Abbot scandals

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Shaolin Kung Fu
21

So with the abbot, who has had a nice car for some time and also holds a position with the People’s Congress, is somewhat expected to have a pimp ride. Of course, everyone has their perception of what a Buddhist abbot is supposed to be like, but that’s generally based on a medieval ideal that doesn’t really apply to the modern world.

Sounds like many people here in America who use religion to increase their own power and fortune. Maybe my not being a buddhist makes it difficult to see the difference, or maybe no one is doing a particularly good job of showing what positive impact the current Shaolin Temple has on society… I just fail to grasp at this point why the abbot should be looked up to and respected any more than any other self serving politician.

22

Has he got a driving licence!

I doubt he needs one, lol.

23

Somehow I’m not sure which is worse …

being a poor sanyasi watching the guru with 90 Rolls Royces and all the women he can handle …

or being a guru with 90 Rolls Royces and having to deal with lots of women and a ton of stupid jealous sanyasis …

I think in both cases I’d hope for early retirement (death).

24

The key issue is not whether the abbot is allowed to own mobile phones, cars, DVD players, and other consumer possesions. The problem is that this type of activity falls within the definitions of criminal graft. It is a very serious criminal offense in China, not to mention the rest of the world.

Secondly considering the extreme poverty in the region it is a very distasteful act on the part of the government and a supposed religious leader.

Lastly if the temple really needs another vehicle they should pay for it with thier own funds.

Gene you sound like you are trying to justify the entire action. Am I misreading you?

25

not “justify”, just play Devil’s Advocate

I’ve always found Shi Yongxin to be a fascinating and complex individual. Now I confess, I do have my allegiances to Shaolin. I’m a layman disciple. I was also the first person to publish an interview with him in English. Every time I go to Shaolin, I pay my respects to the Abbot. We have a good relationship, one that, given my position, I put effort into maintaining. I hope that someday I’ll get to ride in this Abbot SUV. But note that I was also the one who started this thread, with a chiding title at that.

Probably what you’re reading into my comments, bungbukuen, is my attempt to explain the workings of PRC and modern Shaolin. Religion in PRC is a very delicate issue. It’s delicate in America too, but for converse reasons. Also, I like to bring attention to the complexity fo Shaolin. Many critics simply attack the simple fault but fail to see the complete circumstances.

For me, the question of this having a criminal graft element is a red herring. The award seems to be as on the up-and-up as it could be, given the nature of it all. Clearly, if Dengfeng tourism is going to be giving out SUVs for people that have helped that economy, the Abbot should be the top of the list. Like I said before, I’d love to know who got the other nine. The juxtaposition of extreme poverty versus a wealthy monastic class could be more easily and more appropriately levelled at the Dalai Lama. The political nature of the Abbot is also a PRC thing. Note that many outstanding martial artists have served as part of People’s Congress, including GM Liang Yiquan (one of the top ten masters of China) as well as many leading wushu champions. That’s just the way that People’s Congress works. Representatives are selected based on their accolades, not by popular vote.

For me, it’s more of a Buddhist challenge. Buddhism preaches non-attachment. That’s becoming more of a challenge to any modern practitioner because frankly, there’s more stuff. Twenty years ago, there would have never been this discussion because there weren’t really SUVs. But even in the medieval-like setting of pre-communist Tibet, you can see flagrant abuse in terms of have and have-not. I touched on this very breifly in my July August 2006 cover story. Osho is another example, although he’s not really Buddhist, and he had a lot of other issues beyond questionable spiritual practices and materialism.

Shaolin’s Abbot is clearly on the path of acquisition. We’ve documented how he wants to restore Shaolin, to rebuild and recover, in many articles. He’s had a luxury car for years. Now he’s be awarded another luxury and the Shaolin kicker is that he says he wants a better one next year. That’s wacky. I think it’s worth discussing here because it cuts across many issues that we Shaolin practitioners grapple with constantly.

