I try to avoid talking about religion. Not because I fear recriminations from the devout who might take offense, but because faith is like sex: If you keep it out of my face, then it’s none of my damn business. And in Taiwan, where most denominations are not too predatory and don’t seek to convert the human race to the very last disturbed soul, one can be left alone to pray as one pleases. And so it should be.
But by largely steering away from religious topics in this column, I have ignored one of this society’s most important political engines. Elections, social welfare, education, relief work, even organized crime: Buddhist and/or Taoist and/or other groups are in the thick of it even when “it” is not strictly religious. So maybe it’s time to grab this topic by the joss sticks and see where we go.
I lumber into this by way of contemplating the rise and fall of Kuo Kuan-ying (郭冠英), that Government Information Office bureaucrat posted to Toronto whose hate-filled writings under the alias Fan Lan-chin (范蘭欽) and bizarre behavior have killed his career as a public servant — and about whom I’ve written too much already.
I was wondering where Kuo’s career might take him now that he has become a joke. You know he’s toast when KMT attack dogs start lecturing him on etiquette and on his Tourette’s syndrome-like inability to hold his tongue.
Only Mainlander gangsters and a couple of boffins at the Academia Sinecure are rallying around him. Institutionally speaking, he’s finished, with Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators dancing around his funeral pyre as the flames grow higher.
Maybe religion could offer Kuo a way up and out. Shave off what’s left of his hair, don a robe, chant some mantras and — presto! — rehabilitation. It could be this simple.
Kuo’s biggest problem was not the ferocity of his language or his racism but the fact that he was all on his own in blogland. Maybe what he really needed was the backing of one of this nation’s largest religious organizations.
Which brings us to Venerable Master Hsing Yun (星雲).
There is a segment of Taiwanese society that still loathes Mainlander religious figures who profited handsomely from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) support over the decades, including monks who built massive temples here and all over the world — but who never came to the defense of the oppressed. But most of my unforgiving colleagues are too polite to raise such distasteful topics except among trusted friends and associates — and even then, they have to be provoked.
This week, the provocation came.
According to our very own Taipei Times, Hsing Yun was quoted as telling the World Buddhist Forum in China the following:
“‘Both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one family. There are no Taiwanese in Taiwan and Taiwanese are all Chinese.’”
Aficionados of logical aberrations in sacred texts will thrill to that comment. Call it the Now You See Them, Now You Don’t Sutra. But there’s more:
“‘Which Taiwanese is not Chinese?’ he asked. ‘They are Chinese just like you are. We are all brothers and sisters.’”
Thus far it’s all very We Are the World. All that’s missing is starving Third World children and Michael Jackson.
“Hsing Yun also said that opening the forum in China and closing it in Taiwan was especially meaningful because it would enhance cross-strait exchanges and help the unification of the two sides, the Hong Kong-based newspaper Ta Kung Pao reported on Saturday.
“’The more [cross-strait] exchange we have, the more mixed we will be. Then we won’t be able to distinguish who’s Mainland [Chinese] and who’s Taiwanese — and we will naturally become unified,’ Hsing Yun was quoted as saying.”
Yes, you read that right, dear reader. The grand old monk is advocating ethnic cleansing by means of “exchanges” between Children of the Dragon and an ethnic group that apparently doesn’t exist anyway. Call it ethnic cleansing with theological characteristics.
It just goes to show: People don’t give up their sense of ethnic superiority and entitlement if a country democratizes and browbeating moralists demand that they examine their consciences. The same goes double for religious organizations that happily exercised — or, in the case of the Catholic Church’s refugee clerics, learned to rationalize — silence during the White Terror.
I tell you, with this nasty little nexus of Mainlander bigotry and Buddhist influence, my friends with animist and other cult affiliations are looking all the more attractive.
OK, some of you may not buy it when a medium is possessed by a child spirit and hands out high-pitched advice to working class locals on the roof of a suburban apartment block, but at least you can accept that this is religious behavior that is local and connected to everyday lives.
How Hsing Yun can think that joining the Chicoms’ jolly caravan is relevant to the religious health of his Taiwanese disciples is a question that will take a lot of answering. Somehow, though, I don’t think he’ll be explaining himself in this life.
If there’s any consistency in the Buddhist system of regeneration, and given the lapses he has displayed, the master might find himself reincarnated as a 7-Eleven clerk on the graveyard shift for less than NT$100 an hour. I’ll be looking for answers from him as I stock up on Long Life cigarettes and cans of Taiwan Beer.
For me, the most interesting aspect of this saga is not Hsing Yun’s tryst with the Chicoms but the response of those who ought to be aggrieved by all of this. According to the Neihu News Network (NNN) on Thursday, a few independence supporters spoke out, as did the ever-reliable Presbyterian Church, with the Reverend William Luo (羅榮光) accusing Hsing Yun of being prejudiced against Taiwanese and joining China’s United Front.
Hsing Yun responded to this by claiming he had said nothing remarkable and that attacks on him were worse than what used to happen in the “autocratic era,” NNN reported.
Yes, he really said that, too.
When a powerful Buddhist figure comes out with words advocating a form of cultural eugenics and stoking ethnic divisions — by denying the existence, or the entitlement to exist, of a group — it is the main opposition party that must lead the way.
Instead, the DPP responded to this venerable vilification with almost complete silence — apart from the whooshing sound of its legislators ducking for cover.
Forget consecutive election losses and quarreling over primaries. No greater illustration of the weakness and vulnerability of the DPP can be found than its utter helplessness over this incident.
What can the DPP do? Hsing Yun has millions of people to call on, including many in the party’s heartland.
It strikes me that Hsing Yun and his unificationist cronies would be ideally cast in a sequel to that immensely entertaining classic of Chinese literature, Journey to the West.
Picture Tripitaka (played by Hsing Yun) leading the irrepressible Sun Wu-kung (a deluded everyman ape with a fondness for brawling and Taiwanese identity), Pigsy (the DPP caucus) and Sandy (ineffectual pro-democracy intellectuals) across the Strait to gather secular scriptures on Chinese racial supremacy from Zhongnanhai, courtesy of a World Buddhist Congress junket.
On the way there are trials and tribulations to be overcome, of course, such as fearful encounters with the Yak Demon King (the Dalai Lama, with horns) and his wife, the Iron Fan Princess (Annette Lu, 呂秀蓮, who wears her own clothes).
Incidentally, the author of Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en (吳承恩), produced his landmark without using his real name.
So, in the meantime, I can say to Kuo Kuan-ying: Be reassured, for though you may not quite qualify for the monastery, you still have a career as a writer ahead of you. You are the latest in a long line of Chinese scribes with a vision, anonymity and the commoner’s turn of phrase.
But take it from a master of another kind. Johnny suggests you do something about your weakness for scatology if you want The Collected Works of Fan Lan-chin to become a modern classic of Chinese literature. Kids might read this stuff.
Got something to tell Johnny? Go on, get it off your chest. Write to johnnyneihu@gmail.com, but be sure to put “Dear Johnny” in the subject line or he’ll mark your bouquets and brickbats as spam.
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