Moon in Taiwan

Sun Myung Moon has come to Taiwan and gone again. The visit was short. Moon arrived on November 30 flying in from Hongkong. He gave a speech on the same evening and left early the next morning for the Philippines - after a brief meeting with Taiwan members. The public part was pretty standard. The private part – a few hundred attendants – was more enjoyable.

The public appearance

Sun Myung Moon came to give his inaugural speech for the Universal Peace Foundation (UPF). He does that in 100 nations within 100 days. Taiwan was the 78^th stop on the tour.

The event took place in the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, located in Chungshan Square Park in the eastern central part of the capital Taipei. It was built towards the end of the sixties in memory to Sun Yat Sen, the founder of the Republic of China. It also serves as a cultural center with a museum and performance halls.

Attendants included ambassadors from a number of countries, other local VIPs and Neil Bush - the brother of the American president. Annette Lu, vice president of Taiwan, gave a short speech on family values and – as usual – mentioned the 800 Chinese missiles pointed at the island. She left after her speech.

Moons speech was – more or less - the standard speech given on all events of the 100 city tour, with comparably few extempore remarks. It covered the unification teaching on the relationship between God and mankind, the importance of family and lineage, God’s suffering throughout the Biblical events, the role of the Unification Blessing and his work for world peace through the creation of a peace UN, which he also calls the Abel-U.N, based on the Unification teaching on Cain and Abel. Official Unification sites probably cover the background of the UPF initiative sufficiently well.

Standard does not mean ordinary. With high level VIPs in attendance it surprises always to hear that one should “enter into a mystical stand and prayerfully ask God” questions. He suggested this to the audience so that one might – when in doubt - verify directly some of  his theological statements - that the axis of the cosmos is the parent-child relationship between God and mankind, for example, or that Jesus Christ did not come to die and that Moon himself is the flag bearer during this age of the Second Coming.

In the presence of Neil Bush he also did not hold back with the usual comments on the Iraq war and war: “In this age, war is a most primitive and destructive means of resolving conflict, and will never lead to lasting peace.” While he still maintained that “humankind should end the perverse cycle of sacrificing our children’s lives and squandering astronomical sums of money to fight wars”, this time he stopped short of calling war an ‘insane barbarism’. Instead, he acknowledged that America plays an important role in the Middle East. May be an unusual attempt in diplomacy.

Apart from that Moon seldom diverted from the written text, less than usual compared to other events on the tour. 

What was more of an issue was the framework of the evening. One could not ignore the impression that the movement in general is more occupied with ideas than with their implementation. Ideas are a dime a dozen, one says. However, the plan down to earth usually leaves many wishes open. Throughout the evening one could observe that the ground crew may not be up to the challenge of implementation.

The plan that turns and idea into a success seems to lack attention to detail. One might expect more from people who – according to their own understanding - receive the messiah in their own country.

Lists of VIP attendants, for example,  were obviously incomplete. The idea was to have a camera focus in on a person when his/her name was called. However, at the mentioning of several names the TV camera searched the line of VIPs and then the audience in vain. The emcee apparently was left unaware of their ultimate absence – or delayed arrival. Of those that were found many names were pronounced badly – understandable but highly disruptive in light of highest diplomatic ranks in attendance. Rumor even has it that an embassy car pulled up at the hall entrance and left again – with the ambassador – because nobody was there to receive them. The activities before and after the speech were messy, with background music frequently adding to the confusion.

A major accomplishment was the brieft appearance of Taiwan’s vice president, Ms. Annette Lu. She spoke for about 15 minutes on family issues and local concerns for peace with mainland China. As the event took place during an election campaign, when one usually stays out of anything controversial, her appearance, short as it was, speaks for the ground work of the movement. Local news media criticized her participation, but her party’s meager showing in the elections has not been associated with the event.

The larger concern that the movement might not manage to connect the high ideas of its founder to the ground, remains. Other nations tried harder. The Philippines, for example, organized an exhibition around the visit, which should allow for more impact and follow up.

In general, these organizational issues compound the impression of lack of leadership and management associated with an inward looking mindset. On a larger scale that could explain the limited impact that the movement has on societies – in spite of high and well founded ideals. During the event Moon asked “Where are the young leaders of Taiwan.” Good question.

The private part

In all countries that they visit the Moons make effort to meet local members. Even in situations where that’s hardly possible, Moon makes considerable effort in this regard. When there was a change of schedule in an African country, he would talk from the plane with members on the ground.

In Taipei the members enjoyed a more down to earth experience. Already years ago Moon established a tradition of reading religious texts – usually one of his thousands of speeches - in the early morning, from 5:00 – 6:00 am. Thus in the early morning of December 1, members gathered in a hall of the Grand Hyatt Regency where the Moon’s staid overnight.

Not everybody follows the tradition of HDH every day, but with Moon in attendance several hundred members showed up.

The event started with the pledge ceremony, a formal prayer, preceded by ritual bows. Usually members bow in front of a picture of Sun Myung Moon and his wife. The picture represents the position of God or True Parents, but outsiders usually consider it bowing before a worldly ruler.

After everybody sits down somebody begins to read from one of Moon’s speeches – in Korean.

Members are supposed to learn Korean, many of them don’t. Thus there is simultaneous translation via earphones into Chinese. The simultaneous translation into English was messed up somehow - ‘technical problems’. Don’t let that hear the Hyatt management. So Neil Bush got an impromptu translation first from Chinese into English and later from a Korean who apparently spoke sufficient English.
 

For the members it awesome experiences to come so close to a saint, almost touching. The word saint comes over the lips more easily in Asia than it would in Western countries - probably due to the many Buddhists masters traveling around and teaching.

What strikes the eye, in general, is a set of rather high ideals that originate in a down to earth spiritual view of mankind and its destiny. That teaching focuses on a good, loving God who has not been in control of history due to a separation event at the beginning of history. This unprincipled state is coming to an end in our time. The base of lasting peace is mutual commitment with winners on all sides - hence Moon’s aversion against war and violent struggle of any kind. The focus on religion, messiah etc. seems to move into the background more and more when one listens to Moon. He speaks of a world after the coming of heaven, a world that doesn’t need a savior and where mankind relates to the creator without the crutch of religion.

That in itself could be a useful framework for powerful, effective action, in the awareness that one has Heaven on one’s side. It actually fits well within Chinese philosophy and tradition.

The details observed on the event and beyond, give some reason for concern whether the movement will be able to deliver its part. One man can only do so much.
 

Copyright © Cultural Communications, 2005. All rights reserved.
Reproduction even of excerpts is not permitted without explicit written consent of the website
 owner who can be contacted at moonblog@foreignlands.org.

Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall

Best viewed with: