佛说阿弥陀经 - The Sūtra of Amitābha Buddha

 

佛经动画 - 佛说阿弥陀经《上集》

 

佛说阿弥陀经

http://www.drbachinese.org/online_reading_simplified/sutra_explanation/Amitabha/AmitabhaSutra.htm

 

Buddha Pronounces the Sūtra of Amitābha Buddha

https://www.sutrasmantras.info/sutra23.html

 

地藏菩薩的故事 The Story of Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva

地藏菩薩的故事 - The Story of Kshitigarbha Bodhisattva

 

Sutra of the Past Vows of Earth Store Bodhisattva

http://www.buddhasutra.com/files/ksitigarbha_sutra.htm

Shaolin monastery - Tales of a “CEO monk” obscure the business of faith in China

Shaolin is the cradle of kung-fu and Zen Buddhism. Under its abbot it has opened international branches and made plans to list on the stockmarket

 

DENGFENG

FOR NEARLY two hours the monks sit folded in the lotus position, motionless and silent. All are robed in grey apart from the cherubic man in saffron, their leader. When the last joss-stick burns down, he glides out of the room without a word, later offering a brief explanation of the meditation: “True wisdom emerges not from a calculating mind but from the wellspring of your heart.” It is the kind of line that might appear on a motivational poster. Voiced by this man, Shi Yongxin, the words sound heavier, weighed down by scandal.

Mr Shi is abbot of Shaolin Monastery, one of the world’s best-known Buddhist shrines. Tourists flock there to see its warrior monks, impossibly flexible young men who fell imaginary foes with flying kicks beneath the craggy peaks of Mount Song. Founded 1,500 years ago, it is the cradle of kung fu and Zen Buddhism. But in recent years it has had more infamy than honour. Mr Shi has been criticised for transforming hallowed ground into a crass business venture. “CEO monk” is his moniker, appearing in headlines again and again. Who could resist it? Under Mr Shi, a monk with an MBA, the monastery has expanded abroad and made plans to list on the stockmarket.

In 2015 the extent of his hypocrisy seemed to be revealed. Police opened an investigation after an accuser claimed that Mr Shi had enriched himself and violated his vows of celibacy. It was easy to dismiss the abbot as a sham, a venal man cloaked in religious garb. But Buddhist parables are rarely so straightforward.

Five years on, Mr Shi is still at Shaolin, cleared of all charges. He lives in a windowless room in its centre, looking less like a cunning mastermind than a quiet man of faith—one who may have renounced earthly desires but remains at the mercy of earthly forces. Religious institutions everywhere must negotiate between the articles of their belief and the realities of the world. In China that negotiation can get especially fraught.

When Mr Shi arrived at Shaolin at the age of 16, life there was much harsher. It was 1981, not long after the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong had suppressed Buddhism and Red Guards had destroyed temples. Mr Shi found it in partial ruin. Just 20 monks lived there, subsisting on two steamed buns a day. Soon he had established himself as a lieutenant to its aged, nearly blind abbot. They trekked to government offices in Dengfeng, the monastery’s home county, seeking permission to rebuild temple halls, to perform Buddhist rites and, crucially, to sell tickets.

In a remarkable twist of karma, Shaolin became a hot destination. In 1982 “Shaolin Temple”, Jet Li’s debut, hit the cinemas, depicting a foundational story: how 13 monks, supposedly skilled in kung fu, saved a future Tang dynasty emperor in battle. The monastery went from 50,000 visitors a year to 2m in 1984.

Kung fu is just one aspect of Shaolin—a physical discipline that accompanies chanting and meditation—but easily the most distinctive. Tales of its warrior monks have been popular since the 16th century. Knowing that kung fu was Shaolin’s best hope for appealing to secular society, Mr Shi helped create a performing troupe in 1987.

From the outset, cross-cutting interests complicated matters. The main conflict was between the monks and the Dengfeng officials. For the monks, tourism was a financial lifeline to restore their monastery. For the officials, overseeing a poor county with half a million people, it was a kick-start for development. They squabbled over ticket sales. When the monks sold tickets at the temple’s entrance, the officials erected a new gate 1km up the road, controlling access.

Shaolin also became a magnet for profiteers. People flooded in from nearby villages to open guesthouses, shops and karaoke parlours outside its walls. In the 1990s the streets around it turned into a small city, with 20,000 residents. Dozens of kung fu schools, claiming to be the heirs of its fighting tradition, sprung up. Companies around China used the monastery for branding: with “Shaolin” cigarettes, cars and, most gallingly for the vegetarian monks, ham and beer. “We did not seek commercialisation. It was thrust upon us,” says Mr Shi.

He sought advice from officials in Henan, Shaolin’s province, about how to safeguard the monastery’s image. The only answer, they concluded, was for Shaolin to lay claim to its name. In 1998 it established the Henan Shaolin Industrial Development Co as a vehicle to file for trademarks—for tea, furniture, hardware and more. Today, Shaolin owns nearly 700 trademarks.

Having swatted away the impostors, Shaolin emulated some of their techniques. The monastery produced a kung fu teaching mobile app, backed a fighting-monk movie and launched a line of traditional Chinese medicine. Mr Shi also joined a dozen monks on a short MBA, a publicly funded course to hone their managerial skills. To its detractors Shaolin embodied the worst of modern China, an ancient religious order debased on the altar of riches. For Mr Shi the logic was—and remains—undeniable. “This is how to make Buddhism relevant.” If the pope can televise daily mass, why can’t a Shaolin monk seek publicity?

