China's Panchen Lama
accuses monks of turning Buddhist temples into money-making
machines
11 Mar 2017
PTI
China-backed Panchen Lama today lashed out at
the "commercialisation" of Buddhism in the country and said "phony
monks" were turning Buddhist temples into money-making
machines.
The image of Buddhism was tainted, the
otherwise pure and divine religious sanctuaries blasphemed, said
the 11th Panchen Lama Bainqen Erdini Qoigyijabu, who is also the
vice president of the Buddhist Association of China.
"Some temples are treated as money-making
machines, or shopping malls; some phony monks or fake 'living
Buddhas' tout ambiguous 'Buddhist preaching' to cheat money from
believers," he said while speaking at the plenary meeting of the
CPPCC.
The 27-year-old Panchen Lama, regarded in
Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy as the second most important after the
Dalai Lama, has been making efforts to establish his control over
the deeply religious Tibetan population which reveres the Dalai
Lama.
Groomed by China to be the top monk of Tibet,
he is a member of the Standing Committee of the advisory body, the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National
Committee.
With the commercialisation, some monks went
after money and power instead of guarding Buddhist ethics or
concentrating on Buddhist pursuits, he was quoted as saying by
state-run Xinhua news agency in his biggest speech so far after he
was nominated to the body in 2010.
Though such incidents and people were not the
mainstream, they had left an "extremely bad" influence, he
said.
China, before the advent of Communist rule in
1949, was predominantly influenced by Buddhism which was brought to
the country from India by eminent Chinese monks like Xuan Zang
during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
In recent years, Buddhism witnessed a big
revival in China with the encouragement of the
government.
The Panchen Lama said he was also concerned
about insufficient efforts in nurturing talent as some temples had
monks but no instructors, Buddhist scripts but no
teaching.
"Some temples are busy erecting Buddha
statutes, building splendid temple halls but they forget about
nurturing 'real Buddhas'," he said, adding that preaching is
impossible without a good team of Buddhist instructors.
The Panchen Lama said the interpretation of
Buddhist doctrines struggles to keep pace with the need of the
hour.