Many years ago, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, a major Buddhist charity, purchased an area of protected land in Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) for NT$1.3 billion (US$41 million) with the intention of developing it. Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) recent remark that the land deal was “strange” drew a strong response from Buddhist Master Shih Chao-hwei (釋昭慧), who has of course in turn come under fire from hordes of Internet warriors.
The key question is whether land in a protected zone should be developed, and whether negotiations should be arranged to seek an alternative plan that would allow Tzu Chi and the Taipei City Government to both emerge as winners. However, the debate so far has been more a matter of each side attacking its opponents than of dealing with the facts.
The current fracas is just like the story told in the Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch (六祖壇經). The sutra recounts how the sixth Chan patriarch, Huineng (慧能), having spent a long time living in seclusion, felt that the time had come to spread the dharma and went to the Dharma Essence Monastery (Faxing Si, 法性寺) in Guangzhou (廣州). There he sought out Dharma Master Yinzong (印宗法師), who was at the time lecturing on the Maha Parinirvana Sutra.
According to Huineng’s account as retold in the sutra: “One day a pennant was moving as the wind blew. One priest argued that it was the wind that moved, the other that the pennant moved, and the discussion never reached a conclusion. I intervened and said that it was neither the wind nor the pennant, but their noble hearts which moved. Everyone was astonished.”
It is because the people involved in the debate over the land in Neihu all have their prejudices and have been arguing based on their respective feelings that the accusation of strangeness and counterclaims of not being strange at all have cropped up.
In almost every issue that has emerged since the nine-in-one elections held in November last year, differences of opinion have appeared. Take the allegations of improper lobbying leveled against Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) and Democratic Progressive Party legislative caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘), which then resulted in an issue over Wang’s membership of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT).
Just recently, one sentence spoken by KMT Chairman and New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫), saying that Wang is indeed a member of the party, has turned the whole case into water under the bridge. Now nobody wants to go on pursuing the rights and wrongs, truths and falsehoods of this improper lobbying case, which has caused big rifts in the KMT.
Politically manipulated compromise means that there is no point in investigating the rights and wrongs of the case any further, and only stupid people would care about what really happened anymore. As far as the KMT is concerned, all that matters now is whether it can score a big win at the next election, and everything else can wait.
Once “my” party has won an election, everything it does is right, because the result shows that the majority of public opinion is on “our” side, and it follows that everything “my” party’s opponents do is wrong, because they do not enjoy sufficient popular support.
In such an atmosphere, all it takes is for Internet warriors to link up and unleash a tide of criticism, and the key players in the issue will be the villains of the hour and the targets of public scorn even before any fair debate has taken place. We have seen it happen to President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). Now there is just a different player in the role — Tzu Chi.
The fate of the nation cannot be determined by casting lots; still less does its future governance and strength depend on the will of the gods. If 23 million Taiwanese cannot reach a common understanding and work together hand in hand, the ship of state will not sail smoothly, no matter who is at the helm.
It is just that we lack the required collective wisdom, and no politician is willing to step out of this atmosphere of confrontation and seek a greater common understanding between government and opposition parties. Instead, all we get is even more prejudice and conflict. Worse still, the minds that are manipulating this kind of conflict are creating bad karma that will leave a legacy of misfortune for coming generations.
No matter whether the karma arises from speech or from evil intentions, a piece of pure land must be passed down for future generations to live on. Since we are creating karma, why not speak out about rights and wrongs, truths and falsehoods, so as to be fair to all those involved and let some of the arising karma bring about a benign legacy?
Kung Ling-shin is chair of the journalism department at Ming Chuan University.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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