Two things from my daily China reads last week that shook me up into a fit of disbelieve, amazement, shock and (I must admit) amusement were the China'ssurrogate mothers industry and the "modest number" of Chinese people that suffer from mental illness reports.
Especially the first report (about the surrogate mothers, forced abortions, etc.)manifests the reality of complete and utter lack of commonly established and adhered set of ethical and moral values in modern Chinese society, hence the chaos when it comes to issues such as these. And the obvious and all-permeating spiritual and ethical degradation.
picture: a statue representing the very popular in China "Laughing Buddha". He is seated on a huge gold ingot(i.e. money). Hm, the message is not subtle. (The irony is that this particular "Buddha" is the Chinese representation of the Future Buddha (or the Buddha to come) Maitreya. Oh, the humanity!)
Behind any act of most Chinese there seems to be only ONE guiding principle - utility.
(The other major guiding principle being conformity, but that's another topic.) And this is not even obscured by some fancy ideals or justifications.
EVERYTHING is justified if it can bring money, material prosperity, usefulness. Anything!
Or as a person who by the way does NOT rank high in my esteem (i.e. Comrade Deng) said :
"It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as soon as it catches mice".
This Chinese life-credo doesn't stop at the approach to economy, this "any means justify the end" principle is actually adhered to in everything else.
picture:one of the most popular Chinese "deities", the Money God. He is so popular that in one form or another is represented in ANY possible temple, Confucian, Daoist or Buddhist. Or in some cases, as illustrated with the above statue of the Laughing Buddha, he is "undercover" as a "Buddhist" deity. This message is not subtle too.This materialistic approach to human existence in Chinese people is no wonder. It is my observation (which if not 100% true and accurate, then at least 80% and more)that too many Chinese people suffer from a serious condition called lack of spirituality or/and basic integrity. The numbers are staggering, as is the number of the population of this country.
Many (if not all) of the (Han) Chinese are superstitious (about ridiculous things like numbers, ghosts, etc. for instance), huge numbers of people are "atheist" mainly as a successful result of systematic Marxist/Maoist "education"/brainwashing or due to their deep ignorance and misinterpretation, and without any actual knowledge or understanding by rote equal religion to superstition. Some who claim to be religious, in fact are not, and in many instances what they think to be religiosity is actually superstition and misinterpretation. Somehow or else huge numbers of people in their lives and worldviews lack what is (in my view) the most valuable thing of any religion - morality and ethics. Now, Buddhism (originally) is a religion not based on god(s), in fact it is a non-theist religion, it is essentially and mostly a philosophical worldview firmly based on ethics. (It doesn't deny the existence of god(s), but it doesn't think that's important...)
For 2000 years Buddhism has tried to influence the Chinese. Despite its well-established ethical value system and very clear distinction of what is 'right' and 'wrong', and its clearly outlined requirements for 'correct' human behaviour, it seems as if almost none of that is actually observed in even rudimentary form today by the Han Chinese. Obviously (and amazingly since it made a GREAT and systematic effort over a very long period of time) Buddhism has failed.
Instead, the Chinese have turned this jewel of human wisdom into a mere superstition void of its morality, ethics and philosophy.
(With the exception of the development of the Chan/Zen school, but THAT happened more than 1ooo years ago and except on paper doesn't exist anymore).
But even in its Sinicised and distorted by centuries of sinification form Buddhism could do a lot for the despiritualized Chinese, but let's be honest, the "God" and guiding principle in China has always been and (it seems) will always be "Money".
The Buddha (and all other Buddhas and Bodhisattva's) are sought and asked not for wisdom and knowledge of the Path to end ignorance and suffering, but are asked for, guess what, children (preferably male) and fortune (i.e. money).
picture: a drawing representing "The Laughing Buddha" granting (male) children. Again, the message is not subtle and I greatly doubt its very dubious (if any) connection to Buddhism.So the ludicrous claim that China's civilisation is a spiritual one, is a LIE. It never really was, and most certainly it isn't now, and by the look of it, it is going nowhere near to becoming one.
That's it.
So, back to the "surrogate mother" report.
"Forced abortions shake up China wombs-for-rent industry " http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090430/hl_nm/us_china_surrogacy_2
It turns out that in China you can not only buy a new wife or a child (recently some western media reported on the kidnapped children industry, which is a "flourishing" business) , but actually pay to someone to lend you their womb if you don't feel so comfortable (as many Chinese are) about adopting and raising someone else's child, and prefer to have one that is your "bone and blood".
(I'm not even going to comment on the forced abortions part of the report...)
I visited one of the existing China Surrogate Mother websites http://www.aa69.com/ (in Chinese). It has sections for prospective clients (people willing to pay for the service offered) and sections for enrollment of those willing to be used (for money) as surrogate mothers. There is a extremely lousy tune as a background, and pop-up windows prompting you to chat with the online "advisers".
In a country where there is strict birth control and where there are cases when women are even forced to abort their own children (if it exceeds the governmental allotted quota) is this business actually legal?!
I even watched most of a video of a talk show on the subject posted in support of this
"win-win" industry. (link: http://www.aa69.com/daiyun/wzjj/200809/64.html).
The talk show (in Chinese) with audience, talk show host and all, is a surrealistic "gem".
First, the client-mother wearing a ridiculous mask (to "hide" her identity) is interviewed, with the talk show host without much subtlety asking her almost any uncomfortable question, then the surrogate-mother is the next guest. What's amazing to me is that the video is supposed to act as sort of an advertisement to the business and the company (this site is obviously run by a firm that offers the "surrogate mother" service)...