Karmic cycle

For a time Mr Shi was riding high. He was officially named abbot in 1999. The monastery grew to more than 200 monks. He worked out an agreement with Dengfeng county: 70% of ticket sales to the government, the rest to the monastery. Officials razed the streets around the temple, relocating the residents in town—a move that solidified Shaolin’s bid for UNESCO world-heritage status, obtained in 2010. Shaolin became a weapon in China’s soft-power arsenal. Mr Shi met Queen Elizabeth and Nelson Mandela. He was also skilled at aligning the monastery with the Communist Party. He made the case that Shaolin was not a religious threat but the government’s humble servant, promoting Chinese culture. From 1998 to 2018 he was a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the first representative of China’s Buddhists in the rubber-stamp legislature.

Yet trouble was brewing. Dengfeng county officials wanted greater economic dividends from Shaolin. In 2009 they formed a joint venture with China National Travel Service (CNTS), a big state-owned company. Dengfeng would inject its share of Shaolin ticket revenues into the venture; CNTS would invest in local tourism infrastructure. Pointedly, the abbot did not show up at the company’s inauguration ceremony. Word soon spread that Shaolin wanted to list on the stockmarket, raising as much as 1bn yuan ($150m). Media reported it as another extravagant example of the abbot’s worship of mammon. There was just one problem: he was adamantly opposed, fearing it would make Shaolin a for-profit business. He asked questions that reached Beijing. Wen Jiabao, then China’s prime minister, quashed the listing, saying it would harm Shaolin’s identity.

The Dengfeng officials were furious. They saw Mr Shi as “a monk who won’t obey authority”, according to one intermediary. They started building a rival temple, to lessen their reliance on Shaolin. In May 2015 national authorities halted the project over concerns that it might damage the area’s cultural heritage. Local media reported that it was the abbot who had again foiled the plans, though he denied that. Three months later, salacious accusations surfaced online. They were posted by “Shi Zhengyi”, a self-described Shaolin monk whose pseudonym meant “justice”. He accused the abbot of raping a businesswoman, having two children and embezzling millions.

The Henan government investigated Mr Shi but in 2017 exonerated him of all the main accusations. Evidence in the public domain had always been thin. Paternity tests revealed that neither child was Mr Shi’s. Being China, though, doubts persisted about the investigation’s credibility. Perhaps the abbot had mighty backers. Or perhaps China did not want to sully Shaolin’s image. Yet those doubts were hard to square with the government’s zest for corruption prosecutions in recent years. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has repeatedly shown that he believes that institutions matter more than any person (with the notable exception of himself). Surely, the same logic could apply to Shaolin.

With the abbot’s name officially cleared, the obvious question was whether someone had framed him. Local police told him that they had identified suspects and asked whether they should pursue them. It was as if they were looking for his blessing to let the conspirators off the hook. Mr Shi obliged. “What could I do as a monk? So long as I’m fine, I hope everyone is fine.”

For all the controversy about Shaolin, its most striking feature is its smallness. On an autumn afternoon, yellow leaves swirling around, a woman prostrates herself outside its gate, howling inconsolably. Inside, several buildings have warped roofs. The monks urinate in an open trough before entering the Chan Temple, its holiest site. “Jing’an [a gold-trimmed temple in Shanghai] is worth ten Shaolins,” says one.

And for all the headlines about Mr Shi’s business acumen, there exist many examples of his restrained, even naïve, approach to commerce. Shaolin’s most notorious project was a $300m temple-and-hotel complex in Australia, including a 27-hole golf course. Mr Shi had thought the temple would bring Shaolin more followers. Instead, the golf plans—pushed, the abbot says, by local partners—brought scorn. Moreover, Shaolin never had the money to complete the project. It lent its name and seed funds, trusting its partners to raise the rest. Construction has yet to start.

There is money to be made in all the kung fu schools near Shaolin. One has more than 30,000 students. But Shaolin has no involvement in the big schools. They offer no Buddhism instruction and their graduates go on to serve in the armed forces or as bodyguards. Some members of the much smaller Shaolin fighting troupe have left to found their own schools. Mr Shi has limited sway over them. Occasionally he asks for donations—more supplicant than master.

CNTS put its stake up for sale in October. It has lost money on Shaolin this year, with tourism hurt by the pandemic. But a dearth of bidders so far points to a deeper reason for the sale: the abbot has outmanoeuvred the investors. He has also read the changing political winds in Xi Jinping’s China. In 2018, for the first time in its history, monks raised the national flag over Shaolin. At the ceremony Mr Shi pledged to do more to fuse Buddhism and Chinese culture, a message perfectly aligned with Mr Xi’s prescriptions for religion.

At lunch the monks gather in a hall, sitting in neat rows. Mr Shi is alone on a raised platform, with a painting of a lion, jaws agape, on the wall behind him. For a second or two he looks fearsome. Then young monks come by with pots of rice and vegetable stew, slopping some into his bowl. Head down, he eats silently and quickly. In the afternoon a line-up of locals want to see him, to discuss personal problems and matters of faith. Some bring sweet potatoes as gifts; others apples or tea. Visitor numbers may be down, but those entering the monastery are, the abbot says, more serious about their Buddhism. “This is what we want to see.” ■

This article appeared in the Christmas Specials section of the print edition under the headline "The profession of renunciation"

 

https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2020/12/19/tales-of-a-ceo-monk-obscure-the-business-of-faith-in-china 

Buddhism and business - Zen and the art of moneymaking

Local officials make a packet from a religion of self-denial 

 

SANYA 

THE white steel lady overlooking the South China Sea has three heads, three bodies and toenails bigger than human heads. Guanyin, the Buddhist goddess of mercy, stands atop a temple on a man-made islet, each of her heads facing a different way. Her public-relations staff call the six-year task of putting her there, in the resort town of Sanya on tropical Hainan island, “the number one statue-project in China”. The structure’s height, at 108 metres, was intended to be auspicious: Buddhists consider the number sacred.

