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Buddha business
On
April 23 this year a notice appeared in the on-line edition of Taiwan's
Merit Times, a daily newspaper run by the island's Fo Guang Shan
Buddhist Society. Master Hosing
Yun, the society's founder and leader, having propagated Buddhism
in Taiwan tirelessly for more than 40 years, was convalescing abroad,
and would not be returning to Taiwan in the near future. "Please
accept my apologies," the announcement concluded. For Taiwan's millions of Buddhists, the article was a stark reminder that the remarkable era in their religion's history is drawing to a close. In the past 40 years, Taiwan's Buddhist monks, led by refugees from the mainland, have come down from the mountains, exchanged their begging bowls for PalmPilots, and - riding on the crest of Taiwan's transformation from agricultural backwater to hi-tech economy - extended their island's vision of "Buddhism within the human realm" way beyond their island's shores. Economic powerhouses in their own right, these groups have built extravagant temples, founded universities, hospitals and charities, and, in the process, rebranded Chinese Buddhism, once considered a religion in stasis, as a dynamic force in the real world. Many Taiwanese
Buddhists credit it all to Hosing Yun. In the 1950s, he was the
first to use radio to spread his Buddhist teachings. In the 1960s,
he founded the Fo Guang Shan near Kaohsing. Today it boasts 173
branches in over 30 countries. Other Buddhist groups followed. The
Hualien-based Tzu Chi foundation runs the world's third-largest
registry of bone-marrow donors along with hospitals and an international
relief organization that has operated everywhere from Afghanistan
to the Caribbean. Another is the Dharma Drum Mountain Society, which
is opening a new multimillion dollar temple complex just north of
Taipei. And then there's the Ling Jiuo Shan Buddhist Society, which
last year opened the doors to its ultramodern $66 million Museum
of World religions in Taipei. Also last year, the Chung Tai Chan
Monastery inaugurated a vast new $110-million temple in central
Taiwan. Behind the
apparent prosperity and endless activity, however, analysts say
the cost of these large-scale projects are straining the resources
of Taiwan's major Buddhist groups to the limit. With the island's
economy in the doldrums and donors increasingly circumspect amid
a flurry of bad publicity for the societies, mass-Buddhism has hit
saturation point in the Taiwanese "market." The only option
now is to increase the pace of expansion overseas. The groundwork
for Taiwan's "Buddhism in the human realm" was laid early
in the last century by monks influenced by socialism and communism.
Amid the revolutionary fervour of the time, the monks sought a more
active role for their religion. That influence still lives on today.
"This is real communism," says YiKung, publisher of the
Merit Times, who turns over her salary as a university professor
to the Fo Guang Shan every month. In the 1970s,
as young people flocked to Taiwan's cities to work in factories
and offices, Buddhism helped fill the spiritual needs of this newly
urbanized populace, who had free time to spend and money to donate.
Having attracted millions of followers, Taiwan's Buddhist groups
grew into corporation-like organizations, vying for market share
and expanding aggressively with slick marketing campaigns. The academic
Chiang Tsan-teng calls it "Department Store Buddhism".
"The prosperous, happy, resplendent Buddhism advocated by Hosing
Yun, 'religion in the human realm', is very different from the purity
and poverty that people associate with traditional Buddhism. This
is why it can cater to the taste of industry leaders and why politicians
flock to it like ducks", he wrote in his book "Contemporary
Buddhism". In person, he's even more skeptical: "Taiwan's
Buddhist groups are religious business enterprises," he says.
"And Taiwan's Buddhists are not opposed to this. For them,
it is another opportunity to spend money." In May, the
Taiwanese edition of Next magazine ran a report on the monk Wei
Chueh, leader of the Chung Tai Chan Monastery and the fastest-rising
star in Taiwan's Buddhist firmament. Parts of his group's huge new
temple in central Taiwan, the magazine reported, are illegal structures
built on state property. Worse still, local residents said the monastery
had stood by and done nothing in the wake of the disastrous 1999
earthquake: "Chung Tai Chan did not spend a penny on disaster
relief," one local told the magazine. "People in Pu Li
cannot forgive them for that. That big temple is not magnificent.
It is an affront to the eye." A spokesman for the group, Jian-Yun,
dismisses the report as "irresponsible," and says the
monastery set up medical stations and provided food to earthquake
survivors. Away from the headlines, though, Taiwan's Buddhist groups
are busy going about their usual business, and increasingly eyeing
new markets. Top of the list: China. "The mainland is a very
big future market for Taiwan's Buddhist groups," says Taiwan
University's Yang Hui-nag. "At present they are mostly involved
in renovating and rebuilding temples. But I think it will be at
least 10 more years before they can propagate Buddhism freely there." A
simple life
Take Chueh Yann Shih, a Malaysian-Chinese nun who runs what must
be one of the Fo Guang Shan's most remote outposts- a one-woman
monastery in the village of Rosersberg, north of Stockholm. Here
in a converted factory building, the nun rises early each day to
meditate before beginning her work in the Chinese community-visiting
the sick, performing weddings and funerals, and blessing newly opened
shops and restaurants. She may have limited resources, but the nun
is happy to do what she can for local Buddhists. And, she points
out, "you can do a lot with a dollar." |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
