“Yes, that is possible,” the Dalai Lama said. “Sometimes I wish… and some of these masters, I don’t know. Maybe it is just wishful thinking.” I knew as he said this that he was turning away from a public discussion of ideas he preferred not to discuss. Buddhist texts specifically forbid a teacher, except under certain circumstances, from discussing his past incarnations if he is aware of them. “The practical thing is that, yes, I made some contribution to the Dharma. This simple little boy born in Amdo (a Tibetan province). Of course in the scientific way all of this is very mysterious, unproven. But at a spiritual level there must be some forces. So in a very remote area one child was found”–as he said this, he pointed a finger at his chest. “Then peculiar names also appeared in the vision lake–Lhamo Latso–and the exact shape of my house also appeared in the lake, to the regent himself,” he said as he described the visions seen by his regent in the sacred vision lake used to find him as a boy. He seemed bemused that these visions about his rebirth could have come to his regent but also convinced that they did. “So you see at the spiritual level there is a connection, a lot of connection, a lot of karmic forces or spiritual forces.”
