Should Shaolin Temple be commercialized?

After the topic of Shaolin Temple was relaunched by Sina blog, the word "commercialization" became the reason for Shaolin Temple to cover up the fraud. This is misleading. Let me explain some facts:

1. Questioning identity and authenticity

The exact date when I went to Shaolin Temple to burn incense and worship Buddha was the morning of the 13th day of the first lunar month. Local friends can review the weather of the day. I wrote in my blog: on a cloudy day, the expressway from Luoyang to Dengfeng was foggy with sporadic rain. The ticket proves that there are three of us.

Add a detail here. My car is parked in front of the public toilet in the parking lot outside the mountain gate of Shaolin Temple. When I came out of Shaolin Temple and opened the car door, a woman selling tourist souvenirs followed me and asked me to exchange two yuan in her hand for a small Buddha statue to buy me a ticket, saying that one ticket would be exchanged for three pendant Buddha statues. I asked her what she was doing to change her visa, but she refused to answer at first. When she saw me get on the bus and leave, she told me that they were familiar with the management inside and could take the guests in with the checked tickets. Tickets for Shaolin Temple 100 yuan, they let the guests go in with the tickets checked that day and ask for 50 yuan. As long as the date is today, there is no problem. I gave her two tickets, changed six small Buddha statues and kept a ticket for myself as a souvenir.

Netizens have two questions: First, have I ever been to Shaolin Temple, and what I said is true or false. Second, could it be that thugs from other tourist outlets deliberately took such a brick before the May Day Golden Week?

Neither. At present, the reports in the public media are all versions of Southern Metropolis Daily. I have made it clear that I am from Urumqi, Xinjiang, and there is no need to be a thug for such a far place.

2, the problem of clearly marked price

I am a frequent traveler and a Buddhist disciple, and I know the rules of burning incense in temples. Most temples buy incense outside, and few temples are sold by monks. If there is no incense for sale outside, some Buddhist temples will prepare some incense for their guests. This fragrance will not be priced. After burning incense, pilgrims just need to donate some money to the support box, which is up to them.

There is no place to sell incense outside Shaolin Temple. In front of the incense niche in front of the Hall of the Great Hero, I saw a column of high incense, and I already felt that the price was not high. I carefully looked at the place where the price was clearly marked, looked around again, and found that there was no incense. At this time, someone invited me, so I leaned over to know how much it cost. As a result, the man in front spent 6000 yuan, and I wrote this detail in my blog.

This proves that at least on the day I went to Shaolin Temple, there was no clear price tag in front of the incense niche. I don't know if there is a clear mark before and after posting.

Feng Hongping, a reporter from Southern Metropolis Daily, was the first reporter to read my article and interview Shaolin Temple. In a telephone interview, Shaolin Temple admitted that there was a high fragrance of 6,000 yuan per column, and did not mention the price tag.

3. The so-called commercialization

So far, Shaolin Temple has avoided talking about sky-high prices and tourism fraud, and used the word "commercialization" to explain all contradictions. This is a misleading thing here, at least I don't accept it.

In ancient temples, the rich temple had temple property and the poor temple had three acres of land. In addition to charity, monks also rely on labor and management to support themselves. We can't say Buddhism, but think that monks are so pure and don't eat fireworks. Most netizens accuse the temple of making money unreasonably, but they don't understand Buddhism.

Shaolin Temple, as a tourist business card of Henan Province, manages temples by company system and organizes monk groups to perform all over the world, which does not violate the teachings of Buddha, but also conforms to the idea of developing Shaolin Wushu. The "commercialization" of Shaolin Temple advocated by Shi Yongxin is the performance of Buddhism advancing with the times in the new social and market environment. Buddhists or not, we should not object to this.

My question is: Commercialization should be the rational development and management of the image, culture and value of Shaolin Temple. Commercialization does not mean consumption trap, nor does it mean digging tourists' pockets. My experience in Shaolin Temple is not the experience of commercial management in a civilized society, but an experience of cheating in disguise, desecrating gods and buddhas, and collecting money crazily. After kowtowing, I was told that this is a place where people spend money to make wishes, and Shaolin Temple is different from other Buddhist temples. They only made a wish but didn't want to. They charge a dollar a day for chanting Buddha to eliminate disasters. Is this blackmail part of the business operation of Shaolin Temple?

