Tzu Chi ten precepts, number 10 precept: Do not participate in politics or demonstrations. All Tzu Chi members must bear it in mind.
关心时事亚洲佛教徒日益激进 袈裟多了政治色彩 - 陈青山（整理）
缅甸僧侣去年上街游行，抗议军政府独裁专政。泰国僧人及支持者前年参与推翻达信首相的政治运动。印度一个以佛教徒为后盾的地方政党正把势力扩展到全国，其领袖很可能成为印度总理。斯里兰卡一群狂热的僧伽罗僧侣组成的政党不断向政府施压，主张以暴制暴，将搞分离运动的淡米尔人赶尽杀绝。
在亚洲各地，佛教的势力正日益壮大、迅速扩展，并在政治上起着越来越重要的作用，僧侣甚至在一些国家扮演激进角色。许多人不禁纳闷，不明白出家人怎能这么关心世事。出家为僧就是要远离俗世，静心修行，怎么还卷入“肮脏”的政治？
但也有人认为，佛教在高度发展变化的社会中，应该直接面对人生以及人生的苦难，积极参与社会活动，以至社会改革，通过改善社会从而改善人生的质量，实现人间净土！
这个看来矛盾的现象，已引起当政者和学者的注意，最新一期《新闻周刊》有篇专文，探讨这个现象：
美国著名的鲍登学院宗教学教授霍特认为，佛教激进势力的兴起，是全球性宗教走向政治化的趋势之一。他虽然不赞同“佛教原教旨主义”的称呼，但无可否认的是，佛教的激化已有上升之势。
专家：佛教徒激增导致佛教激进势力兴起
佛教已存在2500年，但从来不与恐怖主义挂钩。如今一些信徒摆出激进强硬的态势，专家认为，这跟佛教徒人数激增不无关系。现在全球估计有3亿5000万教徒。学者估计单是中国就有1亿人，印度是佛祖诞生地，2001年只有800万佛教徒，但专家说现在已有3500万人信奉佛教；台湾2001年有550万信徒，2006年增至800万。（此外，佛教在亚洲复兴也为本地区国家复兴印度古代最高佛教学府所在地那烂陀（Nalanda）提供了最好的时机。）
信徒增加反映了几个因素，在中国和台湾，信徒增加反映了政治管制的放松。近年来，中国放宽对所有宗教信仰的限制，主要是因为文革时代被视为洪水猛兽的宗教价值观，如今反而被视为政府打造和谐社会的重要磐石。而亚洲社会越是富裕，人们越是精神空虚，佛教不重视物质生活的价值观，让新中产阶级产生共鸣。
马雅瓦迪获佛教徒支持被看好是未来印度总理人选
在印度，佛教被当成是挣脱阶层制度枷锁的一种途径，对属于社会最低层的广大贱民尤其有吸引力。在孟买举行的一次皈依仪式，人数竟达5000人之多。研究贱民的学者说，过去十年，已有超过百万名贱民改信佛教。来自马哈拉斯特拉邦的村民达斯说：“我不想一辈子连畜生都不如。”
在人口最密集的北方州（Uttar Pradesh），贱民支持的社会公民党（Bahujan Samaj Party)，去年让许多观察家摔破眼镜，夺得州议会403席中的206席。贱民出身的女党魁马雅瓦迪（Mayawati Kumari）出任首席部长，有人看好她将是未来的总理人选。她个人虽未皈依佛教，但生活起居都遵循佛教仪式。她也从不讳言佛教徒是她的势力后盾，她在北方州各地竖立佛教标志，包括花费2亿5000万美元，在佛祖涅槃之地库什纳加兴建一尊150公尺高的铜佛像。
马雅瓦迪为贱民争取权益，却也获得婆罗门阶层政治家的支持。她领导的新兴政治力量正在蚕食执政国大党的势力。她生日当天，连在中国访问的辛格总理也不忘打电话向她祝贺。北方州是印度国会中占席位最多的一州，印度总理大多来自该州。
斯里兰卡僧伽罗僧侣主张赶尽杀绝“淡游”
在斯里兰卡，僧伽罗僧侣在国家传统党（Jathika Hela Urumaya Party，简称JHU）的旗帜下参政。虽然他们在225席的国会中只占9席，但影响力非比寻常。去年，该党加入拉贾帕克萨总统的执政联盟。党内一些极端沙文主义的僧伽罗僧侣，公开批评政府对淡米尔分离主义分子（简称“淡游”）过于宽容。
国家传统党违反佛教慈悲为怀的传统，主张对“淡游”赶尽杀绝，并迫使政府背弃国际斡旋的停火安排。它推动立法，阻止外来基督教传教团招募信徒；它也反对把外国援助2004年海啸灾民的善款，同分离主义分子控制区内的灾民分享。
示威游行并自行武装泰国佛教徒政治化
在泰国，法律禁止僧人参政；然而，由军人出身，担任过曼谷市长的占龙领导、号称正义之师的“达摩大军”（The Dharma Army）同一个称为“善地阿索”（Santi Asoke）的小教派联手，在国家政治中发挥重大影响力，并在前年组织街头示威，把达信拉下台。
