On the road in Hongdae at JustBe Temple

The Journal of American Culture, 1987

This report is an example of how the Tian Kong Buddhist Temple realigns itself after their eviction from Pulau Tekong in 1987. I will attempt to construct the relationship between the religious role of the temple and the portrayal of continuity that the temple has for former Pulau Tekong residents.

Provincial China, 2010

'moment' at the so-called Ta'er Temple. The event which I witnessed as the major annual Tibetan Buddhist 2 occasion of Monlam Chenmo in 1993 but which the Qinghai Daily cites in the Chinese time-and-cultural frame of the Lantern Festival in 2003 has a long history as the former. Its redefinition, or apparent makeover, in the past ten years raises questions of state and local agency, readings of the past, and particularly the political uses of space and occasion. As state agency politicises religious space and practice here, I suggest that at this politicised cultural moment, not only butter is being sculpted into new forms at this particular Tibetan Buddhist monastery. While I hope to leaven the inevitable subjectivity of personal encounters with wider analysis, based primarily in history, I also offer an individual's perspective in the tradition of witness, contingent of course on the witness's own informational, cultural, psychological and many other filters . Although moments take place in places, diverse participants, commentators and interpreters may not all conceptualise the site of action in similar terms. To start with names, the site in question -the Tibetan Buddhist monastery of this paper's title -has two prime locally-used names, 'Kubum' in Tibetan and 'Ta'ersi' in Chinese. Tibetan Buddhist and contemporary Chinese texts agree that the monastery is the most important of its kind in the region, and one of the six great Gelugpa monastic establishments of the Tibetan world. It lies 26 kilometres southwest from the provincial capital Xining in the town of Lushar, seat of Huangzhong (Tib: Kubum) County, which used to form part of Haidong Prefecture but since December 1999 has been moved under the administration of Xining Municipality. Haidong has been both a cultural-ecological frontier and a geopolitical frontier for centuries, whose population has experienced cultural and to some extent political integration into both the Tibetan and Chinese worlds at different times. The area lies at multiple crossroads of culture, religion and civilizational influences. Since the rise of the Tibetan Empire in the 7th century, Tibetan and Chinese civilizations have pressed the region of Haidong -east of the lake 3 -from the west and east respectively. Islam's centuries-old presence links it in culture and religion to Central Asia, while Mongol hegemonies, before and after the Mongol adoption of Tibetan Buddhism, left demographic and cultural footprints into the present. Ecologically Haidong forms the sole naturally arable segment of Qinghai Province, thereby attracting the only significant Chinese settlement in the region before 1949. Beyond Haidong lie the vast grasslands and mountains of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau where, prior to PRC development projects, Tibetan and Mongol mobile pastoralism provided the only livelihood for human inhabitants. 3 Qinghai (Ch.), Kokonor (Mong.), Tsongon (Tib.), the vast inland saltwater lake west of Xining. Huangzhong became a Chinese county at the same time Qinghai became a Chinese province, in 1928, as the Nationalist Government sought to consolidate its tenuous hold over Republican China's northwestern territorial claims. Lushar was then a small shabby trading town inhabited by a variety of people, only loosely connected to the administration in Xining, more appended to Kubum Monastery about a kilometre up a hillside at the south end of town. (Rock, 1956, 6, 23) Today this pattern still echoes in the topography and atmospheric dynamic of Lushar. Kubum still in a way defines Lushar, if not culturally or demographically in a county 77 per cent Han Chinese and 15 per cent Hui (Chinese Muslims), 4 then touristically, as Kubum is methodically reconstructed as the major drawcard in Qinghai's tourist industry. The wording of the article in the Qinghai Daily struck me so forcibly when I first saw it because it presented an event in terms that seemed anomalous with what I had seen take place ten years earlier. At that time, I and most of those who were at Kubum construed proceedings as the occasion of Monlam Chenmo, the Tibetan Buddhist year's most significant celebration, which at Kubum is distinguished by a butter sculpture exhibition that marks Monlam's end. This interpretation was conveyed to me by representatives of various nationalities, including Han Chinese, at least in the sense that the main event was the Buddhist festival, highlighted by the butter sculpture exhibition. Even a Han deputy-director of Qinghai's CITS had presented it to me in these terms, not even mentioning the coincidence of the Lantern Festival which I found out later in situ. Monlam Chenmo, or the Great Prayer, is held at the beginning of the Tibetan New Year which sometimes, and in the Amdo region usually, 5 falls at the same time as the Chinese New Year. As is well known, New Year is the most significant festival period of the Chinese lunar calendar year, and in Qinghai Province's Xining districts, where Chinese have been settled for centuries, it is celebrated in distinctive local rituals throughout the countryside as well as a mass parade in the capital city a couple of weeks after New Year's Day. The Lantern Festival (灯节Dengjie, 元宵节Yuanxiaojie), held throughout the hemisphere of Chinese civilisation, forms part of the series of celebrations during the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival. Falling on the night (宵xiao) of the 15th day of the first (元yuan) month of the lunar calendar, when the first full moon of the new year appears, it marks the end of the Chinese New Year period. While its origins probably lie in multiple religious and cosmological sources, 6 in its recognisable form as Yuanxiaojie it dates at least from the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD). Basic celebratory practices include eating a special food, tangyuan 汤圆 (or 元 宵 yuanxiao), symbolising family unity, and carrying lanterns around in the evening. The Lantern Festival, and the main finalities of Monlam Chenmo, thus take place on the same date: the night of the full moon two weeks into the new year.