Good fortune was certainly on the minds of local officials when they approved the project, in which the local government has a share. It was intended to be a money-spinner. It costs 60 yuan ($9.66) just to get in the lift that whisks visitors up to pray at those giant feet. That is on top of 126 yuan to enter the Nanshan Cultural Tourism Zone with its Auspicious Garden, Temple of 33 Guanyins and colourful Dharma Door of Non-Duality with its 94,000 portals. Guanyin is clearly not intended as a magnet for the faithful who have given up worldly possessions. Visitors are gouged without compassion, even having to pay for tassels “blessed” by souvenir salespeople. Gift stores are everywhere, selling knick-knacks such as prayer beads and Buddhist statuary. For visitors who want to sleep in the presence of Guanyin, a room at the site’s hotel can cost more than $280.

Cheni Foo, a tourist from Copenhagen, surveys the goddess from a boardwalk connecting the islet with the shore. She wrinkles her nose and says she has seen enough. “For me, it’s a little bit too fake. It’s built for the purpose of tourists.” Ms Foo is right. Buddhism is big business in China. In the 1980s the government, which once preached the evils of faith in anything but the Communist Party, began loosening restrictions on the building or restoration of temples—most of which had been damaged or destroyed by Maoist mobs during the Cultural Revolution. New shrines sprang up everywhere, most of them small and discreet. In recent years, however, domestic tourism has boomed, as has curiosity about once-banned religions. Local officials have smelled a moneymaking opportunity.

In 2008 China completed what was described as the world’s biggest statue—the 128-metre Spring Temple Buddha in the central province of Henan. The company that built Hong Kong’s 34-metre-tall Tian Tan Buddha on Lantau Island and Sanya’s Guanyin has been working on erecting ten more mega-Buddhas around the country. The government in Gansu province, in the north-west, hopes to create a theme park linking the historic Mogao Caves in Dunhuang (home to remarkably unscathed thousand-year-old Buddhist frescoes) with the sand dunes of a nearby tourist attraction. It wants to sprinkle the desert strip with fake temples and folk villages.

China’s Buddhism business is also going global. The faith’s most famous commercial site, Shaolin Temple in Henan, which is renowned for its kung fu-trained monks, plans to build a $297m, 500-bed hotel complex and temple—including a martial-arts academy and a 27-hole golf course—in Australia. Tibetan Buddhist temples have been more reserved, however. The government still treats those as highly sensitive religious sites. Chinese and foreign tourists are drawn to them as well—but the complexes are kept under close observation by security cameras and plainclothes police.

Even in non-Tibetan areas of China, some Buddhists are riled by the commercialisation of their faith. At Famen Temple in the northern province of Shaanxi, which houses a finger-bone relic of Buddha, monks protested in 2009 against both an increase in entrance fees and the construction of a wall that would have restricted their access to their temple’s door, says Francesca Tarocco of New York University. Last year seven monasteries in Jizu Shan in the south-western province of Yunnan reportedly closed their gates to visitors, incensed that a developer wanted to charge an entrance fee. “Religion is for practice. It’s not for show,” says Xue Yu, a former monk who is now director of Buddhist Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

While many tourists are dazzled by the glitz and mystique of China’s ersatz temples, some carp about extortionate prices. Visitors to the Guanyin statue in Sanya, however, are allowed one small concession by the park’s operators: incense joss-sticks are free.

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Christmas Specials

Tales of a “CEO monk” obscure the business of faith in China

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Zen and the art of moneymaking"

https://www.economist.com/china/2015/06/25/zen-and-the-art-of-moneymaking 

The retreat from meat

Why people in rich countries are eating more vegan food

The further they go, the better

IT IS lunchtime and a queue is forming for the burgers at Krowarzywa, voted the city’s best in an online poll: students, families, businessmen in suits. This is Warsaw, where (you might think) lunch is usually a slab of meat with a side order of sausage. But at Krowarzywa—which means “cow alive” and contains the word warzywa, meaning vegetables—no animals were harmed in the making of the food. The burgers are made of millet, tofu or chickpeas. The bestselling “vegan pastrami” is made of seitan, a wheat-based meat substitute.

Warsaw has almost 50 vegan restaurants. That does not mean it has all that many vegans. Kassia, a 20-something professional in the queue, says she has no ethical objection to eating meat. She comes to Krowarzywa because she likes the food. Kornel Kisala, the head chef, thinks that most of Krowarzywa’s clientele eat meat, but it does not worry him. “Animals don’t care whether you eat a vegan burger because it is fashionable or because it is tasty.” Altogether, 60% of Poles say they plan to cut back on meat this year. Eating vegetarian and vegan meals now and then is one of the ways some choose to do so.

Interest in vegan food has been booming across the rich world. Celebrity claims of veganism are everywhere: Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Serena and Venus Williams, Lewis Hamilton, Mike Tyson, Beyoncé, take your pick. In America sales of “plant-based” foods—a term for foods that contain no meat, eggs or dairy that reliably says “vegan” to vegans but doesn’t say “weird” to the less committed—rose 20% in the year to June 2018, according to Nielsen, a market-research group. That was ten times the growth in food as a whole that year and two and a half times faster than vegan foods grew in the year before.