同样的，其他佛教组织去年游行到国会，要求政府在新宪法草案中把佛教列为国教。在回教分离主义恐怖活动猖獗的泰国南部，佛教徒已自行武装，成立半军事化的“自卫团”，并以佛寺为训练场。数约7000人的志愿团员操练时虽然只用棍子，但熟悉内情的专家说，政府去年夏季向俄罗斯购买了大批散弹枪，分发给他们。
宣扬慈悲与和平‘人间佛教’强调非暴力
幸好不是所有亚洲佛教徒活动分子都忘记佛祖宣扬慈悲与和平的教诲。越南一行禅师（Thich Nhat Hanh）创办的“人间佛教”运动（Engaged Buddhism，也称“入世佛教”或“参与佛教”）便是例子。
“人间佛教”运动强调非暴力和社会行动，并努力促进区域宗教容忍。它在斯里兰卡的活动最引人注目，当地萨佛陀耶团体（Sarvodaya Shramadana）的成员经常召集不同宗教信徒举行反战示威。据詹姆士麦迪森大学宗教与哲学教授莎莉金说，它也协助1万5000个社区修筑道路，开拓干净水源和设立幼儿园。
“慈济”不过问政治
“人间佛教”运动在台湾形成一股非常强大的力量，慈济佛教基金会（简称“慈济”）等佛教组织应运而起。单是“慈济”在全球就有1000万信徒。“慈济”不过问政治，但通过本身的电视台与出版物，提倡普渡众生的生活方式。今天，“慈济”已被公认为亚洲地区最有效率的赈济组织之一，它的义工曾参与2004年南亚海啸和2005年新奥尔良风灾的救灾工作。
“慈济”不过问政治的原则让它得到北京的默许，把活动扩大到中国；它在穷困的内地如贵州省办学办医甚至修建整个村庄，获得好评。(据知，中国当局已在上月底宣布正式批准“慈济”在大陆成立基金会。这是一个重要决定，因为它是在观察了该会多年来在中国各地的赈灾和慈善活动而觉得非常放心之后，第一次让一个非大陆人领导的民间基金会成立。）
不过，随着其他地区佛教运动走向政治化，信徒的增加难免变成一股让亚洲地区政府操心的政治势力。例如这个月是西藏反抗中国统治起义失败49周年，数以百计的西藏佛教徒打算趁奥运来临，从印度北部西藏流亡政府政治中心达兰萨拉游行到西藏的拉萨。
台湾玄奘大学宗教学教授释昭慧是“关怀生命协会”的创办人，该会协助推动了保护动物的立法，并参与反对堕胎和反对在台设立赌场的运动。释昭慧说：“我们支持个别课题，而非个别政治人物或政党。”
然而，越来越多佛教徒显然相信他们的伟大导师要他们敢于发言，敢于发起运动甚至敢于为他们的权利而斗争。而随着佛教徒激增和势力日益壮大，有朝一日，连强大的中国政府恐怕也挡不住他们。
Throughout Asia, Buddhism is growing fast, playing an increasingly political—and, in some spots, militant—role - Christian Caryl
In recent years, massive groups of fervent believers have taken to the streets of Asia with angry political demands. They've railed against government corruption, condemned the onslaught of Western values and decried the erosion of traditional morals. Having built an extensive network of grass-roots aid groups, their numbers are exploding. Some have even picked up arms to defend their beliefs. Sound familiar? It should—only the faithful in question aren't Islamic fundamentalists or conservative Christians. They're Buddhists: members of what used to be Asia's quietest religion, one usually associated with pacifism and contemplation.