26

Criminal Law Fact Update

The fact that the car awarding ceremony was a public event does certainly give the appearance of being perfectly legal. Obviously graft activity normally takes place under more secretive conditions. I mean who would publically engage in bribes? In this context it may have been innnocent and nothing more than pure stupidity. But ignorance of the law is not a valid defense.

In terms of the definition of graft, the mechanics of kickbacks, and the transaction itself, the gift care does certainly fit the definition of graft and under stingent definitions is punishable at a minimum of 10 years in jail.

As a layman disciple under Shi Yongxin I can understand your aprehension Gene, but please do check up on your PRC criminal law facts law before dimissing anything.

Nerd Facts:
PRC law defines bribery as the giving of moneys or goods to personnel of State organizations or public servants for improper benefits. Improper benefits are also defined as excessive amounts of money or gifts, and are considered bribes.

Under PRC law, government administrative personnel may NOT:

a) Receive gifts while discharging official duty within the PRC. Gifts are gift articles, gift money, vouchers or goods purchased with nominal costs, whether given outright or in the name of or in the form of receptions, ceremonies, seminars, weddings and funerals;

(b) Receive gifts in performing official duties relating to foreign parties only. Such gifts are gift articles, gift money or vouchers, and must be reported according to value.7

According to section eight under criminal law in China, graft in the amount of more than Rmb100,000 is punishable to a minimum of 10 fixed years in prison.
The fat abbots pimp ride is easily worth over Rmb100,000 in China.

[SIZE=“1”]Source:

  1. PRC Criminal Law - Chapter VIII: Graft and Bribery
  2. Provisions Against Offering and Accepting Gifts by State Administrative Organs or Personnel in Performing Official Duties within the PRC (), art. 2-4.[/SIZE]
27

Old News

It’s kindof old news the ‘Shaolin’ temple is a sellout commercial institution now.

Don’t know why this is big news. ??? China is all about money now, and as for graft, this is one government institution giving something to somebody.

‘Layman disciple’ ??? How can you be a disciple of a commercial enterprise, that’s kindof a joke. It’s just a marketing ploy to increase their membership and revenue.

28

You really think they will bust the Abbot, bungbukuen?

Sure grafts etc. are illegal in China, but there’s a country that sometimes seems to run on kickbacks. I think a lot of it stems from the guanxi tradition. Anyway, if they bust the abbot for accepting this car on the basis of it being a graft, bungbukuen, I’ll be quite impressed by your observation. If not, red herring.

As for Shaolin being a sell out, that’s really about how you define sell out. Questions about Shaolin’s validity have been going on for centuries. Tourism has been an issue at Shaolin for longer than the USA has been an independant nation. Check out my article Shaolin Trips: Episode 4 - A Hero Watching the Formation - Chapter Four: Xingqiyi (Monday): Shaolin Revisited, the First and Second Generals, and - oh yes - the Tournament. The 7th graphic from the top is a tourist map of the area that dates back 14 centuries.

But for the record, I’m a layman disciple of a specific monk. There are plenty of us. It’s no big thing. Most martial artists will disciple under some master at some point.

29

[QUOTE=GeneChing;702414]
As for Shaolin being a sell out, that’s really about how you define sell out. Questions about Shaolin’s validity have been going on for centuries. Tourism has been an issue at Shaolin for longer than the USA has been an independant nation. Check out my article Shaolin Trips: Episode 4 - A Hero Watching the Formation - Chapter Four: Xingqiyi (Monday): Shaolin Revisited, the First and Second Generals, and - oh yes - the Tournament. The 7th graphic from the top is a tourist map of the area that dates back 14 centuries.

But for the record, I’m a layman disciple of a specific monk. There are plenty of us. It’s no big thing. Most martial artists will disciple under some master at some point.[/QUOTE]

Wow, I had no idea. I thought it was a recent thing.

I’ll never be a disciple. I don’t have enough discipline. Or tact. Or patience. :slight_smile:

30

Gene - no need to try to sugar coat graft by implying that everyone does it in China. While it is prevelant, it is also something that exists in every country including the US - Enron being a classic example.