McDonald’s is offering McVegan burgers in Scandinavia. The American restaurants in the TGI Fridays chain sell soyabean burgers that ooze blood made of beetroot juice. Tyson Foods, one of the world’s largest meat producers, recently bought 5% of Beyond Meat, the company which makes them. Waitrose, a posh British grocery chain, introduced a range of vegan food in 2017, expanded the selection by 60% in mid-2018 and says sales of vegan and vegetarian foods in July 2018 were 70% above the level in July 2017.

Some people see great things in this. Two years ago Eric Schmidt, a Silicon Valley figure who used to be chairman of Google, called plant-based meat substitutes the world’s most important future technology; he foresaw them improving people’s health, reducing environmental degradation and making food more affordable for the poor in developing countries. The founder of the first vegan society said in 1944 that “in time [people] will view with abhorrence the idea that men once fed on the products of animals’ bodies.” Many since have shared his hope. Perhaps their time is come at last.

If so, it is a slow coming. Meat consumption worldwide has been growing consistently by almost 3% a year since 1960, mostly because people in poor countries buy more meat as they get richer, and the trend has yet to slow. In the early 1970s the average Chinese person ate 14kg (31lb) of meat a year. Now they eat 55kg, which is 150g, or five ounces, a day. But though most growth in consumption has been in the developing world, rich countries are eating more meat, too; their consumption is just not growing as fast as it used to. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), meat consumption in the richest nations has risen 0.7% a year since 1991.

Polling data is used to claim that the number of vegans in rich countries is both quite high—around 10% in some European countries—and growing. But there is reason to doubt at least the first of these. Some of the best data come from Britain, home of the world’s first vegan society. A poll carried out by that society in 2016 found that 1.05% of people in Britain never ate meat or animal products. This is considerably higher than the result the society got in 2007, which suggests real growth in numbers. But it is a far cry from the 5.3% of the population reported as vegan in a more recent poll. In general, polls seem to find many more people claiming to be vegan than they do people abstaining from all meat, fish and animal products.

In America, Nielsen found in 2017 that 3% of the population called themselves vegans and 6% vegetarians (people who eschew meat, but eat eggs and/or dairy products). This proportion seems more or less stable; the country’s largest polling organisations, Gallup and Harris, both found 3% of the population calling themselves vegan over the period 2012-18. But more detailed research by Faunalytics, a company which has been running large surveys of eating habits for 20 years, puts the numbers at just 0.5% for vegans and 3.4% for vegetarians. Fully a quarter of 25- to 34-year-olds in America claim to be either vegan or vegetarian, whereas studies by Faunalytics find the median age of American vegans to be 42, four years older than the national median. It seems that a fair amount of aspirational self-deception, terminological inexactitude or simple hypocrisy is at play.

The idea that veganism is most widely espoused, if not necessarily adhered to, by the young seems to be true in many countries. In Germany, according to Mintel, a research firm, 15% of 16- to 24-year-olds say that they are vegetarian, compared with 7% of the population at large. In many countries declared vegans lean towards the political left. In America polling by Pew has found that 15% of liberals espouse a meat-free diet, as opposed to 4% of Republicans. American vegans and vegetarians are also poorer than average, and twice as likely to be single. Three-quarters of them are women. This all fits veganism’s association with valuing health, simplicity and low environmental impact—an implicit rejection of the values and coronary arteries of older red-meat-eating men.

Veganism is not a way of life that it is easy to keep up. According to Faunalytics, for every active American vegetarian or vegan there are more than five people who say they have abandoned such a diet. The growth in the number of restaurants catering to veganism and the availability of plant-based products on shelves may reduce this churn and allow more to stick with the programme. As it is, a moving target makes it unsurprising that accurate figures on veganism are hard to come by.

Overall, though, it seems safe to say that the number of people sometimes or regularly choosing to eat vegan food is growing much faster than the growth in people deeply committed to a meat-, egg- and dairy-free life. Patrice Bula, a vice-president at Nestlé, says he thinks that only a quarter of the people buying his company’s vegan meals are committed vegetarians or vegans. People in this larger group are often called “flexitarians”, who shift back and forth between omnivorous and vegetable diets. Almost two Americans in five say they fit this category, says Nielsen. The true vegan efflorescence lies in casual, part-time veganism.

Flexible friends of the Earth

In rich countries, people become flexitarians as a response to three concerns: their own health; the health of the environment; and the welfare of animals. On all three, they have a point; on at least the first two, though, a lot of the benefits can be captured without strict veganism.

The direct evidence that vegan and vegetarian diets are in themselves good for people is mixed. Between 2002 and 2007, 73,000 Seventh Day Adventists, a religious group in America, participated in a study of eating habits. The 27,000 vegans and vegetarians among them had significantly lower mortality rates. A smaller survey of British vegetarians from 2016, though, found no such link.

Aspects of veganism do go with the grain of some health advice. Large studies have shown that people who eat a lot of red meat have higher overall mortality rates (the same does not apply to eating poultry). Eating a lot of processed meat is linked to colorectal cancer. The evidence on this seems clear enough for various authorities to recommend limits to the total ingestion of red meat—the World Cancer Research Fund suggests less than 500g a week—and minimising the intake of processed meats such as bacon and salami.

