Enough on conspicuous consumption, here is the answer to our prayers. Excerpted from the WSJ:
Its biggest allies and best companies long ago defected. But in its long running struggle with Chine, Taiwan has snagged victory in the Battle of the Tooth.
The island gave a hero's welcome Thursday to surely the oddest guest ever to be granted a state visit: a 2,400 year old tooth said to have come from the Buddha himself. Flown in on a specially chartered plane, the holy molar touched down to cheering throngs led by Taiwan's premier. Radio stations devoted up to the minute reports to the tooth's stately progress.
"Let us have peace and harmony in our society," said Premier Vincent Siew, offering a prayer to the tooth in an airplane hangar converted into a makeshift shrine. Under a red and gold banner proclaiming "Ceremony to Welcome the Buddha's Tooth Relic," the object of attention rested after its trip in a miniature gold-plated pagoda, wrapped in clouds of incense.
One of three teeth said to have been found after the Buddha's cremation, the tooth was spirited out of Tibet to India in 1968, at the height China's Cultural Revolution.... Buddhists in India, fearing vandalism from Indian religious extremists, have decided to give the tooth to Taiwan.
But the tooth, it turns out is a highly political issue. Beijing, which holds one of the two other surviving teeth, fought for its mate to be returned to the mainland. "They don't like it that they have one tooth, and we have one tooth," chuckles the Venerable Yifa, a nun at a Taiwan temple that is the tooth's new custodian.
Indeed, Beijing's communist rulers--who regularly rail against "feudal superstition"--are attacking the tooth as an imposter. "We have no idea where the third Buddha's tooth originates," read a diatribe in the official Chinese press this week, which referred scornfully to "the so-called third Buddha tooth."
Taiwan has high hopes for the holy tooth. Believers say it can end a recent string of mishaps, from plane crashes to corruption scandals. But fierce squabbling has already created bad kharma. Opponents say the government should solve problems, not fan superstition. Some ask why Taiwan's president, a noted Christian, will preside over a mass prayer for the tooth this weekend.
True believers remain serene. Says You Kuen-song, a food company executive waiting at the sweltering airport to catch a glimpse, "Once the tooth has arrived, our troubles will be over." |
