Friday, November 6th 2009
21:23Heading Home!
This was the only public message that I sent while abroad. Even though I had internet connection from time to time, on the whole it was just a little too complicated to try anything like regular blogging. But I did manage to get out this little missive in Taipei on the day before we were returning to the U.S. We arrived back in LA on November 7, and I flew home to Indiana on the 8th. I had left my S-10 sitting in the long-term parking lot, and--needless to say--was extremely glad to be driving it home.
Obviously, I had no idea that it would not be too long before I would be travelling abroad again, specifically to Germany for my mother's funeral. What follows are the entries in my blog as I'm narrating the Taiwan trip. I'm leaving out most postings on other events, except insofar as I intertwined them with this little travelogue.] |
Tuesday, November 10 2009
22:252Made in Taiwan!
Those who have hung around my blog for a while know that I tend not to advertise overseas trips indiscriminately in advance. Sorry if you're disappointed, let alone upset, if you got left out of the loop, which has a rather short diameter, but there are several strong reasons for it. For those of you who knew, thanks for your thoughts and prayer support. The objective of the trip was to visit a plethora of Buddhist temples in Taiwan and to talk to converts from Buddhism to Christianity. The team consisted of Wyatt, who is my friend and has been my companion on several previous trips abroad, Ntchotchi (hereafter: "Ncho") along with her husband Intchutchuna (hereafter: "Nchi"). Oh yeah, you might not find them listed under those names in the phone book either. I'm not meaning to be overdramatic (if I were, I would have to disguise my identity also and not publish any pictures), but just following some basic measures for publishing something unrestricted on the web. In Taiwan, we were joined on most days by Wa-ta-wa (hereafter "Wa"), a Buddhist college professor, who opened many a door for us.
For tonight, I will just give a quick summary and a few introductory pictures. After spending a couple of days in Los Angeles, we enjoyed a 14½ hour flight to Taipei, which we followed up immediately with a five-hour bus ride down to Tainan, our headquarters for the next week or so. Since most of our locations were around Taichung, we did quite a bit of commuting by train each day. Then we went to Hualien by way of Taipei (the quick way of getting there), and finally spent our last few days in Taipei.
The trip was physically demanding, but everyone was looking out for me: making sure I was taking my meds, eating enough fruits and vegetables, and taking rests whenever possible.
Taiwan is an intrinsically beautiful island, though in all candor I must say that much of the industrialized part of the west coast has taken on a somewhat disappointing resemblance to New Jersey with palm trees. Nevertheless, much of the rest of it makes up in aesthetic appeal. At that, I need to apologize for some of my pictures in advance. Due to the virtually ever-present haze, photography became a little difficult at times. In some cases, I've left the view as it was; in others I've enhanced it subsequently when I've wanted you to see details, creating a little bit of a spinach effect for the greenery. You may substitute other vegetables of your choice as you see fit.
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Ncho and Nchi | Chung Tai Temple | |
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Wyatt | Wa-Ta-Wa | Your Bloggist |
Coming up among other things: what it's like to eat with the monks in their monastery, why calligraphy is not my strength, the difference between Pali and Sanskrit, and some thoughts on the "emergent temple."
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| The Official Gate | Welcome to "Moving West" |
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| Some of the "Sixteen Arhats" | "Hero Hall" (The Main Shrine) |
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| Amitayus, the "Medicine Buddha" | |
. . . some good things came out. Or should that be the other way around: while I was out, some good things came in? Anyway, between reports on events in Taiwan, please allow me to mention quickly, a few items that happened on the publications front. The Pocket Guide to World Religions went into its third printing. In contrast to other publishers, InterVarsity Press always treats a new printing as a minor celebration and sends the author a newly printed copy with a little congratulatory note. But much more fun with regards to the Pocket Guide was the fact that waiting for me at home was also the Spanish translation of the book. Apparently it came out in June or so, but IVP hadn't been able to acquire samples to send to the authors of the Pocket Guide series. Furthermore, James Sire's fifth edition of his Universe Next Door was officially published. (Taylor students and graduates may recognize it as one of the original sources for the "Foundations" course, previously known as "Freshman Seminar." The book and course have grown apart from each other to a certain extent; Mark Cosgrove, of course, has now published his notes in book form, and you can find them under the title of Foundations of Christian Thought at ChristianBooksBibles.com.) Anyway, over the years, Jim Sire has added quite a bit of material to his book, and some of you may remember that I wrote a chapter on Islamic theism for it during my last year of teaching. It didn't rate mention on the front cover, but it's there as chapter 10 of the work. Let me repeat, as I did a while back, that it is an honor to have been allowed to make a contribution to that classic work.
