor’s status, but who takes birth before his or her predecessor’s death. This paper presents ten oral histories of ma ’das sprul skus and examines what they and their narrators reveal about the logic of transference in establishing the personhood of a ma ’das sprul sku, how ma ’das sprul sku personhood may challenge conventional understandings of sprul sku personhood and temporality, ma ’das sprul sku and their creators as reflective agents, and what the dearth of ma ’das sprul sku hagiographies may imply.
Marcia Calkowski in The Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies.
https://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#!jiats=/07/calkowski/b1/
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The notion that a being can have a second incarnation whilst still alive, kind of messes with the idea that one needs to leave the meat before getting some more. She mentions the idea of mandé trülku.
Taken to the limit that could mean that an emanation, similar to that which gave rise to the Dalai Lama, could already be incarnate whilst he lives.
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Literary Sources for Tulku Lines
Successive systems of reincarnation or tulku (sprul sku) are fascinating sources for the study of the social history of Tibet. The tulku, predicated on Buddhist metaphysics of rebirth, is a phenomena in which a person is recognized as embodying a previous person, in their own current body. This is technically referred to in Tibetan as one who is “recognized as having returned to existence” (yang srid ngos ‘dzin or sprul sku ngos ‘dzin).
There are hundreds of multigenerational tulku lines in Tibet. By looking at when such tulku lines were declared, within which contexts, patterns of interpersonal relations, institutional alliances, and regional practices emerge. We are given new visions of these trans-generational social networks and the weblike worlds in which tulkus function.
From The Buddhist Digital Resource Center.
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This suggests that there are so many tulkus that some could be considered common or garden as opposed to the big three.
The naming and interweave is not easily tractable. If I was to start with my recent Tibetan dream, trying to find out who I might have been, there are many pitfalls.
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This dream, if taken literally, suggests that I was being escorted out of Tibet in and around the early sixties / late fifties. Clearly that is a big if. It suggests an importance sufficient to warrant an escort and a rank above common or garden
I could search for a person, lama or tulku, who died in and around that time but the list of tulku lines is not easily searchable by date. The dream suggests that I was not going to make it.
https://legacy.tbrc.org/?locale=en#!persons/tulkus
But I may have made it. Which might make me a co-incarnation of a living person. We share an emanatory source. That co-incarnation could have passed on since and could in principle have been born biologically before me, say ~1940s in order to be old enough to march to freedom.
The feeling from the dream was that I was a youth / young man. Which puts a window ~1935 – 1945. My hands in the dream were soft inconsistent with extended heavy manual labour.
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My eight Tibetan Houses Dream
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Points at Southeastern Tibet / Shigatse/ Shigatze which might geo-locate an incarnation but does not take me much closer to a named individual in the twentieth century.
My Tibetan Buddhist Search Committee Dream suggests that I might recognise a magically inscribed cabinet. It suggests that I might recognise Tibetan martial arts weapons.
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“The carpet on the floor of the hall has been rolled back to reveal a parquet dance floor of some considerable sheen. Amongst the entourage I can hear gossiping. “It cannot be him; he is too coarse thickset and muscular.”
I hear this and whip off my shirt to reveal my muscular bare chest. I say that I will cooperate with whatever it is they must do. Take a look if you must. I am now wearing saffron yellow trousers, training pants, that are “elasticated” at the ankles. I start to do a forward splits on the floor to warm up. I say that given I am nearly sixty I am surprised that being that old I can still do that.
One of the woman in the entourage says to me that I am much older than that both in this lifetime and stretching way back. I am nearly 73 she says. I do the mental calculation that I must have been “born” in the early 1950s. She says, “we tried to wake you five years ago”. You have been “asleep” and we have been waiting.”
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So, the dreams suggest an inconsistency of age or timing.
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The monastery airport dream points at Leh in Ladakh.
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There are a number of dreams with Kālacakra or wheel of time mandala.
In another dream “Tibetan soil dream” I am given my piece of Tibet.
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There are other dreams with H.H. Karmapa and H.H. Dalai lama in.
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If dreams are “evidence” then there is quite a bit suggesting some Tibetan connection. If I were a Tibetan having these dreams then the Tibetans would take them more seriously. A hairy arsed sixty-year old Welsh ex-academic spendthrift is not as attractive as perhaps a younger person linked to the sangha.
It is difficult to explain these dreams cropping up from a Freudian or Jungian perspective.
There is circumstantial evidence. It is pretty unlikely that any conscious imaginations / research makes its way fully into dreams. I did not make any of them up. They were recorded as is the morning after.
I have not tried to visualise this putative life as that is more likely to be prone to prejudice / confirmation bias.
It is possible that having looked at this theme there may be more passive dreams on the way….
Dreamyoga 