Of course the Abbot nor the awarding party will not be going jail. There was nothing malicious about it. But I am forecasting that he will be returning the car soon.

BBK

31

On the last page with all the discussion about what the living conditions are, it IS a kind of wierd complicated issue. To give some perspective, here’s a couple pics I took in the area surrounding Xi’an, technically part of the same municipality:

This is a typical kitchen with “simple appliances”:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17497713@N00/230811993/

You can see the floor in the kitchen is brick but in the rest of the house it is packed earth. (dirt) On the left is a larger stove, home made out of bricks and powered with wood scraps as coal is too expensive for this family. That funny handle on the right is the billows to get the fire hot enough for Chinese cooking. You can see a smaller propane powered burner in the background too though. I was too embarrassed to take a phot of the rest of their home. This wasn’t a tourist site. It was a friends classmates home. No heat. No indoor plumbing.

This is one of those “yards” that were mentioned earlier:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17497713@N00/230812272/

What wasn’t mentioned is that they are generally communal. You might not have a yard in Seattle but you don’t have them in cities in China either. The houses you can see surrounding the yard, housing numerous families, are not heated and have no plumbing. There is an outhouse out back and a water pump in the yard to collect water for drinking and washing. The entrance to the “residences”, which are either single or double rooms, look like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/17497713@N00/230812442/

Again no heating. Just a single room with enough space under the door that mice can come in and visit. The walls and floor are either bare concrete concrete with cheap primer covering it.

These pictures were taken in the area around Xi’an which is a much richer area than the area around Dengfeng. The people here mostly don’t have to worry about starvation but 2 years ago there was a disastrous flood and I expect some people went hungry then. Some 500,000 yuan were raised in disaster relief, 50,000 actually made it to the area.

32

sugarcoat indeed

bungbukuen, you seem to think that I’m trying to spin doctor this into some sort of positive thing. Now why would I do that? If this was something that I felt should be hidden or sugar coated, why would I have started this thread here in the first place?

33

wow! A toureg! That’s a sweeeet ride for sure!

34

If this was already linked or posted and I missed it, just delete it. It does have a few photos with it
Shaolin Temple goes commercial
By Guo Qiang (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-08-31 09:56

[Learn more about the Shaolin Kungfu]

Shi Yongxin, the abbot of Shaolin Temple, widely considered the birthplace of Chinese Kung Fu, spends most of his day greeting corporate executives, government officials and friends from all over the world and dealing with dinner invitations and business instead of shepherding all disciples.

The abbot of the Shaolin temple in the central province of Henan, Shi Yongxin, stands beside a spectacular sports sedan worth 1 million Yuan (US$125, 000), which is awarded to him for his contributions to the local tourism industry. [Dahe Daily]

When Henan officials presented Shi with a spectacular sports sedan valued at one million yuan (US$125, 000) for his contributions to the local tourism industry, it raised increasing doubts that Shi is a monk who is dedicated to fortune rather than religion, the Beijing News Reported on August 30.

“I resorted to using commercialization to promote Shaolin culture,” Shi says. “I believe that people who concentrate on hard work can understand me.”

Shi Yongxin. [Beijing News]
Displaying photos of top Chinese leaders such as Jiang Zemin, Li Peng and Wu Yi along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Shaolin Temple is marked with Shi’s commercialization efforts.

Shi was admitted to the temple in 1981 when it was in a total recession with dozens of monks staying at the temple, where they lived on 28 mu (1.86 hectares) of farmland. Nine of them were elderly.

He began to serve as abbot in 1987, five years after the internationally acclaimed wuxia (literally meaning martial arts) movie ‘Shaolin Temple’, starring Hong Kong star Jet Li, which put the temple in the international spotlight.

Shi has been trying to strengthen cultural exchange and promote the reputation of the temple since 1987, according to the paper.

“I aim to make Shaolin culture something people want to study,” Shi says.

The abbot has set up research cooperatives with dozens of mainland universities, including Tsinghua University and Peking University.

He has continued his cultural exchange with the international community.

Shi has purchased 12 square kilometers of land in Australia and is prepared to build a Shaolin martial arts cultural center he says will be built according to traditional Chinese construction methods.

A monk of the Shaolin Temple holding a club rides a moto bike on a road August 24, 2006. [Beijing News]

“It may serve as a construction museum or an educational base,” Shi says.

Shi’s moves have sparked criticism nationwide from media reports to Internet online posts.

“They have forgotten what their purpose is and are concentrating on what they shouldn’t do,” Xinhua quoted an online post as saying.

Shi has moved to build a Shaolin medicine office in the southwest area of the temple, and he is stepping up efforts to set up a Shaolin museum, according to the paper.

“Before I can do anything the temple needs to acquire more land,” Shi says.

“The expanded Shaolin temple is in need of land and I’m considering building a museum, a practice hall, a Buddhist palace a science exchange center.”

35

Shaolin Temple Theme Park

It looks like they are heading towards the theme park model. Let’s face it, “Shaolin” is a romantic dream from the past. What exists today is there to comemorate it, and there is probably nothing wrong with that as far as it goes. I live in the southwestern United States where there are reconstructed “ghost towns” with re-enactments of old west shoot-outs. Nothing wrong with it, just don’t get confused and start thinking it’s “real.” :wink:

36

even theme parks are real…

…meawhile, in related news…

China’s love affair with the car off to bumpy start
Updated 8/30/2006 10:31 PM ET

Wang Junsheng prefers teaching kung fu but says teaching beginning drivers at the Flourishing China Driving School pays better.
By Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

BEIJING — As a farmer’s son growing up in England, I always thought I’d learn to drive in a field. Somehow it never happened. Until last month, near Bean Village in eastern Beijing, where at age 37, I began taking driving lessons.

My field of driving dreams is being eaten up in China’s race to urbanize. The roads being paved through farm country at the fringes of China’s capital are some of the most dangerous in the world.

“Thirty years ago, this was all fields and trees,” reminisces traffic cop Li Baocheng as he drives through Beijing’s eastern suburbs. He’s worked here since 1974. “There were very few cars on the roads back then. My job was very relaxed.”

Today Li’s beat is a choking sprawl of factories and highways. Every day, 1,000 brand new drivers hit the city’s streets, the Beijing environmental bureau says. “New drivers are my biggest headache,” Li moans. “Some days I don’t have time to eat. There’s an accident every 10 minutes.”

China has fallen in love with the car. Beijingers today enjoy better jobs and freer travel. More than 4 million of them — more than a quarter of the capital area’s 15 million people — now carry driver’s licenses. Their 2.7 million cars clog the capital’s arteries, according to the 2006 Beijing Road Safety Exhibition.

China is the world’s fastest-growing car market. Nationally, car sales leaped almost 50% to 1.8 million in the first half of 2006, the state Xinhua News Agency says. But the fallout is deadly: There were 99,000 auto-related fatalities last year, according to the Road Safety Exhibition. That made road accidents the No. 1 non-disease killer in the country, ahead of floods, fires and other disasters. China’s 1.3 billion people own just 2% of the world’s vehicles, but account for 15% of global traffic deaths, according to the Ministry of Communications.

Liu Xiaolei is unperturbed. “It will be easier to find a girlfriend if I can drive,” says the 18-year-old. “All Chinese girls now want boyfriends who can drive.”

To end his love drought, Liu has joined me and other beginners at Flourishing China Driving School in eastern Beijing. Most of the students here will emerge clutching their driver’s licenses in just six weeks — without ever having left the compound to drive on real roads, which are packed with China’s heedless, dare-to-die bicyclists and pedestrians. Hopefully, by then, this late starter will have a license, too.

My fellow students at Flourishing China are aghast: You’re a 37-year-old Westerner and you can’t drive?