That's all for tonight. Oh, okay, I'll throw in a couple of pictures of Taiwan, just to keep the mood going. You see here a composite, cleverly stitched together by your skilled, but humble, bloggist. Seasoned travelers will undoubtedly recognize the little plaza outside of the train station of Taichung.
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| The Boddhisattva Temple | Guanin and Amithaba at the front of the temple. |
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| Airborne Guanin | Prince Siddhartha in contemplation. |
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| The Venerable Master Huei Guang | |
CHUNG TAI CHAN MONASTERY
A couple of points as I continue my reports on the trip to visit Taiwan. First of all, let me clarify that the entire cost of the trip for me, including spending cash, was due to the generosity of some very wonderful people. It did not cost me a penny (or other units of currency). Even though the trip was physically hard on me, as well as emotionally difficult to some extent on both June on me, the amount of learning for me (and, I like to think, some little contributions I was able to make) definitely made it worth it.
Second, one purpose of the trip included visiting with local Christians, some of them converts from Buddhism, which--as in most parts of the world that declares itself to be ever-so-tolerant--can bear a painful price tag. We made some great contacts, but for the most part I will not discuss those visits.
Third, if you're waiting for stories on what we did for fun, you apparently never took my regular world religions class (before my energy started to give out), and so you aren't aware of the fact there is nothing more fun for me than visiting temples (. . . well, and playing music and watching auto races and doing web sites . . . ). Anyway, we spent an enormous amount of time just traveling back and forth, and I used a lot of that time for zombying out. We did not go surfing or rock climbing.
A number of the local highways led through tunnels. These conveniences of transportation have, however, raised some serious opposition from citizens in a traditional Chinese mode of thinking. You see, a mountain represents a dragon, and a tunnel that goes right through it would break the backbone of the dragon, which is a bad idea, both for the dragon himself and for the larger world whose balance is being upset by the loss of dragons.
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| Bodhidharma |
Now, then, our next temple was the huge Chung Tai temple. It fit the pattern of most of the places we visited: it was built recently under the guidance of a contemporary leader. In this case, it was a man named Wei Chueh, in the direct succession of Zen masters, going back to the remarkable Bodidharma who brough Zen (Chan) to China and whose spiritual genealogy can be traced back to Mahakasyapa, the Buddha's first successor and presumably also the first patriarch of Zen. Wei Chueh founded a separate monastery in 1987 and this place in 2001. As you can see by the pictures, they are doing quite well. Over the last twenty years, more than 15,000 monks and nuns have received full ordination from him. These are roughly the same figures we heard in the context of other new Buddhist orders in Taiwan.
Our guide was a nun who went by the name of "Simplicity," who turned out to be originally from Hanover, Germany. She took us up all thirty-two floors of the temple; fortunately most of the stages were accessible by elevator. Regular visitors and worshipers were only allowed on the first floor, which contained most of the normal statues, some of which I'll come back to shortly. It included the representation of the earthly Buddha (Sakyamuni) depicted below. Then on the second floor there was a statue of the Buddha's spiritual body, much larger and more impressive. Occupying stories nine through fifteen was the Buddha's Dharma body, a huge all-white statue that leaves you breathless, even if you take the elevator and not the stairs. Going further up, there is a pagoda dedicated to the Medicine Buddha. It would be a large building just if it were standing by itself outside; here it is a large building occupying the top floors of a huge building. It is constructed entirely of wood without any nails.
The globe on the very top is dedicated to all Bodhisattvas. As an interesting by-product of the spherical construction, if you stand in the very center of the room and speak, you can hear your voice as it would be heard by other people. There is no particular religious significance to this phenomenon, and if you don't like the sound of your own voice, it's an annoyance.
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| Mahakasyapa | Sakyamuni | Ananda |
Let me come back to the statues on the bottom level. Many depictions of the various Buddhas have them accompanied by two Bodhisattvas. In the case of Sakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama, the "regular" Buddha), these are often two of his first disciples, Mahakasyapa and Ananda. We already mentioned the former, who assumed leadership after the Buddha's death and is considered the first patriarch of Zen. According to the tradition, Ananda had not yet found enlightenment by the time of Buddha's death because he was too hung up on intellectual questions. He was supposed to have had a tape-recorder-like memory. Mahakasyapa finally brought him to the point of realization, and Ananda eventually became the second patriarch. Ananda is credited with being the source of much of the enormous collection of the Buddha's teachings, called the "Three Baskets." This brings us to the so-called Pali canon, of which I can tell you next time because it was, in fact, an unplanned destination on one of our excursions. 
So, as I was saying, we found ourselves unexpectedly running into the Pali Canon on one of the last days of our trip through Taiwan. Specifically, we were at Dharma Drum Temple, to which is attached Dharma Drum University. As you can see by the picture, if you choose your university by its view rather than its worldview, it has a lot going for it (perhaps tempered a bit if I tell you that the big building across the valley is a crematorium).
