Taiwan is now home to a unique museum devoted to
enhancing mutual understanding and respect among
the adherents of the world's major religions. The
ambitious project is the result of ten years of effort
by Zen Buddhist Master Hsin Tao and his followers.
The impulse to reduce human conflicts and in their place to "sow the seeds of love" has led the Venerable Dharma Master Hsin Tao, a Zen Buddhist leader in Taiwan, to call on followers of religions around the world to join together to put aside animosities and instead learn and benefit from one another's experiences.
In an unlikely setting above a Sogo department store in the Taipei suburb of Yungho, this determined monk and his followers opened a stunning, world-class Museum of World Religions on November 9, 2001. The purpose is to provide an opportunity for visitors to understand the world's great wisdom traditions more precisely, to dispel misconceptions and prejudices about them, and with the aid of the latest technology to promote discourse among believers internationally as a way to rid the world of religious disputes and to advance individuals' spirituality.
The timing could hardly be better. The museum's wide range of offerings help offset the debasement of religions by scandals and conflicts that have disturbed our comfortable view of the role of religious leaders and believers in society. The crisis in the Roman Catholic Church and other religious traumas, but especially the September 11 attacks, have resurrected a question troubling to thinkers from the historical Buddha to Karl Marx: Is religious practice a blessing or a curse?
Muslims who respect other cultures and religions grapple with the reality that much of the developed world now links their faith more with plots of terror than with the peace that they view as Islam's presiding ideal. Israel has been the victim of repeated terrorist attacks on innocent citizens, but at the same time the country's conservative leaders stand accused of allowing provocative permanent settlements on the West Bank and unleashing harsh retaliatory measures against the Palestinians.
India, too, has been the scene of violent Muslim attacks, including one in February this year that killed fifty-eight Hindu pilgrims returning home by train from a disputed religious site. For their part, Muslim and other critics of India's ruling "Hindu First" or Bharatiya Janata Party assert that the party has a hidden agenda to undermine the foundations of secular India and to oppress its religious minorities in pursuit of a powerful Hindu state.
Such seething discontent and open conflicts are not based solely on religious tensions, but religion is at the core of a believer's identity and prompts some belligerents to see themselves as divinely inspired freedom fighters, even as others view them as diabolical terrorists. In Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Sudan, to name just a few more regions, violent flare-ups rooted in or exacerbated by religionists' mutual animosities have been commonplace.
All this, of course, makes it difficult to share Hsin Tao's belief that "the common ground of religion is love"--the pivotal conviction of his unprecedented and innovative museum, designed to provide a breakthrough in religious education and exchange.
With the view that a person's choices become habits and shape personality, Hsin Tao set out eleven years ago to inspire the good character he believes exists in persons' hearts by establishing a museum where visitors can discover and pursue their own spiritual paths. Ralph Appelbaum, designer of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, was taken aback when the Buddhist master arrived on his doorstep in SoHo, close to New York's Ground Zero, to hire his firm to design the US$66-million museum. But he views Hsin Tao as well positioned philosophically to guide pilgrims to spirituality and to promote discussions among religionists internationally because the master accepts that persons can follow multiple paths to the Truth. Indeed, the museum's interactive Avatamsaka World, a museum highlight to be completed by the end of this year, will be based on the Avatamsaka Sutra myth of Indra's net of interconnected gems. That is a way of expressing the museum's paramount message that all people reflect one another--one is all and all is one, and therefore common ground can be found for coexistence among religions and their followers. In the two-story Avatamsaka sphere, visitors will be able to link themselves electronically to believers and their faiths in ways that can enhance their own understandings of the rites, customs, beliefs, rituals, celebrations, and outlooks of the world's great religious traditions.
The conceptual core of the museum is found in Buddhist beliefs, germane to all people. The first conviction is that each person is responsible for his or her own spiritual cultivation, which if undertaken seriously will lead one to reflect, cherish the moment, face the world objectively, and live kindly--all of which advance both inner and external peace.
