Statues of Guanyin and Jesus Christ sat in the same room in my house for several years in high school. Guanyin is a goddess in Chinese Buddhism who represents mercy, compassion, and love, similar to the values that Jesus Christ represents in Christianity. When we first put the two in the same room together, something felt off. Nobody in my immediate family identifies as Buddhist, but my mom likes to keep the statue as a symbol of our Chinese heritage. The longer it stayed, the more I got used to it. I loved going to our Chinese friends’ homes because it reminded me that there was nothing strange about my own home, we simply identify with a culture that my other church friends don’t identify with.
My house even smelled different from those of my friends. After changing out of my Sunday best, I would walk downstairs and be greeted by the comforting smell of pídàn (century eggs) and pork in the zhōu (congee) filled crockpot. I’d look forward to the tāng yuán (sweet dumplings) and ginger soup for dessert. After dinner, I’d practice the guzheng, a Chinese instrument, while my dad would light incense and nap on the couch. The distinct smell of incense is hard to mistake for anything else. We don’t use it in the traditional way associated with Buddhist worship. Walking into a room with burning incense means one of two things: someone is trying to relax and detach themselves from reality or they are trying to flush out a bad smell. Warm Vanilla Sugar doesn’t exist in this household.
Starting in middle school, I had the opportunity to live overseas, closer to China. We began visiting Chinese Buddhist temples where my mom taught us to “bai bai” correctly, the physical motion of paying your respects by bowing three times with your palms pressed together in front of you. When we would visit from America, Buddhist temples were never the priority as we only had limited time to see our family. Moving to Thailand gave us the chance to experience our Chinese roots in a way we never had before. I wasn’t used to it at the time. Participating in some of these traditions almost felt like I was betraying my faith. It felt like I was somehow going against the teachings of Christianity by lighting incense and sticking it into a large pile of ash. I remember feeling confused and almost guilty for participating in this part of Chinese culture that I hadn’t been familiar with while living in America. I didn’t know if what I was doing was against the first of the Ten Commandments. Was I unknowingly worshipping a different god? I had that same feeling when my mom added that statue of Guanyin to our collection years later. Did simply displaying a piece of art go against everything I believed in?
Living in Southeast Asia allowed our family to familiarize ourselves with Buddhism and we visited many temples as tourists, especially in Thailand and Cambodia. Their Buddhist temples differ from the Chinese ones. Even after visiting them for five years, their golden peaks and bright orange-clad monks felt foreign. Chinese temples are different. I still feel like a tourist, but not an outsider. It feels like I have a right to be there, despite looking like a foreigner to the natives and despite being a Christian. It feels like I have a place in the dark wooden temples with their red pillars and the grand entryways. The familiar Chinese characters that I can’t even read somehow bring me comfort. Even my dad who was immersed in Chinese culture only after serving as a missionary for the Church felt the same. But why? It’s technically the same religion. Is it because of the familiar style of art? Or the noticeable absence of depictions of hell and damnation? Or maybe it’s the presence of memorable Chinese mythology. Although I’ve been to many more Thai and Khmer temples, there is a sense of familiarity and peace in Chinese temples that is unmatched by any other Buddhist temple I’ve been to.
We never pray like the others who go to the temples, but we will light incense and bow to show respect. At least that’s how I interpret our actions. We do the same thing in front of my grandma’s picture back in the village. There is a responsibility that I feel, being Chinese in a Chinese temple in comparison to a Thai temple. I’ve begun to understand that my participation isn’t worship, and I think many Chinese people feel the same way nowadays. The more I went to the Chinese Buddhist temples, the more I felt that for many locals, “worshipping” in them may not be a form of true worship, but of obligation or tradition. That statue of Guanyin in my home never had any offerings made to it and we have never prayed to it. Incense in our home is mostly just used for the smell, similar to the function of an air freshener. These are symbols of the culture that my mom strives to keep alive and teach her children while living away from her home country. Worship is all about your desire. It is different from respect.
