Political Controversy Mystifies Buddhists Questions About Democratic Fund-Raiser ‘A Storm In A Teacup’
When she made out a check for $5,000 on the occasion of a Democratic Party fund-raiser at a Los Angeles area Buddhist temple in April, Hsiao Pihsia said, she had no idea that it was a political contribution.
“I just gave the money automatically, without asking what it was for,” Hsiao said Sunday during an interview here at the sprawling Taiwan temple headquarters of the Lo Kuang Shan (Buddha’s Light Mountain) monastic order, where she serves as a lay practitioner and master vegetarian chef. “For me, it was like giving to one of those charity boxes you see in grocery stores to help needy people.”
Hsiao, 55, who holds a green card allowing her to work in the United States and who owns a home in Los Angeles but speaks virtually no English, was not at the Hsi Lai Temple gathering - though she was in Los Angeles at the time - but was one of the donors to the event that raised $140,000 for the Clinton-Gore campaign. The guest of honor at the banquet was Vice President Al Gore, a favorite in the Lo Kuang Shan order since his visit to the Taiwan temple as a senator in 1988.
But like others involved in the fund-raiser - including 69-year-old Venerable Master Hsing Yun, evangelical founder of Lo Kuang Shan - Hsiao said she is bewildered by the controversy over the donations.
In the waning days of the U.S. presidential campaign, the fund-raising event has become a focus of questions about the influence of foreign contributions on U.S. politics in general and the fund-raising methods of the Democratic Party in particular.
“I have no interest in politics,” said Hsiao, who inherited money from her wealthy family in Taiwan. “I saw it as a gesture of good ties.”
She said no one had asked her to make the donation but that she routinely donates money at special temple events, including those aiding charities and disaster-relief efforts.
Temple officials contend the controversy stems from a classic cultural misunderstanding of - or at least a miscalculation about - how politics work in Asia and the West. In Asian politics, particularly in the emerging democracy of Taiwan, wealthy people or organizations routinely donate large sums of unreported cash to candidates, often anonymously.
“I think it is a storm in a teacup,” said Man Hua, a tiny, energetic nun who guided a visitor around the tree-shaded compound where work is under way on a 3,000-bed lodge for Buddhist pilgrims.
“How could something that is a good thing turn into something that is a bad thing?” asked Hsing, the religious leader who preaches an activist “humanistic Buddhism” which has proved extremely successful in Chinese communities outside of Taiwan and mainland China.
Since he founded the Lo Kuang Shan order in 1967, Hsing has built an international following of more than 1 million devotees. The order has 130 temples, including the large Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles, and operates in 100 countries.
Following Gore’s initial contact with the order in 1988, the religious leadership has come to look upon the Clinton administration, in the words of Stuart Chandler, Harvard doctoral candidate doing research here, as “Asian-friendly.”
A Lo Kuang Shan description accompanying a Clinton photograph praises him as “the first U.S. president to pay particular attention to Asian Americans.”
Would his organization still hold the Democratic fund-raiser now after he has seen the political ramifications? Hsing was asked.
“The more we Asians try to participate, the more we get criticized,” Hsing replied. “We asked ourselves, ‘What is our mistake?”’ he said. “The only mistake I can think of is that we were Asian.”