Thus one begins the museum visit lifted by an elevator to the seventh floor above the department store as if approaching one's own awakening. As the elevator rises above the din of the street, it symbolically emits an ever brighter light and is filled with sounds of many types of religious observance. Before commencing the "pilgrimage," the visitor may place her hands on a translucent wall of cascading water, for washing with water is a universal symbol of inner purification. One then begins a symbolic journey of transformation by walking down a long passage, Pilgrims' Way, accompanied by images of seekers from many religious persuasions, each pondering queries projected on the walls. These reflect the poignant questions Paul Gauguin contemplated in his master piece, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? As one progresses along Pilgrims' Way, what began as rough gravel underfoot noticeably eases to a smooth surface leading to a heat-sensitive wall where a visitor can leave a handprint. Like water, hands are central to religious consciousness, as they are used to offer prayers, blessings, alms, healing, and even life. Perhaps Michelangelo best captured the spiritual significance of hands in the focal point of The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
The visitor next enters the round Golden Lobby, modeled on the human eye and signifying openness to new spiritual and temporal understandings. The shape also reminds visitors who are meditators to watch each breath to help still the body and lift spiritual energy, while it inspires others to recall that God is watching them. Supporting the lobby, two gold mosaic pillars proclaim, in fourteen languages, the museum's founding principle: "Love is our shared truth; peace is our eternal hope." Gold, like water and hands, is an important element in religious traditions. Sikhs, for instance, worship in the Golden Temple, Taoists attempted to convert base metals into an elixir of gold to achieve immortality, and golden crosses, goblets, and reliquaries abound in Christian churches.
In a cosmography on the floor, patterned on the Chartres Cathedral labyrinth of approximately 800 years ago, the pilgrim truly begins a spiritual exercise and a study of how religions interrelate. Inherent in the labyrinth is the triumph of good over evil, made possible by the great wisdom traditions, and a guide for humanity through the maze of life. Colors, images, and compass directions are imbued with religious significance which each viewer may detect in a different way. Above is a star-studded sky positioning the constellations as they were at the time of Hsin Tao's birth--and not without its critics, who find it at odds with religion's teaching of humility. But as visitors talk in low voices, their words echo, creating a confluence of languages and thoughts under the canopy of Hsin Tao's symbolic blessing.
The second Buddhist understanding central to the museum is that life is characterized by impermanence, which at best surprises us and at worst causes us profound pain. We want families, friends, jobs, financial security, physical prowess, and personal independence to be permanent, but they are in unrelenting flux. Because all of us experience suffering caused by the certainty of change from cradle to grave, we yearn for help to cope with the inevitability of life's often jarring transitions.
In response, pilgrims are introduced by film in the Creations theater to the symbolic story of transformation: the state of original purity degenerates into disorder, culminating in death, which in turn leads to renewed purity and order. Pilgrims progress to the Hall of Life's Journey, where they then confront the stages of life and learn how followers of many faiths manage these transitions. Here one can bear witness to the interactions between people and their religions from birth to afterlife, view artifacts used in ceremonies honoring life's progressive phases, and discover similarities and differences in believers' outlooks.
Finally, a third Buddhist concept underlies the exhibitions: we are preoccupied with our self-indulgent identities, unwilling to see that all people share the same essential nature. Having too little compassion and empathy, we are unable to recognize or choose to ignore that the suffering of others is our own torment.
Thus the pilgrim's journey at times must engage others in order that he may be led to introspection and modify the way he sees the world. In the Awakenings theater, through films and recordings, he can gain insights into defining moments for religious leaders, celebrated figures, and unassuming laity who give their testimonies to their own spiritual transformations. On camera, the pilgrim can share his own epiphany.
The journey of discovery continues in the Meditation Gallery, where one learns through filmed instructions how followers of six major religions take time to sit quietly, empty their minds, and rise above stress. Increasingly popular in the West, although a more complex practice in the East, various meditation practices not only help one to steady the mind, transcend the ego, and come to see the rest of the world more compassionately, but also can provide health benefits and relaxation.
The main display area of artifacts is in the Great Hall of World Religions. Here visitors can increase their empathy for believers worldwide by studying some of the most wide-ranging and influential religions (eventually the museum hopes to address all the world's religions), gaining knowledge of their histories and followers, awareness of what they share, appreciation of their differences, and insight into their practices in traditional and contemporary cultures. Artifacts and interactive displays represent Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, which emerged on the Indian subcontinent; Shinto and Taoism, which arose in Japan and China respectively, and Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the monotheistic Abrahamic family of religions. Mayan religions, those of ancient Egypt, and the minor religions of Taiwan are represented in the Ancient Religions and Indigenous Religions rotating displays.
The unprecedented Museum of World Religions offers the first forum where individuals can explore, on their own time and terms and in seemingly infinite space, the world's great spiritual traditions, assess their personal responses to them (in part after encounters through film, computer, seminars, lectures, and other interfaces with religious leaders and laity), and make private choices based on fundamental teachings.
