Ali on Incarnation

“According to the Northern Buddhist school, there are both mortal and celestialBodhisattvas. A mortal Bodhisattva is one who has manifested himself on earth in human (manushi) form, in a series of incarnations, until such a time as he has acquired sufficient merit and enlightenment to receive Buddhahood. Like Gautama Buddha in his incarnation of the arhat Sumedha, the Bodhisattva may have been, in a former re-birth, an arhat bent on his own salvation who, becoming inspired with the desire for Bodhi in order to save mankind, renounced his arhant-ship.”

“Beside the 'regular' clergy exists a special class of ecclesiastical dignitaries — the 'incarnations' or living Buddhas who are at the summit of the lamaist hierarchy and who, in right of their very origin differ from the rest. A Qubilghan, is in fact the representative in flesh and blood, of some Buddha, Bodhisattva, god or saint, whose spirit is incarnated in him at the moment of his birth, and will pass, at his death, into the body of the child destined to become his successor in the functions fulfilled by him. The incarnation is thus less a matter of person than function.”