No more. In this era of religious fervor, an Asia-wide resurgence of Buddhism is spawning activistsand increasingly assertive political movements, some of which even act like fundamentalists ofother faiths. True, many Buddhist groups, like Taiwan's massive Tzu Chi movement, still practice nonviolence and antimaterialism; indeed, this meditative side is helping Buddhism make inroads among alienated urban professionals in India, China and elsewhere.
But other organizations are now wading straight into the rough-and-tumble of everyday politics, suggesting last year's monk-led protests in Burma weren't an anomaly. In Thailand, an ultraconservative Buddhist faction helped topple Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. In India, the populist leader of a rapidly expanding Buddhist-supported party is now being touted as a future prime minister. And in the most dramatic cases, some Buddhists have even begun advocating violence—such as Sri Lanka's fiercely nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) party—or have started picking up guns themselves, as in southern Thailand.
The rise of this more activist form of Buddhism "is an instance of the wider politicization of religion worldwide," says Jim Holt, a religion professor at Bowdoin College. "I don't like the term 'Buddhist fundamentalism,' but there certainly is a militancy showing up."
Buddhism, which emphasizes detachment from worldly desires and compassion for all living beings, has been around for 2,500 years and has an estimated 350 million followers worldwide. Buddhists have yet to turn to terrorism—perhaps due to the religion's injunctions against violence. Still, many Buddhists are adopting a tough-minded new profile, which can be explained in part by their numbers. The religion is growing fast. Though it's hard to nail down exact figures, scholars say there are now some 100 million Buddhists in China alone. In India, the birthplace of Buddha, there were only 8 million in 2001, but experts now set the total at 35 million. And in Taiwan, the number of Buddhists grew from 5.5 million in 2001 to 8 million in 2006.
The boom reflects several factors. In China and Taiwan, the growth of the faithful reflects the loosening of political control. In recent years, Beijing has significantly eased restrictions on all the country's faiths, not least because religious values (once attacked during the Cultural Revolution) are now viewed as a vital bulwark of the "harmonious society" touted by the government. Meanwhile, as Asian societies grow richer, Buddhism's powerful critique of materialism is resonating among the new middle classes. Akash Suri, for instance, is a 25-year-old banker in New Delhi who once lived a lavish lifestyle, splurging on clothes, restaurants and expensive holidays. But a couple of years ago he began thinking "that all this fancy lifestyle was not making me happy. Instead there was anxiety and stress." Buddhism and meditation calmed him.
Buddhism offers Indians another powerful incentive: a way out of the country's oppressive caste system. This appeals especially to the vast number (approximately 170 million) of Dalits, or Untouchables. Last year, for instance, Hukum Das, a 22-year-old villager from the state of Maharashtra, joined 5,000 people in a mass conversion ceremony in Mumbai. "I don't want to betreated like an animal anymore," he says. Dalit scholars say more than a million Dalits have converted in the last decade.
These growing numbers are translating into political power regionwide. That's made Beijing, for one, deeply nervous. This month, for example, on the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, hundreds of Tibetan Buddhists plan to march from the Indian town of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, to Lhasa, Tibet's capital—one of a series of protests linked to the upcoming Olympics.
Buddhism's growth could also translate to other, longer-term challenges to Communist Party rule. Experts on Chinese Buddhism say that more and more believers are converting to the Tibetan variety or worshiping with itinerant spiritual instructors at home, outside of government-approved temples—and outside government control. Many of these "living Buddhas," says Gareth Fisher of the University of Richmond, frequently criticize the ills of present-day Chinese society, including politically sensitive topics like corruption or environmental despoliation.
In India, meanwhile, resurgent Buddhist movements have begun entering politics directly. Udit Raj, a Dalit who converted to Buddhism seven years ago and founded a political party, says, "Dalits must liberate themselves from the shackles of their oppressed past. Buddhism is the path to liberation." Many of his fellow caste members agree and have gravitated toward the Bahujan Samaj Party, which now controls Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state. The BSP's populist Dalit leader, Mayawati Kumari, who follows Buddhist practices in her everyday life (though she hasn't converted) shocked observers last year when she helped her party win 206 seats in the 403-member state assembly; since then, she's started to be touted as a potential prime minister. Mayawati has made it clear where her support lies, encouraging ambitious plans to erect Buddhist landmarks throughout Uttar Pradesh—including a 150-meter-long, $250 million bronze Buddha at Kushinagar, where the historical Buddha died.
That sort of direct political participation is also evident elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, where the Buddhist Sinhalese majority has been fighting an on-and-off civil war against the island's Hindu Tamil minority since 1983, Buddhist monks have served in Parliament under the banner of the ultranationalist JHU party. So far, the JHU's numbers are small—it holds only nine seats out of 225—but that belies its influence. The party joined the governing coalition of President Mahinda Rajapaksa last year, and has attracted Sri Lanka's most chauvinistic Sinhalese, who accuse the government of being too accommodating toward the Tamil separatists.
Defying Buddhist traditions of tolerance, the JHU has supported a full-fledged military crackdown on Tamil fighters and has pushed the government to back away from an internationally mediated ceasefire. The JHU has also pushed for controversial laws to prevent proselytizing by foreign Christian missionaries and agitated against sharing foreign aid for the 2004 tsunami with the rebels.
This pugnacious side of Buddhism has manifested itself in Thailand, too, where well over 90 percent of the country's 62 million people are Buddhist. Thai monks are barred from serving as legislators, but a group called the Dharma Army, associated with a small Buddhist sect called Santi Asoke, already plays a key role in national politics, and helped bring down Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra during massive street demonstrations two years ago.
The Dharma Army is led by Chamlong Srimuang, a charismatic ex-general and former Bangkok mayor who has turned the ascetic group (its members abstain from sex and eat only one meal per day) into a disciplined and highly vocal organization that attacks political malfeasance and corruption in the state-supported clerical establishment. The group opposed Thaksin for his alleged corruption and abuses of power, and, according to Zachary Abuza, professor of political science at Simmons College in Boston, lent critical support to the oligarchy and the military when they moved against him. The Dharma Army "really hate what Thaksin stands for," he says—namely a populist threat to the country's traditional hierarchy.
It was similar sentiment that drove last year's campaign by a number of other Buddhist factions to ave Buddhism enshrined as the state religion. These org-anizations claim such a move is necessary to preserve Thailand's character and prevent the encroachment of foreign mores. "The Thai people just copy Western culture," says university professor and Buddhist activist Dhirawit Pinyonatthagarn. "Our values are under threat." But the change would have enraged the country's 5 million Muslims. Though it ultimately failed after Thailand's revered royal family intervened, groups like the Buddhism Network of Thailand (an umbrella organization) and the Buddhism Protection Center easily mustered tens of thousands of protesters to push for the change. Experts say the issue is almost certain to flare up again.
Meanwhile, in the country's south—where a Muslim insurgency has been raging for four years—many Thai Buddhists have taken matters into their own hands, forming paramilitary "self-defense groups" with the government's help. These groups are nominally nonsectarian, but they contain few if any Muslim members, and they often use Buddhist temples as training grounds. Many of the 7,000 volunteers drill using sticks instead of guns, but one expert (who didn't want to be identified to avoid compromising sources) says that the Thai government purchased a large number of shotguns from Russia last summer to arm them.