The museum represents a confluence of Eastern and Western values, with its Eastern thrust in the quest for advancement of moral and social behavior and human emotions through education, and its Western emphasis on freedom of conscience, human rights, individual initiative and creative responses, innovative design and technology, and internationalism. In the captivating 7,883-square-meter space of the museum, spread over two floors, seekers approach the histories and special features of religions in a setting imbued with the message of diversity that Hsin Tao preaches: "Respect for other beliefs, tolerance of other cultures, and love of every life."
That this message of pluralism emanates from Taiwan, which into the 1980s was still a repressive polity that denied full access to information and the multiplicity of choice, is a reliable sign of the democratic spirit of this island state. Its religious and other leaders have set a course to improve the education of Taiwan's people, encourage their spirituality and sense of international responsibility, and share their hopes with other seekers. As a sign of Taiwan's leaders' common commitment to such cultivation, President Chen Shui-bian attended the museum's opening, although the government provided no funding for the project.
Will people be drawn to the museum? That is not obvious. Master Liao Yi, the demure Buddhist nun charged as CEO with building the museum's attendance, estimates that only one to two hundred visitors arrive a day. On the Buddha's birthday 1,500 guests turned up, but admission was free. Funding is also a question mark. Hsin Tao's disciples say he has 100,000 followers, most of whom each faithfully donated NT$100 (US$2.94) each month for over a decade to assist in financing the museum. The balance came from enterprises and major donors. But now that the museum exists, donations have dwindled, so it falls to the museum's staff to find creative solutions in a community that is not known as a center for international culture or tourism.
Lawrence Sullivan, director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School, who headed a team of scholars from the center whose conceptualizations led to the museum's rich exhibits and databanks of religious knowledge, describes the museum as a "seed." He calls it "a very tiny place" in contrast to the magnitude of the religious experiences within it. This seed, planted less than a year ago (in the midst of a terrible international storm), preserves thousands of artifacts and explains religious concepts and the religious experiences of today and traditions of the past. From its awe-inspiring beginnings, its founders intend to bring the blossoming of even greater benefits--most especially tolerance derived from mutual understanding, discourse, and relationships among religionists.
Deborah A. Brown is assistant professor of Asian Studies at Seton Hall University, an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and managing editor of the American Asian Review. She was the editor of the book Taiwan's 2000 Presidential Election, published in 2001.
Copyright (c) 2002 by Deborah A. Brown.
A Buddhist's Mission
What prompts Hsin Tao's obsession to educate both the people of Taiwan and the international public in the foundations of religious knowledge?
Born in 1948 in Burma, Hsin Tao was orphaned at four. In the post-World War II period along the Chinese-Burmese border, he witnessed his father's brutal killing and was abandoned by his mother. Between the ages of four and eight, he lived hand-to-mouth, and at nine was persuaded to join a guerrilla army unit by the promise that he would be taught to read. As a child soldier, he moved with troops from upper to lower Burma, encountering slaughter by the Burmese army and rampant violence by indigenous tribes.
Fate, however, looked favorably on Hsin Tao. At thirteen, he left northern Thailand for Taiwan together with remnants of the Chinese Nationalist army, and learned of the heavenly Buddhist Bodhisattva Guanyin--Guanyin meaning "Hearer of the World's Cries." He later recalled, "It was like hearing the name of a fairy godmother saving me from the deep waters and hot fires."
Like Siddhartha Guatama, the historical Buddha (c. 563-483 BC), Hsin Tao as a young man was troubled by the suffering he had seen, prompting him to question the meaning of human existence. He traveled widely to consult with famous masters and at twenty-five tonsured as a Buddhist monk. Choosing harsh asceticism as a path to spiritual cultivation, at twenty-six he sought enlightenment through a decade of solitary living in dilapidated temples, a crematorium pagoda, and cemetery tombs. What others might regard as ghoulish allowed Hsin Tao to confront the central questions of life and death.
Still unsatisfied, however, Hsin Tao retreated to a small cave on Lingjiou Mountain near Fulung in Taipei County for two years, further purifying himself spiritually by living on as little food, drink, and sleep as possible to reinforce his meditation. Consuming only water and nine pills of a secret Chinese herbal concoction each day, he weakened to a startling state of skin and bones. But through this regimen of insight through deprivation, Hsin Tao professes finally to have attained spiritual liberation.
Again like Siddhartha Guatama, who abandoned his previous life to seek answers and after becoming the Awakened One returned to society to proselytize his findings, Hsin Tao at the age of thirty-six reentered society from his own Great Going Forth, dedicated to becoming a spiritual leader and world teacher. The Wu Sheng Monastery that he established at the peak of Lingjiou Mountain is watched over by an imposing statue of Guanyin, the feminine bodhisattva reservoir of compassion and mercy, which she beams to the world.