Don't Bogart My Birth

Officially the government of Communist China rejects reincarnation as superstition. Just as officially they want to make sure that they get to control the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama so as to further their domination of Tibet and the destruction of Tibetan culture. While the Chinese government is convinced that reincarnation is a fiction, it is a fiction believed in by millions of people, and therefore carries tremendous political weight. Who ever the next Dalai Lama is, and they have no doubt there will be one, it would be in the best interest of the Communist Chinese if he were more red than maroon.

Lots of people believe in reincarnation. Hindus do, Buddhists do, New Agers do, and kabbalistic-leaning Jews do as well. What do they know that the Communist Chinese do not? Or, conversely, what does the Chinese government know that the Chinese people do not?

To find out I went to the source, my local Chinese restaurant. I spoke with Lin Tai (not his real name, which he was more than happy to give me, but which I was incapable of pronouncing or spelling), who has run the restaurant since coming to this country to build the railroad. Yes, I know that was well over a century ago, and, no, Lin Tai isn’t that old, but he is the reincarnation of a Chinese worker on the railroad. Or at least I assume that to be the case, since how else do Chinese people maintain their numbers here in America?

Think about it: A Jewish soul couldn’t reincarnate as Chinese because of the pork in their diet. A European soul wouldn’t feel comfortable in a Chinese body, and an African or African American would find the color confusion overwhelming. So only Chinese people reincarnate as Chinese. Since most Chinese people came to the United States to build the railroad (I don’t know this for a fact, but it could be true), all subsequent Chinese must be reincarnations of the original builders.

This, of course, raises issues of pensions. Can a reincarnated soul continue receiving pension checks from a previous life? To find out I went to the source, my local train depot. There I spoke with Billy Bob Wayne John Horton (not his real name either, but only because I think I got the order of his names wrong). Billy Bob was a Christian who belonged to the nondenominational Church of the Blood Drenched Way and was not a believer in reincarnation. Nor did he believe that Chinese people had anything to do with his railroad, having himself worked for the railroad for over thirty years and never once meeting a Chinese coworker. When I asked him about pensions for reincarnated people he sniffed and went to the men’s room to pee. I waited awhile, but I suspect he had been drinking a lot of Mountain Dew and wasn’t coming out anytime soon, so I went back to Lin Tai and the Chinese restaurant.

Lin Tai was out, but I spoke to Francis Xavier Thomas Aquinas (this was his name) who delivered food for Lin Tai. Francis Xavier was a Catholic and didn’t have any idea as to what I was talking about. But he did say that if the Chinese tried to control the rebirth of the Dalai Lama, the President of the United States could bomb them. “And that’s why I’m voting for Cheney in the next election.” Made sense to me.