And the damage to health done by meat is not all captured in the sort of studies that reliably cast doubt on diets heavy in red meat. Lots of factors, both dietary and non-dietary, influence health problems such as obesity, high blood pressure or diabetes, and it is hard to understand exactly what is responsible for what. Comparing diets on a statistical basis, though, allows some striking inferences. In 2016 a study by Marco Springmann and colleagues at the University of Oxford found that, globally, a transition to well-balanced vegan diets might result in 8.1m fewer deaths a year. Universal vegetarianism would avoid 7.3m deaths.

If the associations on which this computer modelling is based are robust, those are impressive figures. But much of the benefit they claim to demonstrate could still be realised if omnivores ate better-balanced diets with less meat. If the world adopted what the study called a healthy global diet, with less sugar than most in the West consume, plenty of fruit and veg and just 43g of red meat a day, the number of deaths avoided would still be 5.1m.

Red meat is typically a quarter to a third protein by weight, so just 43g is nowhere near enough to supply the 50-60g of protein a day that people require (the exact amount depends on a person’s weight, amount of exercise and several other factors). The global healthy diet thus has people relying on quite a lot of plant protein, too. Rich-world diets, though, tend to get all their daily protein requirement from animals, and then some. Americans eat 90g of protein a day, Europeans 85g, and most of it comes from animal products.

Because meat is energy rich, eating more than your protein needs dictate means taking on a lot of calories, which may well be stored as fat. Vegans both eat less protein and get it from less energy-rich and potentially fattening products. In 2017 a French study found that both vegans (62g of protein a day) and vegetarians (67g) were healthier than the meat eaters wolfing down 81g. They were also eating more varied diets, and, perhaps crucially, fewer calories overall; it may have been those choices, rather than veganism per se, that made the difference.

On the environment, too, vegans and vegetarians have a point. Growing their food requires less land than raising meat does. Animals do not turn all the energy in the crops they eat into calories in their muscles. They need some of that energy to stay alive—and while that overhead is good for the animals, from a food-production standpoint it looks like a waste. This waste means you need more land per calorie of food if you are producing beef than if you are producing broccoli. Admittedly, a lot of grazing is on land that would not necessarily be suitable for arable farming. But the FAO’s finding that raising livestock takes about 80% of all agricultural land and produces just 18% of the world’s calories is still telling.

Alon Shepon of the Weizmann Institute and colleagues have looked at this in terms of opportunity costs. Choosing to make a gram of protein by feeding an egg-laying hen, rather than getting the equivalent of a gram of egg protein from plants, has an opportunity cost of 40%. Getting the gram of protein from beef represents an opportunity cost of 96% (see chart 1). They argue that if America stopped paying these opportunity costs and got the protein from plants in the first place, it would be equivalent to increasing the food supply by a third—or eliminating all of the losses due to food waste.

Being so land hungry means cattle farming changes the climate; clearing land for pasture creates greenhouse gases. On top of that, the bugs in ruminant digestive systems produce methane, a fairly powerful greenhouse gas. Once it gets out of the cows—by belching, mainly, not, as is commonly thought, farting—this warms the world. The FAO calculates that cattle generate up to two-thirds of the greenhouse gases from livestock, and are the world’s fifth largest source of methane. If cows were a country, the United Herds of Earth would be the planet’s third largest greenhouse-gas emitter.

Mr Springmann and his colleagues calculated that in 2050 greenhouse emissions from agriculture in a vegan world would be 70% lower than in a world where people ate as they do today; in the “healthy global diet” world they would be 29% lower. The savings are not all owing to cows; but a large part of them are (see chart 2). Raising cattle produces seven times more in terms of emissions per tonne of protein than raising pork or poultry does, 12 times more than soya and 30 times more than wheat. Giving up beef captures many of the benefits of going vegan. Other animals make a lot less difference. Getting your protein from insects—very efficient converters—might be almost indistinguishable from veganism in environmental terms.

Except, that is, to the insects. One of the main things that motivates many vegans and vegetarians is a belief that killing and eating animals is wrong. The vegans also abstain from milk and eggs because there, too, they see a lot of exploitation, death and suffering (the question of honey remains a point of contention). In dairy herds calves are typically taken from their mothers within 24 hours, compared with the nine months to a year they would suckle if left to themselves. Male calves are killed or reared for meat. In industrial egg-production day-old male chicks are killed and simply discarded. Even if one keeps strictly to meat, though, the death toll involved is immense. Over 50bn farm animals are killed for meat every year.

#MooToo

The best known proponent of the case that this matters is Peter Singer, a philosopher at Princeton University. Mr Singer argues that treating the interests of humans as superior to those of other animals is a prejudice, analogous to treating men as superior to women or whites as superior to blacks. It depends on an arbitrary distinction between two groups, one of which has the power to make the distinction stick.

What matters, he says, is not what species an individual belongs to but its capacity for suffering. If an animal suffers as much as a person, then things that it would be impermissible to do to a person—killing and eating him, immobilising him in a cage—are unacceptable if done to the animal, too. “In suffering,” Mr Singer writes, “the animals are our equals.”

This moral point would seem to depend in part on an empirical point; to what extent and in what manner do animals suffer? Animals’ brains contain regions clearly analogous to those correlated with consciousness, perception and emotion in humans. What that reveals about their suffering as compared with a human’s is a subtle question. But they definitely feel pain, and some can both express preferences and, it would appear, hold beliefs about the preferences of others. That would seem to have some moral salience.