Not all of Asia's newly activist Buddhists have forgotten the Enlightened One's teachings about pacifism. A striking example is the Engaged Buddhism movement, which was founded in the 1960s by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who became an activist during the Vietnam War and was ultimately exiled to France by his country's communist rulers. He's since returned to his homeland twice, in 2005 and 2007; on both occasions his countrymen received him like a conquering hero. The movement, which emphasizes nonviolence and social action, has persistently lobbied for religious tolerance throughout the region—most strikingly in Sri Lanka, where members of the local Sarvodaya Shramadana organization hold regular, nonsectarian antiwar demonstrations. The group has also helped 15,000 communities build roads, find clean water and run preschools, says Sallie King, a religion and philosophy professor at James Madison University.
Engaged Buddhism has spawned a particularly powerful movement in Taiwan, where Tzu Chi and similar groups have bloomed in recent decades. Spurred by a larger Buddhist renaissance in Taiwan, Tzu Chi now claims 10 million followers worldwide. Founded by a Buddhist nun in 1966, Tzu Chi tries to steer clear of politics—yet it doesn't hide its light under a bushel, and has used its TV station and publications to promote a more altruistic vision of Taiwanese life. Today, Tzu Chi is considered one of the most effective aid agencies in the region. Its relief workers—known as "blue angels" for their distinctive uniforms—helped tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and Indonesia in 2004 and did aid work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Tzu Chi's apolitical bent has allowed the group to expand its activities onto the Chinese mainland—with Beijing's blessing. The group has built schools, nursing homes and entire villages in poor inland areas like Guizhou province. Yet given the growing politicization of Buddhism elsewhere, there's no guarantee that China will continue to tolerate Tzu Chi's activities.
Especially since Buddhists are becoming more overtly political—even in Taiwan. Shih Chao-hwei, a 50-year-old religious-studies professor at Hsuan Chuang University, founded a group called the Life Conservation Association in 1993; it has since helped to pass a law protecting animal rights, and campaigns against abortion and against a move to establish casinos on the island. "We support issues, [not] specific politicians or parties," she says. Increasingly, it seems, more and more Buddhists believe their Teacher wants them to speak out, to organize, even to fight for their rights. As their numbers grow, there may come a day when even the mighty Chinese government can no longer keep them down.
NEWSWEEK - Mar 1, 2008
No more. In this era of religious fervor, an Asia-wide resurgence of Buddhism is spawning activistsand increasingly assertive political movements, some of which even act like fundamentalists ofother faiths. True, many Buddhist groups, like Taiwan's massive Tzu Chi movement, still practice nonviolence and antimaterialism; indeed, this meditative side is helping Buddhism make inroads among alienated urban professionals in India, China and elsewhere.
But other organizations are now wading straight into the rough-and-tumble of everyday politics, suggesting last year's monk-led protests in Burma weren't an anomaly. In Thailand, an ultraconservative Buddhist faction helped topple Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. In India, the populist leader of a rapidly expanding Buddhist-supported party is now being touted as a future prime minister. And in the most dramatic cases, some Buddhists have even begun advocating violence—such as Sri Lanka's fiercely nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) party—or have started picking up guns themselves, as in southern Thailand.
The rise of this more activist form of Buddhism "is an instance of the wider politicization of religion worldwide," says Jim Holt, a religion professor at Bowdoin College. "I don't like the term 'Buddhist fundamentalism,' but there certainly is a militancy showing up."
Buddhism, which emphasizes detachment from worldly desires and compassion for all living beings, has been around for 2,500 years and has an estimated 350 million followers worldwide. Buddhists have yet to turn to terrorism—perhaps due to the religion's injunctions against violence. Still, many Buddhists are adopting a tough-minded new profile, which can be explained in part by their numbers. The religion is growing fast. Though it's hard to nail down exact figures, scholars say there are now some 100 million Buddhists in China alone. In India, the birthplace of Buddha, there were only 8 million in 2001, but experts now set the total at 35 million. And in Taiwan, the number of Buddhists grew from 5.5 million in 2001 to 8 million in 2006.
