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Updated Monday, April 13, 2009 9:39 am TWN, By Joe Hung, The China Post

Mad Monk

One of the best known Chinese Buddhist monks is Ji Gong (濟公), which literally means Relief Lord. As his name suggests — “Gong” is more often the title of honor and reverence given a Taoist priest or immortal — Ji Gong has just as many followers among the Taoist faithful as among adherents to Gautama Buddha. Better known in English as Mad Monk, he never shied away from wine and meat, which of course are taboos to a Buddhist bonze. His hearty partaking of the tabooed drink and food may have endeared him to the largely Taoist nation. Incidentally, most of the Chinese worship Confucius and his distinguished disciples, the Buddha and his bodhisattvas, and Laozhi and his immortals in an ever-increasing pantheon all at the same time.

Buddhist adherents to Mad Monk are more than willing to condone his sinful drinking and eating habit. Getting drunk and eating meat isn't as bad a sin as going against the vow of celibacy, they reason. Buddhism teaches man to get rid of his craving or tanha. One way to get rid of it is by abstention. That's why monks are forbidden to drink, eat meat or get married. Another way is by sating oneself to the extent that the craving doesn't exist any more. So, some Buddhists believe it really doesn't matter whether a monk drinks, eats meat or gets married, if he can be enlightened. To be enlightened is the ultimate objective monks want to achieve. Then they can teach followers like the Buddha, who in Sanskrit means the Enlightened One. Well, at least one Japanese monk was enlightened and married and then founded the largest Buddhist school in Japan. He is Shinran and his school is the Jodo Shinshu (淨土真宗) or True Pure Land School. His descendents still preside over the two sects of the school, Higashi honganji (東本願寺) and Nishi honganji (西本願寺) or East and West Purvap-pravidhna (Original Vow of the Amitabha Buddha).

Mad Monk is also known as Relief Lord Living Buddha or Ji Kong huo-fu (濟公活佛). He is enshrined as such in at least 13 temples across Taiwan, three of them in Taipei. His birthday, the second day of the second moon on the Chinese lunar calendar, is jubilantly celebrated by the faithful.

It is believed that an unknown soldier in the Huai Army of Liu Ming-chuan brought an image of Mad Monk from China to Taipei and started the Ji Gong worship in Taiwan. Liu, the then governor of Fujian and a top-ranking general in Li Hung-chang's Huai (Anhui) Army, led a division in defense of Taiwan against the French foreign legionnaires in the Sino-French War of 1884-85. Liu fought well and forced the legionnaires, who had occupied Keelung, to withdraw to the Pescadores. Admiral Amede Anatole Courbet, commander of the French Asiatic Squadron, had to stay on Penghu, the largest of the Pescadores, until the war ended.

He had died there, before the foreign legionnaires were withdrawn. After the war, Liu was made the first governor of Taiwan and started modernizing his island province.

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