After the World Teachers’ Day, scholars and human rights activists discuss the slandering and harassment of spiritual masters.
by Alessandro Amicarelli
After October 5, the United Nations World Teachers’ Day, CESNUR and Human Rights Without Frontiers organized on October 8 a hybrid seminar at the Tai Ji Men Qigong Academy in Walnut, California, with the title “Persecuting Spiritual Leaders: The Tai Ji Men Case.” The date was selected to coincide with the celebrations of the 22nd anniversary of the Walnut academy, which in turn offered the opportunity to remember that October 8 was also World Mental Health Day, and Tai Ji Men’s practice benefits both physical and mental health.
Marco Respinti, an Italian scholar and journalist who serves as director-in-charge of Bitter Winter, introduced the webinar and a video presenting the Global Prayer for Love and Peace and the One Minute Silence initiatives, launched by Tai Ji Men for October 16 as a nonsectarian response to the current crises. They are co-sponsored by Bitter Winter together with several other organizations.
Respinti emphasized the need of teachers in schools to cooperate with the parents for a harmonious development of children. He also mentioned China’s Cultural Revolution as a misguided attempt to eliminate the whole professional class of teachers, creating an educational disaster that even subsequent Chinese leaders have recognized. More broadly, Respinti said, ideological approaches to education end up destroying it. Totalitarian states and corrupt bureaucrats hate independent teachers including the spiritual ones, Respinti concluded, as demonstrated by the Tai Ji Men case in Taiwan.
Respinti then introduced the first three speakers. Stephen Enada, president and co-founder of the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON), a Baptist pastor, and a well-known human rights activist, argued that in the case of Tai Ji Men the persecution of its spiritual leader, Dr. Hong Tao-Tze, had three different features. There was direct persecution thought the criminal case, attack on the economic basis of Tai Ji Men through the ill-founded tax bills, and indirect attack, as not only the Shifu (Grand Master) but also some of his dizi (disciples) were harassed and persecuted. Enada concluded by suggesting that more advocacy is needed, particularly in the United States, to make the human rights community more and more aware of the Tai Ji Men case.
J. Gordon Melton, distinguished professor emeritus of American Religion at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and one of the world’s leading scholars of religious pluralism, explored the notion of “spiritual teachers,” their role in society, and how this role interacts with religious liberty, a comparatively new idea in the long human history, as it emerged in its modern form only in the 16th century. The global movement of people and immigration also brought new kinds of spiritual masters from different cultures into new countries, including to the United States. One component of religious liberty, the right of spiritual masters to exert a “prophetic” role and criticize governments and bureaucrats based on a superior idea of conscience, has proved the most difficult to be accepted, Melton said. Bureaucrats do not like to be criticized, and some of them tend to attack the teachings of spiritual masters they do not understand or like as “superstition” or “fraud.” This was what happened to Tai Ji Men, Melton said. He suggested that the bureaucrats who persecuted Dr. Hong probably did not specially understand nor care about his teachings, they simply wanted to crack down on a movement they regarded as too independent.
Camelia Marin, deputy director of the NGO Soteria International, presented the case of a European spiritual teacher, Gregorian Bivolaru, the founder of the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA), also know as the MISA Yoga School. As the Swedish Supreme Court, which opened the way to his political asylum in Sweden, and the European Court of Human Rights confirmed, Bivolaru and his movement were persecuted both in Communist and post-Communist Romania through false accusations of sexual abuse and unfair trials. Marin compared this case to the harassment of Tai Ji Men’s Shifu in Taiwan, which she shortly summarized, concluding that spiritual masters that promote ways of thinking disturbing for the powers that be are often slandered and persecuted.
Willy Fautré, co-founder and director of Human Rights Without Frontiers, introduced the second part of the webinar. Fautré recalled the story of the World Teachers’ Day, which was introduced by the United Nations among its days in observance in 1994. The date, October 5, commemorates the signing in 1966 of the “Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers” by UNESCO and the International Labor Organization. The Recommendation intended to protect the status of the teachers in situation of crises and promote their formation in all countries. Fautré also shortly recalled his past as a teacher who was prepared to learn from his students. In fact, he started his teaching career as an atheist and converted to Christianity due to his interactions with his students, Fautré said.