Before going on I might just note that this entry is somewhat long and technical; perhaps even "geeky." Please bear with me. It all leads up to some worthwhile points.
The so-called Pali Canon is a collection of writings of truly encyclopedic proportion. The name is simply based on the fact that its largest and most likely oldest surviving version is in the language called "Pali," which is possibly the language that the Buddha spoke. Pali is one of the several languages that spun off Sanskrit. The Pali Canon is also called Tipitaka, the "Three Baskets," because it has three divisions: rules for Buddhist monks, teachings of the Buddha, and scholarly analysis of Buddhist teachings.
As we mentioned last time, according to tradition, much of the teaching material was recollected and dictated by Ananda, Buddha's own disciple, at the first Buddhist council in the early fifth century B.C. If a particular issue came up, or if someone was trying to recollect specifically what Sakyamuni had said, Ananda would concentrate, begin with the words "Thus have I heard," and then start to recite what was supposed to have been pretty much verbatim the words of Sakyamuni. Of course, many scholars, particularly those who are having a hard time believing that there even was a historical Buddha (Sakyamuni), question the accuracy of these alleged recollections. However, as I keep contending, we Christians need to be careful not to buy into the unfounded skepticism of religious scholarship that we so heartily reject for the Bible, when it is applied to other religious texts. Furthermore, I've known people who have had the kind of auditory memory that is being ascribed to Ananda. So, to put things cautiously, it is credible that the Pali canon does, indeed, contain some of the direct teachings of Sakyamuni.
Still, over the centuries, the Tipitaka swelled by constant addition of new material. Some of it, no doubt, consisted of the rewriting of popular traditions into Buddhist thought forms. The complete Pali canon stems from no earlier than the first century B.C. The Pali version of the Tipitaka is the most complete, and although some of it may be a fairly accurate rendering of the first generations of copies of the original as well as the first appearances of additions, there are other versions of it, some of which include different material: several in Sanskrit, and others translated into Chinese, Korean, and Tibetan. The overarching problem for scholars analyzing the early manuscripts is not textual precision--that is a lost cause---but simply identifying passages that may or may not have been a part of the original. Starting about the thirteenth century, there are wooden print blocks of it in Chinese and Korean, and so from that point on the translated texts into those languages have stabilized themselves.
So, anyway, since the visit to Dharma Drum came towards the end of the trip, I won't get into the specifics now, except as they impinge on this discussion. I never really caught our guide's name (a volunteer, not a monk), but his name tag revealed that it was 
. Let's call him "Joe" since that's a little easier on the orthography. I guess I must also mention that we distinguished ourselves a little bit by asking our friend some questions early on in the tour that he couldn't answer, and so he called in an American professor of Tibetan Buddhism at Dharma Drum University. He answered them in the common academic manner by providing nomenclature rather than insight, but we had a pleasant chat. Regardless, my point is simply that we manifested a bit more intellectual curiosity than they were used to.
(Jimm W., skip this paragraph please. 
) Based on that impression, after lunch, Joe suggested that we visit the library, a thought that did not particularly inspire me since it was located several hundreds of steps up a hill, and libraries are not usually places you visit for just a few moments, and you have to be really quiet, and you have to be extra careful not to spill anything, and they never ever let you run, not that I wanted to. But since I did not particularly stress those matters, I was out-consensused, and we made our way up and entered the bibliophilic premises.
I changed my mind.
The part of the library that Joe wanted us to see was a collection of various versions of the Pali Canon: some authentic ancient ones (to which we did not have tactile access), reproductions of ancient ones, and multi-multi-volume translations into both ancient and modern languages. Wyatt had been excited all along, and now all my fatigue left me instantaneously. We could have spent hours there. Joe and a very pleasant librarian (who, by the way, never once shushed us), offered to xerox for us a page from the Pali version, and I've copied it here. It is the beginning of the Mulapariyaya Sutta, for which you can find a complete translation and introduction by Thanissaro Bikkhu on the website Access to Insight: Introduction to Theravada Buddhism, literally the Sutra about the Conversation on the Root. Here is where I'm asking you to hang in, even if this looks pretty off-putting at first, and you've never seen anything like this before nor would you have chosen to. As you will see, this is a lot like a game, actually. If you've had any experience with Hindi or Sanskrit, you will immediately recognize that Pali uses the Devanagari alphabet. The most obvious difference that strikes the eye is the dissimilarity in the spelling of various words. Not that there aren't also grammatical differences to Sanskrit, but it's the spelling that really stands out. Okay, novices and budding experts togther, let's start with the word sutta. It is, of course, the Pali variation of the word sutra. So, in the title (mulapariyayamsuttam), the last part reads So, what did we notice with the word "sutra" as it was transformed into Pali? Pali became more nasal in its pronunciation, but--much more importantly, it dropped the "r" and doubled the consonant. This is a pattern we encounter throughout. Here is an example from the top of the second page: I highlighted two uses of the word So, with a little bit of luck you can take a Pali word and make an educated guess as to what its Sanskrit predecessor might have been. I called the "Three Baskets" the Tipitaka. That is the Pali word for it. What might it be in Sanskrit? You're right: It's Tripitaka. Since there were no doubled consonants, the original "r" must have been at the front of the word, and so we just needed to add it there. The syllable tri also shows us how nicely Sanskrit lines up with general Indo-European patterns. We didn't get the use of "tri" to indicate "three-ness" from Sanskrit, nor did they get it from us nor the Romans nor the Greeks; it's a part of our common I-E heritage. Let's now take a quick look at the first paragraph. The quotation marks, commas, and dashes, not to mention the footnote indicator, are additional accommodations to Western style. Classical punctuation consisted of only two signs: Now we get to the pay-off. What does the little formula, "Eva me sutam--Thus have I heard" really indicate then? It's a reappropriation of the notion of shruti, indicating that the text that is about to follow is the real shruti. Buddhism is sometimes considered to be one of the two "heretical" schools of Hinduism (the other one being Jainism), primarily for two reasons. It rejected the caste system, which was already finding its place in Indian society in the sixth century B.C., and it rejected the authority of the Vedas and their accompanying texts, all of which are considered shruti. So, instead of the Hindu shruti, we get the new shruti, except that it is now expressed in Pali with the phrase: eva me sutam. In other words, the new formula may be a compliment to Ananda's memorization skills, but that's neither here nor there. More significantly, it is a dramatic claim: "You are about to hear the genuine revealed truth." This is, of course, only a relatively minor insight, which presents little surprise in the history of religions. And I could have simply told you this right at the beginning without confusing you with all those illegible symbols. ---- But wait! What makes them illegible? They are, after all, languages, encoded in an alphabet. If they are illegible to you, it's because you don't know the languages, and I don't blame you if you don't. Most likely, you've never even had much of an opportunity to learn them. I've had to teach myself. Thus, we come to my polemic. Serious evangelical Christian seminaries have their students become competent in all three biblical languages: Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, and we justifiedly react negatively to those who interpret the Bible in direct contradiction to what it plainly says in its original languages or to those, such as Jehovah's Witnesses, who clearly distort the Greek text in order to support their heretical doctrines. Furthermore, some of the best schools offer the opportunity to delve deeper into the ancient languages prior to and coterminous with the Old Testament: Moabite, Akkadian, Edomite, Egyptian, etc. This is very good because it contributes to our understanding of the biblical text and biblical history. I would not want one less credit unit of these ancient languages offered or taken. However, here is another point to consider. For quite a while now, neither Moabites nor Akkadians have provided too many significant intellectual challenges to the truth of Christianity. Whatever is written by them is past history. On the other hand, Buddhism is alive and well and intent on swallowing up Christianity, and if we want to do any meaningful apologetics, we have to be able to read their scriptures in their languages. How do I know whether Ven. Thanissaro's very elegant translation of the Root Sutra is accurate or whether he is deliberately covering up items that could possibly turn off the people he might be trying to reach? How can we know whether the Theravada Buddhism presented on that site really is Theravada Buddhism or just an accommodation to Western tastes? (For what it's worth, from my vantage point, this appears to me to be an excellent site and a good translation.) Without knowing some Pali, we won't be able to make such assessments. Many of the more popular translations of Eastern scriptures into English bear only a faint resemblance to what they say in their originals. For example, a popular translation of the Bhagavad Gita makes references to churches and mosques. Are they really there in the Sanskrit text? How will you respond to someone who brings up that passage (without writing an e-mail to me And I'm wondering--and this is a radical thought--are any Christian schools at all contemplating training their students in classical Eastern languages? This has been a long entry, written sporadically over a strenuous weekend trip visiting June's aging and ailing Mom in Michigan. I thank you for reading this, and I hope that you might catch both my excitement for this kind of study and the ache in my heart for those who need the truth. I'm praying that Christians who are excited about apologetics would also become excited about the hard study necessary to do apologetics well. We cannot afford another generation of American Christians who spread the absurd notion that Buddhism is a form of pantheism. Buddhism has come too close to us to keep getting it wrong. (Hint: Look at the courses offered at major universities these days.) Next time a culinary topic: Lunch with the monks and nuns at the monastery. 
(sutta) rather than 
(sutra) as it would in Sanskrit. The little dot over the final character in the Pali means that the "a" is nasalyzed. By the way, the thing that looks like a question mark is the numeral "1," and the period after it is a concession to Western conventions. It is, after all, a contemporary printing. 
