佛教文物成为某些地方吸引投资和旅游的手段－－转载

原载　中国日报　2009 7月2日　第18版

作者：穆谦

北京西南的云居寺因为对外开放佛舍利瞻礼，一周内引来超过十万名访客。参观人数远远多于平时。

　前不久，安奉有佛指舍利的陕西省扶风县法门寺，也在一片反对“过度商业化”声音中，大兴土木，大作广告，意欲吸引更多游客，带动当地经济发展。

　而这些只是全国众多佛教文物，进行商业开发的两个例子......

 然而，不管有各种各样的议论，这些举措，能够让更多人了解佛教文化，起码是让人沾上一点“佛缘，”总归算是件好事。

　　至于有人用它赚钱，那不是问题。

　第一：各人因果，各人了；好事，坏事，自有不同结果。

　第二：佛教文化里，有句话，“先以欲钩牵，后令入佛智。”

　此言大有深意。就算是有人“借机”发财，但无论如何，他、她都跟佛法“沾了边”，结了缘，如何发展，且待来日

　－－跟那些一辈子没有机会亲近佛法、听闻佛法智慧的人比，他们还是算有福气的！

Hot property

By Mu Qian (China Daily)

Updated: 2009-07-02 08:06

Despite 39 C heat last weekend the Yunju Buddhist Temple in the southwest of Beijing received a record number of visitors.

Yun Guirong, director of the administration of cultural relics at Yunju Temple, said there were 10,000 visitors a day, compared with the usual hundreds.

The influx is because of the Buddha sarira (or sheli in Chinese) that were found in the cremation ashes of Shakyamuni. The exhibition opened on June 23 and closes today.

Buddhists gather to see the two crystal-like beads, reportedly found in the ashes of Shakyamuni. Inset: Visitors buy joss sticks and watch the sariras displayed on a big screen at Yunju Temple. Photos by Jiang Dong

The sarira on display at Yunju Temple consists of two crystal-like reddish beads about the size of rice grains. Unearthed at Yunju Temple in 1981, the sarira was entrusted to the care of the Capital Museum by the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage. This is the first time the sarira has been exhibited at the temple.

Although it is impossible for visitors to clearly see the sarira, which is kept in a bulletproof glass box 3 m from a safety barrier, people have flocked to worship the sarira.

"We believe that seeing the sarira equals seeing Buddha himself. I can feel great power here," says Li Dong, a lay Buddhist from Beijing, after praying for a long time before the sarira. "One ought to see through not only the eyes but also the mind."

Another visitor from Tianjin, who declines to give his name, says that he feels "incomparably at ease" after seeing the sarira.

It is a general Buddhist belief that emotions of peace, inspiration, or even spiritual transformation can be felt in the presence of sarira, which is found in the cremation ash of spiritual masters, among whom Shakyamuni, or Buddha, is the greatest.

The sarira is purported to embody the spiritual knowledge, or living essence of masters, and is taken as evidence of the masters' enlightenment and spiritual purity. Some believe masters deliberately left sarira to be venerated.

However, like the Shroud of Turin, in Christianity, there is intense debate over the sarira. Some people hold they are mostly bladder or kidney stones, but Buddhists usually deny such an assumption.

Liu Qingzhu, director of the Academic Committee of the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who has closely inspected several sarira, including those unearthed from the Famen Temple of Shaanxi province and the Yunju Temple, says that the substance of sarira awaits scientific analysis.

"A simple scientific examination will disclose the physical substance of the sarira without causing any damage, but because of the unique religious status of the sarira, it is difficult to conduct such an examination," he says.

Bao Shengyong, dean of the department of sociology, Central University of Finance and Economics, believes the worship of sarira is a unique religious phenomenon incompatible with scientific research.

"The belief in sarira goes beyond the sphere of the rational," he says. "For believers, the power of a belief is not subject to scientific interpretation, which disintegrates the consecration of belief."

In China, sarira are mostly recognized on account of the consistency of their places of discovery and historical records.

It was said that after the passing away of Shakyamuni, 84,000 sarira were found in his cremation ashes, and buried in 10 places in India. During the reign of Ashoka (304-232 BC), an ardent propagator of Buddhism, he unearthed the sarira and delivered them to different areas in order to promote the religion.

Some of these sarira ended up in China, brought by monks from India who came to preach in China, or Chinese monks who came back from study in India, like the famous Xuan Zang (AD 602-664), who is portrayed in the classic Chinese novel Journey to the West.

According to historical records, there were 19 stupas that housed sarira in China during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (AD317-420), but some of these have fallen into oblivion. Today, besides the Famen Temple and Yunju Temple, some of the most famous sites for discovery of sarira in China are the Lingguang Temple of Beijing, Huqiu Stupa of Jiangsu, and Ashoka Temple of Zhejiang.

In recent years, there has been a craze for sarira in China, as a number of places claimed to have found sarira, including Yingxian county in Shanxi, Wenshang county in Shandong, and Liaoyang of Liaoning.

The Yunju Temple is the third to hold a ceremony related to sarira this year, after Famen Temple's inauguration of a new stupa to house its finger remains of Shakyamuni, on May 9; and Tianmenshan Temple's ceremony emplacing the sarira on June 8 in Zhangjiajie, Hunan.

Nearly 30,000 people attended the inauguration ceremony of the 148-m high Heshi Stupa of Famen Temple, including such celebrities as pop diva Faye Wong and kungfu star Jet Li, who are both lay Buddhists.

The sarira of Famen Temple has been exhibited not only in the Chinese mainland, but also in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Republic of Korea, drawing more than 20 million visitors since its discovery in 1987, according to Xue Cheng, abbot of Famen Temple and vice-president of the Buddhist Association of China.

At the inauguration ceremony of the Heshi Stupa, Xue Cheng says: "The sarira has made immortal achievements in terms of constructing a harmonious society", and the Heshi Stupa is "a symbol of the prosperity of the Chinese nation".

For local governments, however, the sarira, is more of a resource to promote tourism and investment.

After the inauguration of the Heshi Stupa, ticket prices for Famen Temple have risen from 28 yuan ($4) to 120 yuan. Developed by a company under the government of the Qujiang New Area of Xi'an, a 9-sq-km Buddhism-themed tourism zone is being built beside the temple, including a sanitarium, eco-agricultural garden, medical center, amusement park, martial arts club, shopping mall, and a group of hotels and apartment buildings.

A key project of the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10) of Shaanxi province, the Famen Temple tourism zone is expected to achieve a yearly tourism income of 0.6 billion yuan ($88 million) by 2010, and 1.8 billion yuan by 2016.

Various Buddhist items in the Famen Temple are open for donations, which range from 4,800 yuan ($700) per year for a "heavenly tree" to a one-off 10 million yuan for a "dharma pole".

For the government of the Fangshan district of Beijing, where Yunju Temple is located, the sarira is also expected to spur local development. A Chinese Park of Sutra-Inscribed Stone Tablets, the biggest of its kind in the world, is being built beside the temple with an investment of more than 300 million yuan ($44 million).

According to Yang Haifeng, director of the Administration Office of Beijing (Fangshan) Historic and Cultural Tourism Quarter, an important part of the park will be an underground palace that will meet the requirements of protecting the sarira. The government of Fangshan district and the Yunju Temple hope then that the sarira will be kept there permanently.

(China Daily 07/02/2009 page18)