Fautré presented a video where world leaders and common citizens expressed their support for the Global Prayer for Love and Peace and the One Minute Silence.
He then introduced the testimonies of four dizi.
Kelly Wu, a purchasing specialist, expressed her excitement in participating in this and previous celebrations of anniversaries of the Walnut academy. These are not only festive events, she said. They are opportunities to reflect on the central role of conscience as the needed moral compass for both individuals and countries. The unjust tax case against Tai Ji Men, Wu said, is not only a bureaucratic case. It is not even a tax case only. It is evidence that the compass of conscience has largely been lost by Taiwan’s institutions and bureaucrats, and should be urgently recovered.
Jason Lu, the director of an electronic design company in California, expressed his understanding for the difficult life of teachers as he was once a teacher himself. He also recalled how his own teacher in Taiwan, and even his father, were influenced by the slander campaign started in 1996 against Tai Ji Men. However, both dizi and Shifu resisted this attack, and continued to bring love and peace to the world. This was evidenced by the international events Lu has attended, which include the World Leader Summit of Love and Peace held last month in New York. There, Lu had the opportunity to witness the warm friendship between Dr. Hong and the former President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, a politician well-known for his advocacy of international and regional peace.
Jeff Kuo, who works as a business development manager in a U.S. company, reported how he first joined Tai Ji Men hoping to solve his insomnia and gout problems—which he did—and only later learned about the Tai Ji Men case. Kuo believes that the case has severely damaged the relationship of trust between the Taiwanese citizens and their government, which has proved incapable of keeping the abuse of power by some bureaucrats in check. Like other speakers, he also emphasized the importance of a return to conscience for solving both Taiwan’s legal and tax systemic problems and the Tai Ji Men case.
Tiffany Shao, the principal engineer in a semiconductor industry, reported that she is herself the daughter of a schoolteacher, and learned the importance of teachers in her own home. Later, she met Dr. Hong and understood the role of spiritual teachers, particularly when she saw how other famous spiritual teachers from all around the world hold Tai Ji Men’s Shifu in high esteem. This makes the persecution of Dr. Hong and his dizi that started in 1996, and created considerable suffering in Shao’s family, even more unjust and less understandable, Shao said.
Cheng Yawen, a bank executive from London, England, said she learned a lot from teachers in school, yet she always found something was missing. Nobody succeeded in teaching her how to overcome her shyness—until she met Dr. Hong. Then, the once shy Cheng found herself speaking in public with confidence, including at prestigious scholarly conferences. A logical conclusion, Cheng said, would be that teachers such as Dr. Hong should be respected and honored. This did not happen in the Tai Ji Men case in Taiwan, Cheng concluded, creating a situation that now needs to be urgently rectified.
Massimo Introvigne, an Italian sociologist who serves as managing director of CESNUR and editor-in-chief of Bitter Winter, offered the conclusions of the seminar. He observed that in the anti-cult narrative, particularly in France, “guru” has become a derogatory word. This is absurd, Introvigne said, as in India, where it originated, the word “guru” has a very positive meaning, and indicates a spiritual master who dispels the ignorance of the disciples and lead them to enlightenment. In both Hinduism and other spiritual traditions, to receive their teachings varying degrees of submission and obedience to the gurus are requested. While abuses are certainly possible, Introvigne observed that today the very fact of surrendering a part of our liberty to a spiritual leader is regarded as something objectionable, because modern rationalism does not understand the religious context of the master-disciple relationship. This was also one of the backgrounds of Dr. Hong’s persecution in Taiwan, Introvigne concluded.
A final video featured the song “A Prayer for Peace,” which Tai Ji Men dizi sung at their September 21 event in Times Square in New York.