is article is devoted to an early seventeenth-century folio album (now mounted as a handscroll) assembled to invite potential donors to contribute to the reconstruction of Fuyuan Monastery, located on an island in Lake Tai, near Suzhou. e album included two paintings representing the monastery as it might look after reconstruction as well as a set of calligraphies by Suzhou luminaries recording the efforts of the monk who had initiated the fund-raising campaign and encouraging contributions. e artistic and social circumstances of the endeavor are analyzed on the basis of the texts in the album and other contemporary sources.

During the Tang dynasty (618-907), 1 the Buddhist community (sa∝gha) interacted with the state with an intensity that was rarely witnessed in the previous dynasties and those that followed. Although being occasionally restrained by the first two Tang emperors, and , Buddhism started to gain its momentum from the time Gaozong (r. 649-683) took over, and its growth was so immense and rapid that it reached its unprecedented climax under the later half of Gaozong's reign, which continued throughout the rule of Empress Wu regency: 684-690; reign: 690-705) and Zhongzong (r. 705-710). It suffered some cutbacks under the reign of Xuanzong (r. 712-756), who attempted to halt the aggressive extension of the sa∝gha's domain in which his predecessors had colluded. After Xuanzong's heirs Suzong (r. 756-762) and Daizong (r. 762-779) succeeded in cracking down on the An Lushan 安錄山 (703-757) and Shi Siming 史思明 (703-761) Rebellion (755-763) and reunifying the whole country, and up until the end of the Tang in 907, Buddhism, by and large, continued to prosper except for a brief period under the rule of Wuzong (r. 840-846), who launched the only persecution of Buddhism under the Tang.

Fabrications, 2017

2017

It is possible for laypersons to purchase a tour package allowing them to ‘cross the line’ and for a day or two ‘live as a Buddhist monk’ in some Chinese monasteries, with the result that they might intrude into the life of its religious members much more deeply than a simple visitor with some degree of religious interest would. This paper investigates whether visitors who had chosen to experience the life a Buddhist monk for a day or two in a Buddhist monastery were looking for the opportunity of experiencing some degree of “peak/extramundane experience”. In Buddhism, a peak/extramundane experience is meant to be a truly meaningful religious experience that is a step in the direction of enlightened. It is also a core objective, to a Buddhist practitioner, of undertaking a pilgrimage to and spending some time in a monastery. Yet lay visitors with various degrees of faith in Buddhism may have different purpose(s) for living for a while in a monastery. Each case can put the resident m...

Socio-Cultural Aspects of Aging in Buddhist Northern Thailand

The testimony of two Buddhist lay nuns gives a positive insight into the culture of aging in this Northern Thai community. This is fieldwork I conducted in Chiangmai in 1973. What becomes clear is the role of the Temple in the lives of Northern Thai elders. In this article I describe how elderly men and women spend a night at the temple once a month; and how the temple becomes a place of solace, safety, and hope. Yes, there were disappointments around lack of merit-making rites and this caused resentments among the old people. But time at the temple, hearing sermons, aiding the monks, chanting, sitting in the shade would dissipate much of the hurt. In the final analysis, the temple and household are contrasted as two competing spheres each with its distinctive ethos or emotional tone. The testimony of two vital elderly Buddhist Nuns is presented and examined for the type of resolutions elderly Northern Thai were attempting with their families and selves.

The world is experiencing an increase in the number of elderly people. This global trend is more advanced in western countries. However, many Asian countries are experiencing the same phenomenon, and within the next few decades, Asia will be the “oldest” region in the world. Adverse effects from a rapidly aging population on society and economy are evident; therefore, policy options are being created to deal with these problems. Nevertheless alternative solutions are still needed. As Asia is the region with the highest proportion of Buddhists in the world and Buddhist principles are embedded within belief systems of followers, the idea of using religious space to support the aging population might be worthy of consideration. This academic interest raises two questions: (1) beyond the use of temple space for preserving and spreading Buddhist teachings, do monastic institutions manage temple space for the benefit of elderly ?, and (2) how do such ancillary activities contribute to the well-being of the aged? This paper uses evidence from Thailand, a country with a large number of Buddhist temples (37,075), to explore these issues. The synthesis reveals that beyond religious activities, numerous secular activities are conducted at temples. These activities conform to the Buddhist worldview on aging and seem to actively promote the well-being of the aged in three dimensions; namely, physical and psychological health, lifelong learning, and social well-being. This article seeks to refocus attention away from governmental management of the elderly towards local management, in the belief that this would be particularly helpful in parts of Asia where institutional welfare is somewhat unreliable. As the temple is a component of the community and plays an important role in the cultural life of Buddhists, it is argued that using temple space can serve as an alternative approach to the development of appropriate policies aimed at enhancing the well-being of the aged in the Buddhist world.