(dhamma), which is the Pali version of the word 
(dharma), whose meaning includes everything from the fundamental rules of the universe to the truth of Buddhism to the means towards enlightenment. If you read the Venerable Thanissaro's translation of this sutra, you'll see that in this case it refers to the rules of the nobility (lit. the Aryans) and the righteous men (lit. the "sannyasin," i.e. monks who have withdrawn from the world), of whose dharma the hypothetical common person is ignorant. But to come back to the language, the Devanagari alphabet has many ways of indicating the letter "r," which is considered a semi-vowel. In dharma it is indicated by that half loop over the last character, which is a "ma." So dharma in Sanskrit becomes dhamma in Pali. Sometimes the consonant changes slightly as well. Thus, for example, nirvana (Sanskrit) becomes nibbana (Pali). 
the first one designating a short break, such as after a line in a poem, the second one calling for a full stop (thus resembling a comma and a period respectively). The first words constitute the famous formula ascribed to Ananda and copied by imitators and forgers ever since: 
Eva me sutam. ("Thus have I heard.") It occurs to me that there could be some confusion between suta here and sutta earlier. sutta ("sutra")and 
suta ("heard") are two different words. See if you can find the little line that doubles the letter "t." in sutta ! 
Ok, then, if you try to revert suta back to Sanskrit and follow the previous formula, how would you do so? You have only one consonant in the middle, and if you just add an "r," you would get the same word sutra again. But that wouldn't make sense for Sanskrit any more than we just said it would for Pali. So, just like with tipitaka/tripitaka, we have to look at the front of the word again. But in this case it's just a little more complicated. To turn the Pali back into Sanskrit, you also have to change the type of "s" from the straight-forward hissing sound to one that's better transliterated as "sh," and then you do add the "r" to it, resulting "shr." I drew a little red rectangle around the little bar that stands for the "r" in this instance. Now make one further grammatical adjustment and you get shruti, the word that is used in Hinduism to refer to the holiest texts, such as the Vedas, those that were supposed to have been "heard" by the rishis ("holy semi-divine seers") of ancient days. 
)?
That is, of course, luncheon at the monastery and temple of the Order of Buddha's Light Mountain. --- Where have you heard that term before? Would it help if I told you that the Chinese translation is Fo Guang Shan? --- Very good! That'll be five extra credit points for whoever remembered that this is the same order that has built the massive temple complex in the Los Angeles area. In terms of size, if I were to rate the Hsi Lai Temple in LA as large, this one would easily be double-X. It claims to be the largest Buddhist temple in Taiwan, and I wouldn't dispute it, though it must be a close call in competition with Chung Tai Chan and Dharma Drum.
Just to remind ourselves, this order was started in 1967 by Master Hsing Yun. Similar to Wei Chueh, the founder of the Chung Tai Temple, he stands in the direct succession of Chan Zen masters along the branch called Linji Chan, which in Japan eventually issued in Rinzai Zen.
The Buddhist professor whom I'm calling Wa-ta-wa in this blog (see the entry of Nov. 10) saw to it that we would be able to participate in the daily lunch at this monastery. This was supposed to be quite a ceremony, to which we looked forward. We were told ahead of time that it would be vegetarian, but that had been true for quite a few meals already, so that prospect didn't bother us at all. When we heard that we needed to receive instructions for lunch, I, for one, thought that such training should be unnecessary. I was wrong.
Our guide on this day was a nun who had been in the order for twenty-six years. Once again I need to confess to striking out on catching the name; my best reconstruction is "Ijir" or something similar-sounding. The first thing she did was to give us directions on how we were to eat lunch when the time came: to maintain complete silence, to finish any food once we had started it, to place the dishes into the correct positions on the table in front of us to indicate a) whether we were still eating of it, b) finished with it, or c) wanted more, etc. She used a set of paper dishes that could be moved around various transparent pockets on an easel to give us visual illustrations. After she had finished the long and complicated set of instructions, she assured us with a twinkle in her eye that, if we made a mistake, we would surely be forgiven.
There was only about an hour or so left before the procedure would begin. Remember that one of the ten precpts of Buddhism holds that monks should not eat too much and not after noon; so, the meal would have to be over by that hour. We spent the time beforehand touring through a museum-like exhibition hall, most of which was given over to to exalting the spiritual qualities of the Venerable Hsing Yun. (I shall come back to that phenomenon of the person-cult in a future entry). When it got to be surprisingly close to noon, the monks, nuns, faculty and students of the adjoining university, and lay workers hired by the temple, filed into the huge dining hall. While we were watching, I casually asked Ijir, "This is the last meal of the day for you, right?"
To my surprise she answered, "No. We take dinner also. It is considered 'medicine': 'medicine' for hunger."
I said nothing, but my thoughts immediately turned to the several students over the years who, as a project for the Eastern Religions class, had attempted to follow the ten precepts for a week, and how hard it had been on them not to eat anything after luch. They didn't realize that a late night trip to Ivanhoe's (an ice cream restaurant in Upland, Indiana) could perhaps be construed as taking medicine. Let me assure you, though, that there are many Buddhist orders, particularly in the Theravada tradition, that do not make use of such an interpretation.
We visitors entered last. The room was divided into halves with the tables and chairs on each side facing the other. Each place had empty dishes in place already. There was complete silence until from nowhere there came the sound of a gong and someone chanting "AUM" just one time. It was so unexpected and loud, it almost startled me out of my seat. Then, as the deep silence resumed, a great number of food workers, reminding me somewhat of house-elves at Hogwart's, bustled around and provided everyone with their portions of the day's repast. I'm afraid, I cannot remember everything that they set before me. I can recall two items that looked like variations on the theme of boiled cabbage, chestnuts, something big, dark, and fungioid, chestnut soup, and a large dumpling wrapped in green leaves, but I'm sure I'm leaving out one or two other things.
Rice, of course, for one thing. How could I forget about the rice? It's a hungry person's life-line if everything else on the table looks like it needs a lot of explanation.
Now, the key for my decisions on what to try was the rule that if you start an item, you must finish it (though I had already decided that if something would turn out to be utterly impossible to get down, I would bank on the forgiveness that had been promised earlier).
Ijir had sat two seats down from me, and I assumed that I had been out of her line of sight, but apparently Buddhist nuns have x-ray vision, just as mothers do. When our little group reassembled, she came up to me and expressed her concern that I might not have eaten enough to keep up my strength. She may very well have been right, but I felt fine and told her so. Then the real tour of the temple premises began, and I shall tell you what I learned about meditation, calligraphy, and temple gift shops, and how I had the opportunity to share the gospel, the next time or two.
By the way, I have felt really awful since coming back from Michigan (though I'm sure Michigan is not to blame) Sunday evening. There was a change in medication, which apparently has taken me in the wrong direction. When I called Dr. B's office early this morning to be reminded of what time today my appointment would be, the office lady disclosed to me that it had been yesterday. I really dislike it when I do things like that, but I'm not sure I could have driven to the doctor's yesterday anyway. The lady was nice about it, but couldn't find another slot for me until February. Well, I'm scheduled for several appointments with other doctors before then, so I'm sure someone will put me back on the right track fairly soon. I will also mention that the stress caused by the precariousness of the material side of our lives is not helping. As always, June and I appreciate your prayers.
So, after having visited the meditation hall at Fo Guang Chan Monastery, we (Wyatt, Ncho, Nchi, Watawa, Ijir, and your allegedly underfed bloggist) took some time to sit, chat, and--needless to say--drink tea. At the outset our conversation had, of course, been limited to the normal superficial topics, such as Ijir's observation that I didn't eat enough at lunch. By this time we had hung around with her long enough to be comfortable with more personal remarks. Performing my function as the Hermione of the group (the point being to make sure that we didn't get talked down to, but to keep the conversation at a level at which we would really learn things), I said something or other that struck Ijir as profound or knowledgeable, and she called me a Bodhisattva. I responded by saying that I was not a Bodhisattva, but a saint, since I had been sanctified by the blood of Jesus, but she didn't respond to that assertion, probably more because she was being distracted by the tea being brought in, than out of lack of interest. 
There is no telling what was going on in her mind as she next turned to Wyatt and asked him about his story. Wyatt knew potential overkill when it was lurking, and gave a more abridged version of his conversion, but also highlighted that he did not become a Christian until he was in college. After a little more conversation, we moved on to the big Buddha Hall. | | |
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After we had produced our master (Nchi), journeyman (Wyatt), and pre-apprentice (your bloggist) pieces, the teacher dried them, gave them an official stamp, and wrapped them up as little scrolls. In case you're wondering, the text we were copying says,
Our last stop at the temple grounds was the gift shop, which, similar to most gift shops around the world, contained a lot of stuff made in Taiwan, though they passed it off as home-made here. (Sometimes I truly crack myself up.) The shop was actually a little sheltered outdoor nook with some soothing Chinese music in the background. Ncho sought for and purchased one of those wide Chinese straw hats. As soon as we entered the premises, Ijir gave some directions to one of the workers there, who immediately changed the music to a rather catchy tune sung by a group in English. The lyrics were of the standard "let's-change-the-world-with-the-dharma-of-unity" variety. Actually, I remember more of the words a little more accurately. Furthermore, both Wyatt and I, though neither one of us is terribly knowledgeable when it comes to contemporary Christian music, were pretty convinced it was originally a Christian song of relatively recent vintage, apparently adopted and adapted by the Chinese temple to provide a more attractive ambience for Western visitors. I am simply relating our impressions, and I won't give any more details because there is a difference between being personally fairly certain of something and being able to swear to it in court. For all that I know, although it seems unlikely to me, the Buddhists may have bought the rights to the song. My main point is that the Buddhists are learning the skill of contextualization. Salvete amicae et amici!
