Farewell, 2008

Time flies,
But I will remember.

love thy neighbour

When a friend of mine asked me to write something about Christmas in China, my first reaction was how I should write. Do I have any special feelings about the day? If there is no such a request, this Christmas might be passed as usual, just like a holiday in which people naturally do traditional things, such as family gathering, exchanging gifts, enjoying the festive time of the year end.

Probably it's also the time to ruminate something special about the past year and to plan something new for the coming year. At least the first idea appeared in my mind about the writing was about a kind annual review of current affairs, so when I was told of some strange commercial promotions appeared in this Christmas season in Beijing, such as decorating a Christmas tree with a Mini Cooper car model as a kind of advertisement, I realized it's the problem of commercializing Christmas.

Looking around, one might find an awful lot of evidences that Christmas in China, especially in the cities like Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, has been largely commercialized. Shopping centers, coffee shops, and book stores are full of joyful Christmas atmosphere. Indeed, a lot of young people are simply seeking fun and pleasure in this festive season, as the Christmas day probably is just an excuse in their daily life, to enjoy, or even to indulge a bit in some extravaganza, like having a luxurious dinner, or a wild party.

But some friends have also told me that a lot of church-goers are seriously treating it as a religious holiday, and they may seek the peace of mind by attending activities in various churches or at their homes.

So, basically we have two kinds of celebrators for this special day, one is the pleasure seeker, and another is the soul searcher. In between, there are a lot of people go neither side of the spectrum, just passing it by as an usual day.

I'm not a Christian, and I once enjoyed Christmas abroad with some foreign friends. The celebration seems to me more like a family gathering, where we shared and enjoyed pleasant time. Fleeting and impermanent as it might be at the superficial level, the sweetness and lightness of those moments has entered into my memory, which in turn reminds me of their existence each year in this season, so does the people I have encountered, acquainted and befriended in my life.

Yesterday, when I mentioned to a friend of mine in my greetings that I was to do some small giving job on the Christmas day, he said it's very Christian. I understand perfectly why he thought so, even though I'm not a Christian. Probably it's because of the date. But does it matter, to be Christian or not in this sense? Isn't the true spirit in being a Christian means 'love your neighbour', which one can easily find the similar sayings in other religions.

Can we say that as long as one's act embodies such a spirit, it doesn't matter whether one is called a Christian, a Muslim, or a Buddhist? Tolerance has been promoted in the secular multiculturalism. Perhaps it's time to promote toleration in various beliefs and religious practices, as long as the central spiritual pillar - ' love your neighbour' is identified in various religious practices.

In an interview with Spiegel, Rabbi Yona Metzger mentioned that his dream is to create an United Religious Nations, which will not only include Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, but also Hinduism and Buddhism. Grand plan indeed, and it's not difficult to understand his benevolent intention. This idea of the holy unity binding together various religions and the totality of the spirit of all human beings are very attractive, and perhaps it is the highest level of the human being's evolution.

As Rabbi Yona Metzger says, religious people speaks the same language. This same language, if one thinks about it, probably is more or less centred around 'love-your-neighbour', with which religious concord might be achieved. Such an ideal has been held by more and more people; but nowadays, its prospect of being realized is still located somewhere beyond the horizon of human being.

To be religious does not necessarily mean that one has to believe in a certain kind of religion, since belonging to a group of people unavoidably raises up the problem of 'Self' and 'Other', therefore it can cause all sorts of conflicts, discrimination, prejudice, and identity politics, which will hinder the formation of total spirit of all human kind - the communion that which would only emerge from the real religious concord. In this sense, humanity as a word can be treated as the signifier for the religious concord as well, so long as it reflects the spirit of 'love-your-neighbour'.

Excessive commercialization of Christmas has been considered by some observers as a vile symptom of contemporary society. Perhaps there is no more typical resentment against such a commercial mood of Christmas than the one made by atheist Richard Dawkins. In a review appeared two years ago in NYT, regarding his book the God Delusion and his attitude toward Christmas, Dawkins stated that,

'Christmas has long since ceased to be a religious festival. I participate for family reasons, with a reluctance that owes more to aesthetics than atheistics. I detest Jingle Bells, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and the obscene spending bonanza that nowadays seems to occupy not just December, but November and much of October, too. So divorced has Christmas become from religion that I find no necessity to bother with euphemisms such as happy holiday season. In the same way as many of my friends call themselves Jewish atheists, I acknowledge that I come from Christian cultural roots. I am a post-Christian atheist. So, understanding full well that the phrase retains zero religious significance, I unhesitatingly wish everyone a Merry Christmas.'

Very fine reasoning. I have no doubt that Dawkins has been enlightened as an excellent rational intellectual, and I still remember how I enjoyed reading his Selfish Gene several years ago to defend my atheistic standpoint. Its scientific reasoning is so powerful, that any fantasies of social benevolence might be traversed as a kind of self-gratification.

However, I have started to doubt whether or not such a pure reasoning can answer all needs of human being? There are some historical lessons regarding the promise of the Enlightenment in the period of Romanticism, from which one can tell that the notion of the general individuality of various societies or various states are still partial and the sacrifice of particular individuality thus called for in the name of the general individuality is problematic.

After nearly 200 years, and with so many bloody lessons we have learned, this problem of human being is still there and hasn't been solved. The interdisciplinary study of neuroscience and religious practices has tried its best to decipher the myth of individual enlightenment in a brave new world, but the result is also unclear. For this reason we have to accept the fact that the promise of the Enlightenment is yet to be fulfilled, largely because its initial emphasis on the autonomy of an individual as a rational being is partial, and the fact that in human nature people also has blind passion for communion at various levels can not be ignored.

There is a suggestion that such an irrational aspect of human nature can only be completely civilized if one dedicates oneself to a religious life. So the problem is how such a dedication of personal choice can co-habit peacefully with the secularized social norm. If it's externalized in the public sphere prematurely without the establishment of the religious concord, conflicts between different groups are quite likely to occur.

Therefore, the first principle, I think, for the realization of such a religious concord is that any voluntary religious organizations should not interfere with the issues that which belong to the secularised society, such as obtaining and executing the governing power of people, and any activities of those organizations should follow the principle of the rule of law in a secularised society. Under such a condition, religious people should have their own rights and freedom to enjoy their religious life, no matter what kind of form it is.

In another words, religious organizations under the unifying band of 'love you neighbour' should be always on guard against any temptation of stepping into the power struggle in the secularized society since any form of power struggle unavoidably manifests the Self, which will contaminate the spirit of 'love your neighbour'.

Theoretically, such a self-negation is a must to achieve the spiritual totality of human being, but in reality it is basically impossible to realize since that element of blind passion in human nature can not be eliminated completely, and the history has already manifested how disastrous and tragic the life could be if there is an exterior force to impose such a mandate to the ordinary people in the name of God, or some unfathomable higher orders.

One might argue that it will make a religious person extremely weak. Yes, paradoxically and individually it seems to be so, and it underlies the very meaning of the sacrifice and of being religious, that is, the true belief in 'love your neighbour'. But if every religious person holds this principle dearly, the spirit thus formed in their communion will be very powerful in-its-self.

This choicelessly formed spiritual power shall be the true manifestation of the holy unity of human kind.

mental regression to the Middle Age

Some European leaders who are using Dalai Lama as a kind of political leverage haven't realized that from the perspective of the Enlightenment, his political vision as a religious leader is against the core values of secularization in European/western civilization, as the power game he is in should be treated separately from other concerns about ordinary Tibetan people. 

Is Dalai Lama willing to give up his prestigious religious leadership in entering the sphere of political power structure? I doubt so. As far as I know, among Tibetan Buddhists, which are segregated roughly into four sections, Dalai Lama belongs only to one section. In fact, the way he interferes with the religious life of other sections have caused internal tension and conflicts among TIbetan Bhuddhists. Such a fact is hardly exposed by the western media, which shows either ignorance of current state of Tibetan religious life, or collusion of treating him as a proxy to level against Chinese government.