During my study abroad in Taiwan, I had the opportunity to experience these Chinese Buddhist temples again, this time without my family. I didn’t have my mom guiding me and I was surrounded by a lot of other BYU students. Kaohsiung is a city in southern Taiwan where the largest Buddha in Taiwan stands at the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum (佛光山佛陀紀念館). Although this isn’t a temple, it is still a place of worship. Four small pagodas sit in front of a 36-story tall buddha where people give offerings to different buddhas depending on what they are praying for. Because this is a museum, the offerings given are different than what is usually given at temples. They were reusable plastic offerings provided by the museum for us to lay at the feet of each buddha. Each one had a different object that was to be offered to them depending on what they represented, candles for one, flowers for another. Workers of the museum had these objects ready for us on a tray as we walked in. Many students opted to lay them at the feet of the respective buddha and many didn’t. Those students stood at the very back of the group, hoping not to be asked so that they wouldn’t have to decline. I didn’t lay an offering at each one because it was so crowded that it was hard to get through. After being asked if she wanted to participate, one of my friends whispered under her breath, “I won’t participate in idol worship”. I quite literally felt my stomach drop at her words. Was that what I had just done? Did she see me put that flower up there? Was I participating in idol worship? Had I been doing so my whole life? I thought I had made peace with this. Being the person that I am, I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say. I felt guilty. Was this not just a part of my culture? How far do you have to go for this to be idol worship? All I did was put a fake flower on a table. I thought about all the times I questioned my mom in my head when we lit incense. Had I been right to question it? I didn’t know. My resolve had been weaker than I thought.
I left the pagoda alone, second-guessing everything I thought I had already sorted out in my head. I found an area in the museum where guests were allowed to copy Buddhist scriptures in Chinese calligraphy. Looking at the phrases, I found that many of the quotes were very similar to what I knew to be true. They were only slightly off from the doctrine I taught as a missionary. As I copied down a scripture I only partially believed in, I felt peace. It may have been from the low classical Chinese music playing over the speakers, the comforting smell of incense, or the fact that it was only me and a few monks in the room, but I did feel peace. It was different from the feeling I get from scripture study or prayer. This peace was closer to the kind of tranquility you’d feel while meditating, a sort of healing for the soul. Maybe that’s why people come here, maybe that’s why centuries of ancient people valued religion, even in the far corners of the earth. Even now, in our increasingly less religious world, people are turning towards spirituality to find peace and healing that they can’t seem to find elsewhere.
That day at the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum left me with more questions than answers. On the way back to the bus, I ran into a friend who had a very different perspective on Buddhism from the first. He wore a Japa Mala, a chain of beads strung into a necklace significant in the Buddhist tradition. He was never without it. I originally thought he wore them because he bought them as a tourist. I soon found out that his dad, who is a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, believes and supports the teachings of Buddhism as well. He even goes to a Buddhist temple after church on Sundays. This was the first time I’d heard about somebody of our faith actively practicing another religion, especially one that wasn’t a monotheistic religion. This knowledge calmed the questions raging in my head.
I wanted to know why somebody who believed in the same things that I did would feel the need to seek and follow other traditions. People seek religion to feel a connection with a greater being, but why do we want that? We want to know that there is more to life, and that we have a purpose. Religion often gives us answers. It gives us hope. It gives us healing.
It seems most logical to me that the reason people have valued religion for millennia and even spirituality without religion in more recent years is because of their need for healing. No matter how much you strive to be a good person, bad things will happen in life. You will be disappointed in yourself and other people. You will go through hard times and come out damaged on the other side. People need a reason to keep going. They need a way to heal. More and more people are beginning to turn to meditation, a common practice in Eastern religions like Buddhism, to recenter their minds. Many people rely on prayer, which can be considered as a form of meditation. All because we need healing. Nobody is unscathed by the wounds we accumulate just by living. If we don’t do anything about them, we’ll continue to bleed out and it will become more difficult to bounce back from them. It is in our nature to want to avoid pain. But it is also written in our DNA to heal when we are wounded. We seek solace in a higher power because we need healing in places nobody else can reach. We seek comfort in ways nobody can comfort. Whether you are Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, spiritual, or none of the above, you seek this healing.