The one person who does believe me is my instructor, Wang Junsheng, who as it happens is also a kung fu martial arts master from the home of flying fists, the famed Shaolin Temple in Henan province.

Wang, 27, says he would rather be teaching martial arts, but being a driving instructor pays better. “Get out!” he shouts frequently. So I exit the driver’s seat of our shiny Hyundai Elantra.

“This is how you do it,” Wang says, removing the brick he placed under the gas pedal to keep me from speeding.

In just 23 seconds, he screeches in and out of two parking spaces separated by slalom poles, this challenge being one of three on China’s standardized driving test. Beginners like me can take as long as we like to make the maneuver. We’re supposed to navigate the poles by using a scheme of colored dots placed on the rear window.

Many of China’s drivers are the first in their families to get behind the wheel. Ten years ago, Chinese learners practiced by driving on ordinary streets. When numbers boomed, the government corralled them at schools like Flourishing China, a huge plot with 175 training vehicles and mock hazards.

Student drivers pay $380 for a 58-hour course. First, though, they must pass a tough online “theory” test on the rules of the road. Thanks to Wang, I’m now at the final stage — the “road” test, which, thankfully, takes place on the grounds of the driving school and not amid the mayhem on real Chinese roads.

That’s the trouble, says red-faced taxi driver Zhang Chunqiu. “There are too many killers on the roads because people don’t learn (to drive) on real roads,” he says, swerving to avoid a cyclist who has stopped in the middle of an expressway to pick up plastic bottles.

Policeman Li says change is coming: Beijing will reintroduce genuine road tests at the end of the year. That will mean fewer accidents, he says — and more time for lunch.

37

Of course, everyone has their perception of what a Buddhist abbot is supposed to be like, but that’s generally based on a medieval ideal that doesn’t really apply to the modern world.

Not the least of which is of course the Buddhist community who looks to the abbot for spiritual guidance. It dosent’ send a particularly good message when the head of the seat of Zen/Chan for the entire world breaks the 8th grave precept that all monks of his order take:

“I vow to refrain from indulging in miserliness and action for material gain.”

But that’s just me. Maybe he intends to use his SUV for the benifit of all sentient beings.

38

So, if he drove a Corolla he would be more ‘enlightened’ in your view? :confused:

39

How enlightened is someone who vows to do one thing agreeing that it’s wrong, then goes back on his word and does it anyway?

But this issue isn’t really about enlightenment. It’s about the role of a priest. I couldn’t care less if a former Catholic Priest took a wife, but an active Catholic Priest is forbidden to do so. If the Pope decided to marry, it would be big news and would turn the entire Catholic community on it’s ear.

So why is it okay for the Abbot of Shaolin to drive an expensive car, but not the ‘lowlier’ monks, who all took vows against such things?

As a practicing Buddhist, I find such behavior offensive.

40

Here’s a little day in the life for a “well off” student of Shaolin, Anthony Graceffo, who has written several articles for KFM about his experiences:

While the other students have to live in crowded rooms with bunk beds, I have my own room. It is a 12 X 12 concrete box, devoid of any amenities apart from my steel frame bed. There is no box-springs or even a mattress. My blanket is simply laid out on a wooden plank. The house itself is just a concrete block with no comforts. We have no running water. Miao Ping helps me by having his little brother fill my water jug in the kitchen once a day. We are allotted one liter of drinking water per person, per day.

There is no shower or even a toilet. We have to take a bus into town to take a shower, once a week. As for the toilet, it is a smelly, snow-covered hole, a little too close to the kitchen for my tastes.

Our meals consist of vegetables, rice, and mantao, three times a day. There is never any tea or any beverage apart from our meager drinking water. I learned to drink the water quickly, because if you let it stand sediment would collect in the bottom and make it even more foul tasting.

If the students don’t even have clean drinking water, how can the Abbot justify driving a couple of sports cars?

Is this how we want Buddhism to be represented?