But would it be better for animals that suffer not to exist at all? A vegan world would have no need of cows, happy or sad. The genus Bos currently numbers some 1.5bn. Should those lives be valued less than the lives of the wildlife which might repopulate their overgrown pastures when they are gone? When it comes to wild animals, people tend to abhor population collapse; are things that different when it comes to domestic animals?

Mr Singer’s project of seeking legal rights for animals is certainly going to be a tough row to hoe, if not an impossible one. Neither courts nor legislatures seem very interested. Reducing the cruelty that animals suffer, though, is more plausible, both through legislation—battery cages for hens have been banned in the EU since 2013—and through consumer pressure, such as a preference for free-range products, cruelty-free certification, transparent sourcing and the like. This second route, though, is not available to vegans.

Though biology is not destiny, humans, like their relatives the chimpanzees, evolved as omnivores; the evidence is in the teeth and the guts. If people’s diet is otherwise restricted, for example to staple starches, meat does them good. As the increasing consumption of meat worldwide shows, a lot of people in most cultures really do like eating it; the vast majority will do so, at least a bit, when they get the chance. The great exception is India, where, mostly for religious reasons, about 30% of the population has a vegetarian lifestyle.

None of that makes veganism, full- or part-time, and the spread of plant-based foods irrelevant. A mixture of ethical concerns, innovative cuisine like Mr Kisala’s and more convenient vegan shopping at supermarkets could yet see the rich world reach “peak meat” and head down the other side. If so, and in particular if reduced consumption of red meat is part of the process, there will probably be substantial gains in health and happiness. And if the world improves standards in the meat-rearing operations that remain, some of that may even be shared with animals.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/10/13/why-people-in-rich-countries-are-eating-more-vegan-food

China, the birthplace of fake meat

As meat substitutes take off in the West, Fuchsia Dunlop lifts the lid on the ancient art of imitation

 

Fuchsia Dunlop | August/September 2018

 

The grand centrepiece of our lunch is a bowl of paddy eels in a sea of spicy oil thick with scorched chillies and Sichuan pepper. Around it lie a pot of red-braised beef and bamboo shoots, a deep-fried fish in chilli-bean sauce, stir-fried bacon with green peppers and several other local specialities. It looks like a typical Sichuanese meal, and it is – except that the food is entirely vegan. The “eels” are strips of shiitake mushroom that look and even feel in the mouth like the real thing; the brisketty slow-braised “beef” is fashioned from wheat gluten; the “fish” is a package of mashed potato in a tofu skin. It’s a satisfying and ingenious lunch, served in a restaurant at the Buddhist Temple of Divine Light just outside Chengdu, capital of the western province of Sichuan.

In the last few years there has been a rush in demand for vegan and vegetarian foods in Western countries. Much of it is coming from flexitarians – people who have not renounced meat completely but want to cut their consumption. To satisfy them, companies are developing products that look, taste and feel as close as possible to meat and dairy dishes – most famously a plant-based burger made by Impossible Foods that appears to bleed like a rare beef patty.

Amid this flurry of innovation in the West, it’s worth remembering that the Chinese have been using plant-based foods to mimic meat for hundreds of years. In the time of the Tang dynasty (AD618-907), an official hosted a banquet at which he served convincing replicas of pork and mutton dishes made from vegetables; in the 13th century, diners in the capital of the southern Song dynasty (Lin’an, now Hangzhou), had a wide choice of meat-free restaurants, including those that specialised in Buddhist vegetarian cuisine.

The tradition is still alive in contemporary China. In Shanghai, most delicatessens sell rolled-tofu “chicken” and roast “duck” made from layered tofu skin. Restaurants offer stir-fried “crabmeat”, a strikingly convincing simulacrum of the original made from mashed carrot and potato flavoured with rice vinegar and ginger. Elsewhere, Chinese food manufacturers produce a range of imitation meat and seafood products, including slithery “chicken’s feet” concocted from konnyaku yam and “shark’s fin” made from translucent strands of bean-thread noodle.

 

Such dishes are in part a reflection of a sophisticated food culture in which wit and playfulness have always been prized. Just as Heston Blumenthal, a British experimental chef, amused guests with a dessert that resembles an English breakfast, China has a tradition of dishes that pretend to be something they are not, such as edible calligraphy brushes, or a facsimile of tofu made from finely minced chicken breast and egg whites. In the Song dynasty, restaurants served not only vegetarian temple food, but imitations of pufferfish, soft-shelled turtle and roasted venison made from other ingredients that were not necessarily meat-free.

This elaborate trickery is found throughout Chinese society, but it is most strongly associated with Buddhist monasteries. Buddhist monks tend to live on a simple diet of grains, tofu and vegetables, but many larger institutions run vegetarian restaurants that cater for visitors. At weekend lunchtimes, the restaurant at the Temple of Divine Light is a clamour of customers tucking into a vegetarian homage to traditional Sichuan cooking.

In a private room hung with calligraphic artworks, a group of male friends (none of them vegetarian) were enjoying their meat-free Sunday lunch when I visited. “Before China’s reform and opening up, people couldn’t even eat their fill, so of course when meat became more widely available we wanted to gorge on it,” says businessman Chen Mingqing. “But after this period of indulging in rich food, China has reached a new level of culture and development. People want to eat more healthily and prolong their lives, so vegetarian eating is becoming more popular.” The temple’s restaurant, once frequented mainly by elderly Buddhists, now attracts a mixed crowd including many young people.