[The rest of this entry continues with matters other than Taiwan; so I won't go on with it here. You can always consult the original entry if you're curious. However, I included a number of pictures from Taiwan, not directly tied to Buddhism or religion, so I shall leave them here. Also, I had the ducktor make one of his rare appearance, and I can't bring myself to cut his shtick out of this entry either.] |
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Well, that's all we need to include of this interlude entry. Next time we'll get back to Taiwan. What do you say, let'stalk about pirates and not just one, but several emperors and the pirate's son who becomes a god? And it won't be one of those kissing stories either.
What a relief it was when I discovered that I could spell the name of this religion with a D by following the pinyin system of romanization, rather than having to write it as Taoism, in accord with Wade-Giles and then tell my students that it's pronounced as "Daoism"!Under W-G, leading consonants by themselves tend to get softened, so that T's are pronounced as D's, K's as G's, J's as R's, and so forth. To clarify that a consonant should be pronounced in the hard form to which we English-speakers are accustomed, it is followed by an apostrophe. Thus, W-G has us pronounce Taoism as "Daoism," but t'ien (heaven) as "tian."The People's Republic of China constructed the pinyin system as an aid, if not outright substitute, for traditional Chinese writing. This system became officially mandated in many geographical areas and institutions since the 1980's, and it is quickly finding its way into the hearts and word processors of people around the world. Thus we can now write Daoism or tian, just the way we more or less say them. The goddes Kuan- yin (W-G) is now Guanin, more in accord with its pronunciation, and the Confucian principle of harmony among people, which was spelled jen under W-G, though pronounced "ren," may now be spelled ren.But remember: pinyin was not invented for our convenience, but for Chinese-speakers, and so the distinction between ch, zh, x, j, and q, for example, all of which receive variations along the "ch"-"sh" spectrum in pronunciation, are still going to be difficult for us to appreciate or imitate. Furthermore, most of the time when you see pinyin romanizations, they will ignore the all-important tonalities of spoken Chinese, which can be marked by various accents and diacritical marks. |
| [In the meantime my dad called to let me know that my mom in Germany had suffered a probably fatal aneurysm.] |
 | Live a long life and establish an honorable legacy among those whom you leave behind. |  | Accumulate wealth so that your family can afford to supply you with its equivalent for the afterlife. |  | Have several generations of descendants so that all of the proper rites will be maintained on your behalf. |
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| Buddhist-led Funeral | Daoist-led Funeral |
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So, Monday turned into a travel day, and I suspect I probably got more rest sitting in the trains than I would have staying in Tainan. The arrows on the map indicate our route to Hualien. Even though it's a lengthy track and backtrack, it's still the quicker way to go than to try to cut across.
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| [I am omitting a number of entries here that were related to the passing of my mom and my trip to Germany.] |
Don't you hate it if it ever happens to you that you wake up in the morning and suddenly realize that you are hurting all over? Well, that didn't happen to me today. There was no surprise this morning because I was already hurting all night with every trigger point and every bump and cyst on my body feeling on fire. I did have a long-standing appointment with Dr. I today, and, as usual, it was a good one, but there simply is no magic potion for these outbreaks, which are not directly related to the Parkinson's, but aren't helped by it either. In a while, this inflammation will cycle itself out again. I'm not whining, just reporting, so that the world will know why I might not have done today what the world might have thought I would do today.
The Integration of Faith and Learning. Please forgive me for starting this entry with such a potentially overused, if not downright hackneyed, slogan among Christian colleges in the United States. Almost every college with some Christian connections, no matter how faint they may be, seems to claim it. Whether it is actually implemented in a meaningful way depends among other things on what the school understands by "faith," how much the various disciplines are willing to put biblical truth ahead of acceptance by the academy, and how much support faculty members receive from their administrations in attempting to do so. (A surefire way to keep any reasonable efforts of integration to happen is for an allegedly Christian school to hire non-Christian faculty or to soft-pedal its Christian affiliation for the sake of attaining respectability from those who will never grant it.) *
In this case, however, we're talking about the the integration of Buddhist faith and learning, and a university that appears committed to do so thoroughly, Tzu Chi University of Hualien, Taiwan. Before closing out our all-too-short visit to colorful Hualien, early Wednesday morning we visited the Tzu Chi center, which includes a university, an administrative center with temple/sanctuay, and a hospital. We skipped the hospital and started out with the university because our tour of the main center was going to be coordinated with a visit by some senators from the country of Nigeria. The gentleman who coordinated the visit for us had to do some serious multitasking trying to keep on schedule, so he turned us over to the public relations official of the university. 