Buddhism, like many other religions, is founded upon principles that teach others to be better people. They believe in the Noble 8-Fold Path which provides guidelines for the right speech, actions, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration, thoughts, and understanding (“Introduction to Buddhism” 2002). This path can be separated into three categories: moral conduct, concentration, and wisdom. The more I learn about other religions, the more connections I make with my own. It has always been fascinating to see the similarities and differences between other Abrahamic religions and Christianity, but Eastern religions have completely different roots. They have different histories and different gods. But even so, Christianity follows similar moral codes to Buddhism, even if they may not be the canonized commandments that many are familiar with. Like Buddhists, Christians also strive to avoid malicious language that may harm other people. We have different doctrines about how the world began and what will happen after this life, but the behaviors and morals we teach are so similar that following the moral teachings of Buddhism will help you become more Christ-like.
Many people now recognize the value of spiritual health, but they don’t want organized religion. They don’t want people telling them what is right and wrong. A friend I made in Taiwan told me that she didn’t want a book that was thousands of years old to dictate how she lived her life. I’d never heard Christianity described in this way before. The people in my Chinese classes at the National Taiwan Normal University were from all over the world. Many had already graduated from university. I learned quickly what others thought of us.
One classmate remarked, “Don’t you think it’s kind of predatorial the way they lure high schoolers into their church with free English classes?” I felt my heart racing and I started to sweat. Why me? Why do I have to be the one to respond to a question like this? We’d discussed the Church for a couple of minutes at that point, but in my 22 years of living, I’d never heard a perspective quite like this one. I couldn’t respond. I didn’t know how to. I was so caught off guard by this comment that I didn’t even know what to say. I just chuckled awkwardly and said nothing. As they moved on with the conversation, my mind was still completely blank. The regret was already blooming in my chest. I began thinking of all the things I should have said. Things that could have helped them understand. Why couldn’t I have thought of these things earlier? But the conversation had already moved on, and they had no desire to listen to a response that would challenge their very strong opinions. I was thoroughly disappointed with myself. I had returned from my own service as a missionary just months prior, but this was the first time since then that I didn’t have a companion to help me after an unexpected accusation. I felt like I needed to prove to them that their perspective on Latter-day Saints was skewed. That specific topic never came up again, but I continued to think about that conversation for many months to come.
Trying to keep things nonconfrontational was difficult, especially when someone suggested that my religion had been forced upon me by my parents and that I didn’t have a choice in it. Yet another instance where I said nothing. Yes, my upbringing has had a major impact on my choice to follow Christ and attend His Church, but that’s not all there is to it. I wanted to tell her that my religion is my choice, that my faith is my own and I had worked hard for it to get to this point. She couldn’t brush off my efforts in building a personal relationship with God. It was really hard. But it’s also something you don’t understand unless you’ve done it yourself. Unless it’s something you value. I didn’t even understand it until I served a full-time mission. But again, I didn’t think of this response until much later.
Although unsuccessful at times, I have defended my beliefs as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for as long as I can remember. At first, it was because that was what I had been taught from a young age. But the older I got, the more complex the questions became. I had to start relying on my own faith and ask myself what I truly believed and why that even mattered. I pushed forward and developed my faith in Christ because I hoped that I would find joy, peace, comfort, and healing if I needed it. I’ve never identified as Buddhist, and I had always used my mom as an explanation for why we have that statue of Guanyin in our house, but I will now make known my Chinese heritage when people ask about that statue. Yes, it is Buddhist, and I am not. It is a representation of my cultural heritage, not a betrayal of my God. Christ is the one I go to for healing. He not only mends my wounds, but He brings me back stronger. His influence in my life has changed me for the better and made me into the person I am today. As for Guanyin, she isn’t the one I go to for healing but the culture that she represents is a major part of my identity, and I couldn’t do without it.
Bibliography
Brown, Waka Takahashi. “Introduction to Buddhism.” Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, December 2002. https://spice.fsi.stanford.edu/docs/introduction_to_buddhism.