The restaurant’s imitation-meat ingredients are mostly concocted from konnyaku yam, gluten and various bean products, says head chef Du Mingxue, who stopped cooking meat 13 years ago. Some, like the sliced “bacon” (appropriately pink and white and umami-delicious) are laborious to make, so the restaurant buys them from specialist producers; others, like the eels, are made in situ. “Vegetarian cooking is actually more complicated than meat cooking,” says Du, “because we have to work harder to create umami tastes. Here, we make flavouring powders from dried mushrooms and stocks from peanuts, soybeans, potatoes and tomatoes.”

Because this is a Buddhist restaurant, the food is not only free of animal products, but also of the “five pungent vegetables” (wuhun) traditionally shunned by Buddhist monks because they are thought to inflame carnal passions. These include garlic and spring onions, though, happily for the Sichuanese, chillies and Sichuan pepper are alright.

There was no explicit prohibition on meat-eating in early Buddhism. In the religion’s early days in India, mendicant monks were expected to eat anything that was put into their begging bowls, as long as they didn’t suspect an animal had been slaughtered for their benefit. After Buddhism spread to China, however, abstention from meat became the norm in monasteries, especially under the influence of the 6th-century Emperor Wudi, a devout Buddhist who became a vegetarian on compassionate grounds. Although monks had no need to make their own vegetarian dishes resemble meat, Buddhist institutions had to entertain patrons and pilgrims who normally ate meat, so they devised creative vegetarian versions of classic banquet dishes such as roast meats and Dongpo pork.

Outside Buddhist monasteries, strict ideological vegetarianism (sushi zhuyi) or veganism is rare in China, but a more flexible, intermittent vegetarian eating (sushi) is deeply entrenched in Chinese food culture. Until recently, most Chinese people couldn’t afford to eat much meat anyway – and, with a few exceptions, dairy foods have been largely absent from Chinese diets. Although meat is adored and a feast without it is almost unthinkable, Chinese people typically eat far more vegetables and much less meat than is usual in the West. Meat, lard or stock are used in small quantities to enrich dishes that are otherwise vegetable-led. Tofu has never been stigmatised as a mere substitute for meat and is a central part of Chinese diets. Fermented bean products such as soy sauce can lend rich savoury tastes to vegetable dishes.

The Chinese have an intellectual tradition that favours vegetable eating as a wise and healthy counterpart to eating meat. Gluttonous consumption of meat has always been regarded as unhealthy. Men of letters have traditionally viewed carnivorous excess as vulgar or even depraved; Confucius is said to have eaten meat only in moderation. In the 17th century Li Yu, a writer, suggested that eating vegetables brought people closer to a state of nature: “When I speak of the Tao of eating and drinking, finely minced meat is not as good as meat in its natural state, and such meat is not as good as vegetables in terms of the closeness of each to nature.” A preference for wild foods, vegetables and modest consumption of meat has long been understood as a sign of cultivation.

A new generation of vegetarian restaurants is sprouting up outside monastic settings to feed the appetite for such cuisine. One of the most successful is Wujie (No Boundaries), a chain run by Y.B. Song, a Taiwanese businessman and vegetarian Buddhist who moved to Shanghai 25 years ago. He opened his first branch in 2011; his most glamorous restaurant, on the Shanghai Bund, has just won a Michelin star.

“I gave up meat 20 years ago as a religious offering when my mother fell ill with cancer,” says Song. “If you come to the realisation that your own life is connected to nature and to the lives of animals, you will naturally want to eat vegetarian food.” He reckons health concerns are the driving force behind the new fashion for vegetarian eating in China, rather than concerns about the environment or animal cruelty. Wujie’s nine branches run at different price points: the luxurious Shanghai Bund branch offers vegetarian banquets for around £60 to £70 per head ($80-$90).

“Many people think vegetarian food is bland,” says Song, “I want to surprise them with a really delicious food experience. I also want to show them that eating vegetarian food can be a positive and fashionable choice, not one born out of poverty.” His Bund branch offers several imitation-meat dishes, including a version of a Sichuanese classic “man-and-wife offal slices”, glossy with chilli oil and made with slices of king oyster and elm ear mushrooms that perfectly evoke the appearance and texture of the tripe and ox meat in the original dish. Song, however, has broken with Buddhist temple tradition by avoiding any reference to meat on the menu: this dish, for example, is just called “Sichuanese man-and-wife”.

“If the food is seriously delicious”, says Song, “you don’t have to pretend that it’s meat. But I don’t want to judge people for wanting to eat vegetarian food that resembles meat. Trying to broaden acceptance of vegetarian food is like jumping over a high wall: you have to do it in steps, and one step is to give people delicious and familiar dishes that just happen to be vegetarian.”

Fuchsia Dunlop is author of “Land of Fish and Rice: Recipes from the Culinary Heart of China”

 

Illustrations Brett Ryder

https://www.1843magazine.com/food-drink/china-the-birthplace-of-fake-meat

Top Chinese Buddhist monk Xuecheng quits amid sex probe

Xuecheng stepped down from his post as president of the Buddhist Association of China. He is accused of sending explicit text messages to at least six women, threatening or cajoling them to have sex with him.PHOTO: REUTERS 

Published

Aug 15, 2018, 2:01 pm SGT 

BEIJING (AFP) - The head of China's government-run Buddhist association quit his post on Wednesday (Aug 15) amid an investigation into allegations that he coerced several nuns into having sex with him.

Xuecheng, a Communist Party member and abbot of the Beijing Longquan Monastery, is one of the most prominent figures to face accusations in China's growing #MeToo movement.

In a 95-page report that circulated online late last month, two monks accused 51-year-old Xuecheng of sending explicit text messages to at least six women, threatening or cajoling them to have sex with him.

China's top religious authority launched an investigation shortly after the allegations were made public.

Xuecheng stepped down at a meeting of the Buddhist Association of China on Wednesday.

"The council accepted Xuecheng's resignation as president of the Buddhist Association of China," said a statement posted on Wednesday on the association's website.

It was tucked into a long report detailing a council meeting which neither elaborated on the abbot's reasons for quitting nor referred to the recent probe.

The same statement was also posted by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the government body overseeing religious groups.

A prominent personality in Chinese Buddhist life with a social media following of millions, Xuecheng's Twitter-like Weibo account has been silent since Aug 1, when he posted a statement rejecting allegations of sexual misconduct.

In their report, the two monks, who are no longer members of the monastery, said four women gave in to Xuecheng's demands.

One of the authors said on social media that he was compelled to speak out after the victims were ignored by the authorities, who said they could not investigate the matter.

The report and posts about it have been taken down or censored on social media.

There is no legal definition of sexual harassment in China and no national regulations on how to handle sexual assault cases in schools and workplaces.

The #MeToo movement ignited in China earlier this year, with more women starting to open up about sexual assaults, especially on university campuses.

Unlike in the West, where #MeToo has forced resignations and sparked widespread public debate, the authorities in China have sought to control the discussion, sometimes allowing and at other times censoring social media commentary.

Bring home a blessed Medicine Buddha

Medicine Buddha is the Buddha of healing and medicine in Mahayana Buddhism.
The practice of Medicine Buddha is a powerful method for healing and an antidote for overcoming all sickness and sufferings caused by greed, hatred and delusion..

The Medicine Buddha Sutra states:

“Wherever there are sentient beings who hold fast to the name of the Medicine Buddha and respectfully make offerings to him, whether in villages, towns, kingdoms or in the wilderness, we, the Twelve Generals, will all protect them. We will release them from all suffering and calamities and see to it that all their wishes are fulfilled.”

供奉药师琉璃光如来

药师琉璃光如来是大乘佛教公认的大医王，药师佛的法门有强大治愈力，能增进自他治疗力的修持方法，更是一剂能根除因贪、嗔、痴形成的身心痛苦的良药。

Medicine Buddha Statue 供奉药师琉璃光如来

Offering Payable 每尊: $108 数量有限, 欢迎预订

Reservation: Front Office | 6849 5333 | 9.00 am – 4 pm daily
Enquiry: Reception Office Tel: 6849 5300 | 8.30 am – 4.30 pm daily

旺狗贺岁 欢乐祥瑞

闻钟声 烦恼轻 智慧长 菩提生

闻钟声 烦恼轻 智慧长 菩提生

钟是寺院重要的法器之一，鸣钟更深的含义是为了祈祷：国泰民安、风调雨顺、道场兴隆、正觉净念。年复一年，一百零八下雄浑、洪亮的钟声响彻大地，能令修道者消除一百零八种烦恼，能令名利客醒悟回头。浑厚悠扬的钟声，激荡在心田里，呼应着每个人的自性，令之断除烦恼显现智慧，明了烦恼和忧愁皆来自对名利贪欲的渴望。钟声愈发的悠长，人生愈发的清晰，愈发的明澈。人们只有远离了颠倒梦想，和平、吉祥、福气、好运才能靠我们更近。

新年的钟声，带着祝福，带着希望来到我们身边！让我们一起祈祷：世界和平，国泰民安！一起祈祷：功德圆满，百福千祥！

                                               聆听新年钟声  祈祷世界和平  祝福合家安康

当晚活动包括：叩钟偈·108钟声·早课·礼祖·向诸位法师拜年

旺狗贺岁 欢乐祥瑞

活动内容：叩钟偈｜早课｜礼祖

日期：2018年2月15日（星期四）

时间：晚上11时30分

地点：大悲殿

询问：6849 5300 | 消灾祈福法会 | 海报

* 本寺将于除夕夜，晚上10时30分至初一下午2时提供面线汤享用。

CNY Vegetarian Steamboat and Yusheng

Usher in an auspicious year of the Dog at KMSPKS!

Let us extend our compassion and love for all beings by celebrating this festive period with healthy and delectable vegetarian dishes.
Our yummy vegetarian steamboat and Yusheng will be available from 10th February onwards.

Ru Yi Vegetarian Yusheng

Dates: 10 Feb ~ 2 Mar 2018

Time: 9.30 am – 2.30 pm

Cost: A: $48.00  For 8 to 10 pax B: $30.00  For 4 to 6 pax • Takeaway available

Venue: Ven Hong Choon Memorial Hall | Level 2 | (Dining Hall)

Enquiry / Reservation Hotline: 6849 5333 | Poster

Reservations are on a first-come-first-served basis. Please book in advance at our Front Office.

Ji Xiang Vegetarian Steamboat

Dates: 10 Feb ~ 2 Mar 2018 Due to monastery events, reservation will not be accepted on the following days: • 12 Feb* * ( Only for Vegetarian Yusheng takeaway ) • 18 Feb • 25 Feb

Time: • 10.30am ~ 12.00pm • 12.30pm ~ 02.00pm

Cost: $168 Vegetarian Steamboat & Yusheng – each table can accommodate up to 8 persons.

Venue: Ven Hong Choon Memorial Hall | Level 2 | (Dining Hall)

Enquiry / Reservation Hotline: 6849 5333 | Poster

Reservations are on a first-come-first-served basis. Please book in advance at our Front Office.