The representative of TCU could not have fit better into his role if he had been selected by a Hollywood casting agency. He combined just the right amounts of enthusiasm for the school, devotion to its Buddhist commitment, sincerity towards us as visitors (who, for all that he knew, might at any moment open our checkbooks for a sizable donation), and the dignified bearing of a professional and experienced undertaker. Even though the last attribute may sound just a bit overstereotyped, it turned out that it was, indeed, highly appropriate for his function. . . . the facilities for teaching the tea ceremony . . .
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As I mentioned, the video became somewhat wearisome, but the promotion of this exciting opportunity did not stop there. You would think that there would be much more to see in this school than their body-acquisition program, but next we paid a visit to the anatomical lab, where we saw not much more than the storage facilities. Having worked as orderly in hospitals a long time ago, when a part of my job was to take the deceased into the morgue and store them in the refrigerated compartments, there was nothing new here for me. (BTW, remind me to tell you all about that duty some day.)
Once we were back at the main center, our original guide took over again. We had no sooner entered the premises, than we were greeted by a group of five women who had attained the highest status as members of the Tzu Chi society. In an effort to contextualize their welcome to us Christians (and perhaps because one or more of them had seen Once Upon a Time in China, part 1, starring Jet Li--highly recommended by your bloggist), their greeting consisted of their chanting "Hallelujah" multiple times. A word of caution to anyone: you don't necessarily build a bridge to another culture or religion by repeating phrases out of their argot in a meaningless way. As we learned subsequently, these women had attained the highest ranks in the society, which is based on participation in so many world-wide acts of rescue, which can take the form of contributing a great amount of money as the society carries out its mission. 
After a time, we were joined by the expected team of senators from Nigeria. As Wyatt pointed out to me, the dynamics changed immediately, as these men and women were obviously accorded higher standing than us and took precedence (actually I did not get the feeling from them that they saw it that way; after all, they got to meet the great Wyatt in person, but that's what the dynamics were). They sat in front of us for another lengthy video, and they received a greater amount of attention than we did. We didn't get snubbed, and the atmosphere suited us fine. It was just interesting to see the layers of respect emerge when we toured the building. It had a lot of glass-encased representations of the Tzu Chi society at work. We rested in a pretty sizeable sanctuary with padded seats, which was dominated by a picture of a Buddha or Bodhisattva figure who was caring for the world, the idea being that the society, thanks to the Buddha, would create a "pure land" on earth. Our guide took questions, and all of them, as I recall, came from the Nigerian delegation. In contrast to our group, they were not particularly acquainted with Buddhism, and a lot of what they asked about had to do with the basic tenets of Buddhism and particularly with reincarnation. 
Now, I need to pause here for a moment for some careful reflection. For many years now, I have maintained that, even though the world loves to blame Christianity for many alleged evils, not many groups other than Christians go out and serve others sacrificially, especially when they are not of their faith and the chances of conversion are slim. Where are the Soka Gakkai hospitals for lepers or the Islamic fund raising activities for non-Muslim victims of the Tsunami a little while ago? There are a few groups, such as the Ramakrishna Society, that have attempted to imitate Christian missions of mercy with limited success, but on the whole, non-Christian religions are as likely to interfere with Christian missions of mercy as they are unlikely to undertake their own initiatives. 
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| Temple/Organization | Founder |
Bodhisattva Temple | Venerable Master Huei Guang |
Chung Tai Chan Monastery and Temple | Venerable Master Wei Chueh |
Fo Guang Shan Monastery and Temple | Venerable Master Hsing Yun |
Tzu Chi Society | Venerable Master Cheng Yen |
Dharma Drum Monastery and Temple | Venerable Master Sheng Yen |
No, it never wears off. I am always excited when something I have written appears in print. And I still get totally goosebumped whenever someone whom I've never met sends me an e-mail and tells me that the Lord used whatever I may have written in his or her life. So, I'm pleased that I've received my copies of the May/June issue of Areopagus Journal (I think they're somewhat behind), and that it contains my article, "Hinduism: Empty Diversity," followed by Keith Yandell (University of Wisconsin) on Buddhism and by Pat Zukeran (Probe Ministries) on Confucianism and Daoism. The issue also contains a good exposition on the sometimes famous, but almost always misrepresented, Falun Gong by Clete Hux of the Apologetics Resource Center, the group that publishes Areopagus Journal. 