Master Shi Yongxin, as a celebrity, can push the problem clean. It can be said that the Shaolin Temple stall is too big for him to manage small things. It can also be said that people are scattered and the team is not easy to bring. However, the problems existing in Shaolin Temple can be seen everywhere: outside the gate, there are women who exchange old tickets to go through the back door and take individual guests. Next to the incense niche, there is a real monk wearing a yellow cassock, asking for exorbitant prices. There are monks in gray robes in the back hall, waiting for the guests to make a wish and take the bait. I don't know if it's true or not. In Tallinn, fake monks who solicit fortune-telling wander around. Black hands are everywhere, one step at a time. Where is the temple? It's a butcher's black shop. Faced with so many problems, does Shi Yongxin have no clue? If he really doesn't know, as the top manager of Shaolin Temple, should Shi Yongxin bear the responsibility?

Let's go back to the issue of "commercialization". Since Shaolin Temple has been commercialized, it should bring all Buddhism into the scope of enterprise management system, and carry out systematic and standardized management of the temple according to the requirements of enterprise management. Managing a temple to such a chaotic and out-of-control degree, if there is no golden signboard of Shaolin Temple, if Shi Yongxin is not a monk, but a business owner in secular society, can such interest groups exist in commercial society?

4. Cause and effect of Buddhism

I am an ordinary person. I have no chance to climb Master Shi Yongxin, and I have no intention of hurting Shaolin Temple. In the face of online accusations, I split the good and the bad into two.

No religion can exist in a closed way without the social environment. Buddhism believes that using all the convenient conditions of secular society to spread Buddhism and help the world and people is to carry forward Buddhism. Therefore, Buddhism does not exclude matter. Some people belittle Buddhism by talking about monks using mobile phones, computers and cars, which is a prejudice against Buddhist teachings. There is also a need for communication between temples and between monks. Society has developed into the era of mobile phones. How can you ask a monk to wear a pair of old hemp shoes and travel across mountains and rivers to visit relatives and friends? Buddhism and society are synchronized, and it has reached the era of network communication. How can we make the wizards go to Wan Li to seek scriptures like Tang Xuanzang? In this era of increasing popularity of family cars, how can monks walk step by step without taking a car or flying?

With the popularity of Shaolin Temple and its position in the Buddhist circles in China, Master Shi Yongxin rides in a limousine. People in secular society dislike him and hate him, but he never violates the teachings of Buddhism. Don't understand Buddhism as an ascetic monk, let alone ask them to distance themselves from the real society. If we must use primitive Buddhism to understand the present world, how can we deal with major international issues such as Islamic fundamentalism and Taliban armed forces?

Material is not the opposite of Buddhism, but greed is what Buddhism tries to refuse. Buddhism advocates thrift and economy. Buddhism hopes that every Buddhist can make rational use of donations and support from all sides, and take out extra donations when temples have more support, build temples and promote Buddhism. If you still have savings, you can do more good deeds, help the poor and help the poor, and try your best to return the property to the society. We often see such a scene in books and movies and TV plays: every year when a disaster happens, the temple should install a cooker in front of the Buddhist temple to cook porridge every day to help the victims. This is a kind tradition that Buddhism has maintained for more than 1000 years.

Buddhism stresses cause and effect as well as support. If monks do not cherish social support and live a luxurious and decadent life, they are sowing bad consequences for themselves. What they have not suffered in this world will be punished more severely than ordinary people in another world.

A person who really understands Buddhism and Buddhism does not need to criticize Buddhism for trivial things in life. In the period of ideological confusion, people who do secular things in the name of Buddhism abound, but all this, Buddhism starts from cause and effect, leaving a warning to future generations. Buddhism is a person who can cross, not a person who has lived all his life. To understand Buddhism in this sense, what car Master Shi Yongxin takes should no longer be the focus of discussion.