Some observers have suggested the similarity of Dalai Lama's struggle with the case of Northern Ireland, which I don't think it's valid exactly because of Dalai Lama's identity. Instead of being nudged into a certain mode of thinking unconsciously, one should ask where Dalai Lama's popularity is from. Is it from soothing religious statements as a religious figure that which meet the spiritual needs of ordinary people, or from a politician who is eyeing for the secularized power, or from a representative speaking on behalf of Tibetan people in the name of human rights and liberty?

It's the second aspect of the above-mentioned three facets that Dalai Lama have goes against the principle of the secularism, and for those who have followed him closely, one might have noticed that he's very skillful in addressing those different appeals to different audiences. In another words, he knows what his audiences want to hear under different circumstances, be they politicians, religious practitioners, or ordinary people who want to be enlightened spiritually. 

Isn't his mythic and affectionate aura that has attracted many overseas followers from his own contradictory identity that he is both a 'spiritual leader' speaking nicely on human issues and a 'political leader' fighting for those being repressed and asking for governing power? If Levi Strauss was still alive today, he probably would point out that Dalai Lama is actually a myth created by the post-ideological society.  

No wonder those members of European Parliament would be excited when they are greeted by his congenial smile and witty remarks, which makes what's going on around him in Europe now looks rather like a political farce. One might argue that at the very moment he's greeted with an unanimous applause there, his charming manner as a religious practitioner has conquered parliamentary members. What he said is very simple and plain, and nothing special to those sophisticated politicians of modern world; his persona and his very presence there count as a symbol to satisfy the fantasy of political struggle. 

Struggle? You must be joking. It's very easy for those of us in a secularised society to forget the fact that the prestigious leadership currently he is enjoying as a 'spiritual leader' is granted by the reincarnation system of the Tibetan Buddhism. He probably will reform this system, but that's only the future prospect. 

This is a kind of mental regression to the Middle Age, isn't it? Because he is so different, he must have brought a rare fresh air to the stuffy parliamentary building in Brussels, which is full of endless and lengthy debates in a politically disengaged society largely at the mass level. 

So far, there is no dogmatic political journalists who would follow his statements in various occasions like those in the US do, that any inconsistent views of a prominent political figure would be highlighted to the public. If so, I guess the general impression would be quite different.

But this does not mean that there is no way to look into this murky situation. Instead of being confused by all those extrapolations that have so far appeared in the public sphere, one should stick to the identity issue of Dalai Lama himself from a firmly secularized standpoint, the quilting point that seems to hold everything now regarding Tibetan issues; unless, of course, the coordinates are changed.  

By promoting the very idea that Dalai Lama as a equivalent party Chinese government should deal with on Tibetan governance, which falls into the problem of secularism I mentioned above, European leaders have implicitly endorsed his unique representativeness, which not only reveals their partial understanding of Tibetan religious life, but also betrays their self-centred approach in recognizing the unity of China. This is the true test of the Sino-EU strategic partnership.

However, that is still not a fundamental issue about Dalai Lama. By supporting Dalai Lama regarding the governance of Tibet, European leaders would also give a implausible signal that they are promoting theocracy, which can not be accepted among those progressives. I've found that some European pundits and politicians have ignored this aspect, perhaps because their memories of the Enlightenment movement that is originated from the Europe in the Middle Age are faded, or they are not willing to confront and to reflect, because of the prevailing sentiment about China in the European public sphere. 

The standard argument that Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC) might be more radical to handle if there is no breakthrough in the dialogue when DL is still alive has its own merit, but those countries who silently allow those ethnic Tibetan people, who can speak fluent English, to organize political gatherings and obtain donations from different channels for their radical political activities in doing something against a sovereign country should be held accountable as well. This is similar to the internationally co-ordinated anti-terror strategy.