In a move that has sent shockwaves through the world of navel-gazing, lotus-position advocates, and men who can break bricks with their foreheads, the former abbot of China’s legendary Shaolin Temple has been slapped with a prison sentence. The news, delivered with all the solemnity of a flying brick to the temple, prompted a swift and typically sanctimonious response from the United Kingdom, which has apparently never seen a corrupt monk before.
Let’s get this straight. The Shaolin Temple. A place where, for centuries, ass-kicking monks have been refining the art of doing backflips while balancing on one finger. A place that gave us the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and the dubious cinematic genius of Jet Li. And now, its former head honcho, Shi Yongxin, has been found guilty of… wait for it… corruption. In China. No, really. Who could have possibly seen that coming?
The charges, as far as anyone can tell, revolve around the mishandling of temple funds, which is a bit like accusing a Kardashian of excessive self-promotion. Apparently, Our Man Yongxin was using the temple’s considerable revenue stream to fund a rather more lavish lifestyle than is strictly appropriate for a man who’s supposed to be all about simplicity and not wanting stuff. He bought cars. He bought property. The horror. The sheer, unadulterated hypocrisy of a Buddhist monk actually enjoying the fruits of the material world. Someone alert the Dalai Lama, he’ll be heartbroken.
Now, enter the UK, stage left, clutching its pearls and pretending to look shocked. The Foreign Office, that grand bastion of moral superiority, issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over China’s “corrupt state control of religious institutions.” This is the same UK, let us not forget, where the Archbishop of Canterbury recently had to apologise for the Church of England’s massive investment portfolio in companies that are, shall we say, environmentally unfriendly. But that’s different. That’s British corruption, which is like a fine wine. It ages well and is only discussed in hushed tones in members-only clubs.
The real kicker here is the sheer absurdity of the situation. We have a monk, sworn to poverty, getting caught with his hand in the donation box. We have China, a country not exactly known for its squeaky-clean legal system, meting out ‘justice’ with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. And we have the UK, a country where the House of Lords is stuffed with hereditary peers and the police have been caught spying on dead relatives’ families, tut-tutting from the sidelines. It’s like a three-ring circus, but with fewer clowns and more people in robes pretending to be holy.
But here’s the rub, the nub, the bitter pill we must all swallow: this is just another day in the madhouse of global hypocrisy. The Shaolin Temple was already a tourist trap, a Disneyland for the spiritually incontinent, long before Yongxin started buying Mercedes. The definition of ‘kung fu’ has been reduced to a series of Instagram poses. And the UK, with its history of state-church collusion that would make a Vatican accountant blush, has no right to lecture anyone about anything.
So let the ex-abbot rot in his cell, or meditate his way out, I don’t care. But spare me the sanctimony. Corruption is the air we breathe, the water we swim in. It’s just that some people have better PR teams than others. The Shaolin Temple’s halo has slipped, China’s has never been straight, and Britain’s is a cheap plastic thing bought from a souvenir shop in Westminster. In the meantime, I’m off to find a gin that hasn’t been watered down by institutional hypocrisy. Cheers.