The boom reflects several factors. In China and Taiwan, the growth of the faithful reflects the loosening of political control. In recent years, Beijing has significantly eased restrictions on all the country's faiths, not least because religious values (once attacked during the Cultural Revolution) are now viewed as a vital bulwark of the "harmonious society" touted by the government. Meanwhile, as Asian societies grow richer, Buddhism's powerful critique of materialism is resonating among the new middle classes. Akash Suri, for instance, is a 25-year-old banker in New Delhi who once lived a lavish lifestyle, splurging on clothes, restaurants and expensive holidays. But a couple of years ago he began thinking "that all this fancy lifestyle was not making me happy. Instead there was anxiety and stress." Buddhism and meditation calmed him.
Buddhism offers Indians another powerful incentive: a way out of the country's oppressive caste system. This appeals especially to the vast number (approximately 170 million) of Dalits, or Untouchables. Last year, for instance, Hukum Das, a 22-year-old villager from the state of Maharashtra, joined 5,000 people in a mass conversion ceremony in Mumbai. "I don't want to betreated like an animal anymore," he says. Dalit scholars say more than a million Dalits have converted in the last decade.
These growing numbers are translating into political power regionwide. That's made Beijing, for one, deeply nervous. This month, for example, on the 49th anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule, hundreds of Tibetan Buddhists plan to march from the Indian town of Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile, to Lhasa, Tibet's capital—one of a series of protests linked to the upcoming Olympics.
Buddhism's growth could also translate to other, longer-term challenges to Communist Party rule. Experts on Chinese Buddhism say that more and more believers are converting to the Tibetan variety or worshiping with itinerant spiritual instructors at home, outside of government-approved temples—and outside government control. Many of these "living Buddhas," says Gareth Fisher of the University of Richmond, frequently criticize the ills of present-day Chinese society, including politically sensitive topics like corruption or environmental despoliation.
In India, meanwhile, resurgent Buddhist movements have begun entering politics directly. Udit Raj, a Dalit who converted to Buddhism seven years ago and founded a political party, says, "Dalits must liberate themselves from the shackles of their oppressed past. Buddhism is the path to liberation." Many of his fellow caste members agree and have gravitated toward the Bahujan Samaj Party, which now controls Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state. The BSP's populist Dalit leader, Mayawati Kumari, who follows Buddhist practices in her everyday life (though she hasn't converted) shocked observers last year when she helped her party win 206 seats in the 403-member state assembly; since then, she's started to be touted as a potential prime minister. Mayawati has made it clear where her support lies, encouraging ambitious plans to erect Buddhist landmarks throughout Uttar Pradesh—including a 150-meter-long, $250 million bronze Buddha at Kushinagar, where the historical Buddha died.
That sort of direct political participation is also evident elsewhere. In Sri Lanka, where the Buddhist Sinhalese majority has been fighting an on-and-off civil war against the island's Hindu Tamil minority since 1983, Buddhist monks have served in Parliament under the banner of the ultranationalist JHU party. So far, the JHU's numbers are small—it holds only nine seats out of 225—but that belies its influence. The party joined the governing coalition of President Mahinda Rajapaksa last year, and has attracted Sri Lanka's most chauvinistic Sinhalese, who accuse the government of being too accommodating toward the Tamil separatists.
Defying Buddhist traditions of tolerance, the JHU has supported a full-fledged military crackdown on Tamil fighters and has pushed the government to back away from an internationally mediated ceasefire. The JHU has also pushed for controversial laws to prevent proselytizing by foreign Christian missionaries and agitated against sharing foreign aid for the 2004 tsunami with the rebels.
This pugnacious side of Buddhism has manifested itself in Thailand, too, where well over 90 percent of the country's 62 million people are Buddhist. Thai monks are barred from serving as legislators, but a group called the Dharma Army, associated with a small Buddhist sect called Santi Asoke, already plays a key role in national politics, and helped bring down Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra during massive street demonstrations two years ago.
The Dharma Army is led by Chamlong Srimuang, a charismatic ex-general and former Bangkok mayor who has turned the ascetic group (its members abstain from sex and eat only one meal per day) into a disciplined and highly vocal organization that attacks political malfeasance and corruption in the state-supported clerical establishment. The group opposed Thaksin for his alleged corruption and abuses of power, and, according to Zachary Abuza, professor of political science at Simmons College in Boston, lent critical support to the oligarchy and the military when they moved against him. The Dharma Army "really hate what Thaksin stands for," he says—namely a populist threat to the country's traditional hierarchy.
It was similar sentiment that drove last year's campaign by a number of other Buddhist factions to ave Buddhism enshrined as the state religion. These org-anizations claim such a move is necessary to preserve Thailand's character and prevent the encroachment of foreign mores. "The Thai people just copy Western culture," says university professor and Buddhist activist Dhirawit Pinyonatthagarn. "Our values are under threat." But the change would have enraged the country's 5 million Muslims. Though it ultimately failed after Thailand's revered royal family intervened, groups like the Buddhism Network of Thailand (an umbrella organization) and the Buddhism Protection Center easily mustered tens of thousands of protesters to push for the change. Experts say the issue is almost certain to flare up again.
Meanwhile, in the country's south—where a Muslim insurgency has been raging for four years—many Thai Buddhists have taken matters into their own hands, forming paramilitary "self-defense groups" with the government's help. These groups are nominally nonsectarian, but they contain few if any Muslim members, and they often use Buddhist temples as training grounds. Many of the 7,000 volunteers drill using sticks instead of guns, but one expert (who didn't want to be identified to avoid compromising sources) says that the Thai government purchased a large number of shotguns from Russia last summer to arm them.
Not all of Asia's newly activist Buddhists have forgotten the Enlightened One's teachings about pacifism. A striking example is the Engaged Buddhism movement, which was founded in the 1960s by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese monk who became an activist during the Vietnam War and was ultimately exiled to France by his country's communist rulers. He's since returned to his homeland twice, in 2005 and 2007; on both occasions his countrymen received him like a conquering hero. The movement, which emphasizes nonviolence and social action, has persistently lobbied for religious tolerance throughout the region—most strikingly in Sri Lanka, where members of the local Sarvodaya Shramadana organization hold regular, nonsectarian antiwar demonstrations. The group has also helped 15,000 communities build roads, find clean water and run preschools, says Sallie King, a religion and philosophy professor at James Madison University.
Engaged Buddhism has spawned a particularly powerful movement in Taiwan, where Tzu Chi and similar groups have bloomed in recent decades. Spurred by a larger Buddhist renaissance in Taiwan, Tzu Chi now claims 10 million followers worldwide. Founded by a Buddhist nun in 1966, Tzu Chi tries to steer clear of politics—yet it doesn't hide its light under a bushel, and has used its TV station and publications to promote a more altruistic vision of Taiwanese life. Today, Tzu Chi is considered one of the most effective aid agencies in the region. Its relief workers—known as "blue angels" for their distinctive uniforms—helped tsunami victims in Sri Lanka and Indonesia in 2004 and did aid work in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Tzu Chi's apolitical bent has allowed the group to expand its activities onto the Chinese mainland—with Beijing's blessing. The group has built schools, nursing homes and entire villages in poor inland areas like Guizhou province. Yet given the growing politicization of Buddhism elsewhere, there's no guarantee that China will continue to tolerate Tzu Chi's activities.
Especially since Buddhists are becoming more overtly political—even in Taiwan. Shih Chao-hwei, a 50-year-old religious-studies professor at Hsuan Chuang University, founded a group called the Life Conservation Association in 1993; it has since helped to pass a law protecting animal rights, and campaigns against abortion and against a move to establish casinos on the island. "We support issues, [not] specific politicians or parties," she says. Increasingly, it seems, more and more Buddhists believe their Teacher wants them to speak out, to organize, even to fight for their rights. As their numbers grow, there may come a day when even the mighty Chinese government can no longer keep them down.
NEWSWEEK - Mar 1, 2008
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