In my view, to any person with some basic ethical and moral integrity this kind of commercial transaction obviously should not be acceptable.
What can I say? I'm speechless.
Who said money can't buy you "happiness"?!
In China EVERYTHING can be sold and bought. I'm not saying that those issues exist only in China. I'm saying that in China there is nothing (i.e. established set of moral and ethical values) to counteract this. The pervasive moral and ethical degradation and the state of public morals is in a dreadful state, which cannot and should not be ignored anymore.
There is an occasional debate perhaps, but since there doesn't exist an established principle, like most things in China, the moral and ethical set of values are yet to be established.
Because the fact is, China with its so-called "5000 years old" civilisation and history is one of the youngest countries in the world. It has yet to build its civil society.
It's like a huge giant baby that (in many aspects) has not yet really learned how to walk. And talk. And think.
Yes, China is a big and powerful country, but at this moment (and in near future) it is very very far from being a great country as it obviously aspires to be.
Quantity is not quality.
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"A Modest Number": China has 100 million people with mental illness
The other (absurdly amusing) news that drew my attention these few days was the statement made by the director of the China National Centre for Mental Health (Huang Yueqin) that "China has at least 100 million people suffering from mental illness" and added that"This is a modest number" and possibly much more.
In an interview with UK's "The Telegraph" (China has 100 million people with mental illness
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/5235487/China-has-100-million-people-with-mental-illness.html) she expressed doubt that modernisation has made more people crazy, saying:
"People nowadays are less crazy than they were during the Cultural Revolution, that’s for sure. People are definitely happier now than in that special period,” she told the Telegraph. (I'm NOT making that up!)
China suffers from a serious lack of qualified psychiatrists, since the profession was outlawed during the Cultural Revolution. From the late 1960s, Maoist thought attributed any mental illness to an incorrect appreciation of the class struggle.
Many mentally-ill patients were taken from hospitals and sent to labour camps because of their "counterrevolutionary" behaviour.
Hm, doesn't this last thing remind you of "1984"?
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In connection to the mentally ill topic, recently a Peking University law professor caused an outrage when he said in an interview that he believes that 99% of Chinese petitioners (people with grievances who come to the capital to file petitions) are mentally unstable/insane and should be locked-up without consent. As a result some petitioners went to PKU and staged protests against the professor, demanding his apology.
Apart from other things, this case illustrates a very interesting phenomenon and typical behaviour in China.
People almost NEVER see the big issues and almost invariably busy themselves with small grievances and if they protest at all, they protest against the particular matters at hand, and against the "small fish", and NEVER against the real and significant reasons (and the system that ALLOWS those things which they protest against to exist), never against the big and powerful "sharks". It is a self-protective instinct I guess, but such protests are purely "cosmetic" and have no real constructive or lasting result really.
Some of this actually reminds me to an extend of George Orwell's "1984" description of the "proles" and of the mechanism of the "Ingsoc" society.
The resemblances are just uncanny:
"……The Party claimed to have liberated the proles from bondage. Before the Revolution they have been hideously oppressed by the capitalists, they have been starved and flogged, women have been forced to work in the coal mines (women still did work in the coal mines,as a matter of fact) , children had been sold into the factories at the age of six.....So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.....It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings.All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice......"
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To add to the above, another scary/insane piece of Chinese reality.
Recently I came across a report about a young Buddhist monk (I express my strong reserves that he should be called that) and his activities as a singer and his pop-star status. A phenomenon such as this is not isolated, it's just an example how deeply disturbed and upside-down everything is.
Here is the video report I saw (it's in English)
http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=12949576&ch=4226715&src=news
After I shared this disturbing piece of Chinese reality with several Chinese classmates, one of them (L.X.) send me the link to this so-called 'artist-monk' 's ("艺僧") blog ：http://shidaoxin.blog.sohu.com/ (it's in Chinese).
We discussed this phenomenon in my/our weekly Buddhist Reading Group and I expressed disbelieve that he and similar people like him are not renounced and expelled from the Sangha (Buddhist monks order/community), since, obviously his activities are harmful to the Sangha.
Each Buddhist monk is supposed to represent the Sangha, the initial aim of Buddha Sakyamuni forming the Sangha (the monks and nuns being subject to a set of rules and precepts for right conduct called Vinaya) was for it to represent the Dharma (The Buddha's Teaching).
When one becomes a Buddhist (by official "procedure") there is a ritual in which each believer "takes refuge" in the Three Jewels (The Buddha, The Dharma and The Sangha). The Buddha is not present now, the future Buddha has not come yet, hence, the importance of the Sangha for the spreading and preservation of the Dharma is paramount.
In my observation the present state of the Sangha is far from ideal to put it mildly.
The Chinese Buddhist nun that takes part in our reading group revealed that in China there actually is no central community and actually no way to even control (apart from locally at the monasteries themselves) monk and nun activities in society.
Hm, I know a few monks whose behaviour and qualifications are very wanting...
But what else is to stop them if they are ready to bend or even trample their monastic vows?!
I guess somewhere here Sakyamuni would say (as he always does in the 'jatakas' (Buddhist former birth stories):"Indeed it is no wonder that this brother has thus transgressed, in a previous birth, many eons back, he also did so..."And then tell a story that illustrates and proves that karma follows us hard on our heels...
I know what some of you would say. I am saying the same myself.
Stop posting and write your thesis!!! You have almost no time left!
(My thesis is about the jatakas, Buddhist ethics, etc. and their Sinification....Hm, will post about it more some other time...)
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