Last day in Kaohsiung!
We had our second day of class, which was more lecture based this time in order to prepare us for our visit to Foguangshan. Foguangshan is one of three major religious institutions in Taiwan, with global reach via their various business ventures. Prof. Young went into some more depth on core Buddhist beliefs and Prof. Chen spoke on how local Taiwanese people view and practice religion. We then read articles on Buddhist economics and discussed how religious institutions participate in the economy via businesses and investing in stocks. Many people have had positive experiences with such businesses before, but we agreed that there could be complications in the level of oversight and transparency that might be expected. Whether it’s counterintuitive for a Buddhist Institution to run a business remained to be seen during our visit.
Afterwards, Hanna, Jenn, Malli, Mikey, and I went to an all-you-can-eat Korean hotpot place. It was Mikey’s first hot pot experience, and I think it ended up being pretty good. They had all my favorite ingredients: pork, bean sprouts, enoki, and tteokbokki. We did get laughed at a little on our way out because I guess we did not eat enough for an all-you-can-eat.
We then took a bus ride through the country side to Foguangshan, the largest monastery in Southern Taiwan. We never stepped foot inside the monastery, but rather were given a tour of their adjoining museum on the opposite hill. Some people who go there will stay for a half day or overnight and experience life with the monks and nuns, but we had only about a few hours. When you first walk into the front building, it’s like walking into a mall. There’s a Starbucks and a few other cafés, as well as many shops with souvenirs of quality and priciness that varied from keychain charms to large, carved statues of Buddha. If you walk all the way through this crowded shopping area, you exit the building into a large pavilion lined with eight pagodas, the giant sitting Buddha rising above the end of the walkway.
Each pagoda serves a different purpose: the one we went into stored the calligraphy of Venerable Master Hsing Yun. As his eyesight began to fade, he took up writing with a technique called one stroke calligraphy that minimized the need to lift his brush from the paper. We watched a 3D movie describing his work and some of us also got to copy down one of his writings as a souvenir. It felt like a trip to a Disneyland museum rather than a Buddhist monastery at this point.
There are many treasures held in Foguangshan, particularly in the museum as it is most available for the public to come and view or worship. Apparently, Hsing Yun was gifted one of the Buddha’s tooth relics long ago and the museum was primarily built to house it. It is stored in an alcove above the Jade Buddha, which lays on its side in a representation of Buddha’s death. We had to take our shoes off and were not able to take photos inside this hall, as it was a place for quiet meditation.
After learning to meditate within the Jade Buddha hall, we went back outside to see the sitting Buddha up close. From that angle, I was able to better conceptualize all 108 meters of it. 108 is specified because that is the number of things one must overcome to reach enlightenment and also the number of beads on a set of prayer beads. They played chants/sutras from speakers all around the courtyard, which added an additional feeling of gravity when looking at the statue. It almost felt like I was in a movie. The sitting Buddha is surrounded by four pagodas representing the four great boddhisattvas. One of these boddhisattvas, the compassion bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, is also the deity Guanyin. Guanyin has a lot of influence in Taiwan, having changed genders and cultures after traveling from India to China and then again crossing the Taiwan Strait. It was interesting to see how not only this deity but also the Buddhist religion as a whole changed as it spread from India to other countries. I learned how before Buddhism reached China, it had a distinct form within places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
We also had the privilege of speaking with Venerable Miao Guang, who was the translator for Hsing Yun and is currently in charge of the translation department as a whole. Both she and the nun who took us on our tour were wonderful hosts who answered many of our burning questions. We learned how the both of them came to be nuns, and indeed it tends to be a lifelong process. Miao Guang mentioned that one of the main reasons she enjoys life as a nun is seeing how the value of Dharma brings faith, comfort, and joy to the people who come to Foguangshan. Amma asked a very specific question about a story from the Buddha’s life, and the answer was also very enlightening. I asked about the use of technology in the monastery, as I had a misconception in mind that it was somehow incompatible with an ascetic lifestyle. She said that it was necessary to use things like phones in order to keep up with society. They are even currently working on two AI chatbots: one to translate sutras into many different languages to increase accessibility and one that is being trained on the words and writings of Hsing Yun. Although not a theme for our course, I’ve noticed that AI has been coming up a lot throughout our visits. I was also interested to know more about the segregation of roles in the monastery since I’ve taken to noting more of the gender differences in religion. Miao Guang mentioned that the reason we saw so many more nuns in the museum than monks is because they actually outnumber the monks 3:1. It seems that women have increasingly moved into positions of religious authority and have received more visibility across all of Taiwan’s religious practices.
At night, we attended the Dragon Boat Festival! The whole river side was lined with food stalls and people selling souvenirs, and at one point they had a giant dragon floating over the water pulled by a boat. We came just in time for the races to start, and all took light bets on who would win. I included a video clip towards the end of the race. I bet on blue, which was the fastest out the gate, but at some point they ended up turning almost fully perpendicular to the path they were supposed to be going! I thought we were going to witness a boat crash, but instead I got to see my favored team finish dead last. I unfortunately did not get a chance to try the traditional Dragon Boat Festival food, zongzi, a.k.a. sticky rice dumplings wrapped in leaves. The origin story of the festival goes that a poet once stood up against a corrupt emperor and was banished for it, which then led to his suicide. The zongzi are intended to feed the fish in the river to keep them from feeding on his body. Quite a macabre story for such a happy occasion, but it explains why nobody really says “Happy Dragon Boat Festival Day!”.
Next up: back to Taipei!
