On the market: consumption and material culture in modern Chinese Buddhism

Abstract

For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of ‘market theory.’ While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the ‘aura’ of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goods – in the spirit of Walter Benjamin's essay ‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire’ (1939) – is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations.

Keywords:

• Chinese Buddhism
• religious goods
• media and religion
• consumption

Acknowledgement

I wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I also would like to express my gratitude to Christian Meyer, Thoralf Klein and Thomas Jansen for their valuable suggestions and for organizing the workshop that led to this publication, as well as to the other participants of the workshop, in particular Peter van der Veer, Joachim Gentz, David Palmer, Vincent Goossaert and Wendy Dosset for their feedback and for helping me to refine my ideas.

Notes

¹According to Charles Muller (2007), ji can be ‘the results, or after-effects of something, especially Buddhist teachings’ and can often be translated simply as ‘teaching.’  See also Benjamin (1999a).

²Between the years 1995 and 1999, I conducted multiple interviews with the monks Guangfu and Rending of Wenshu Monastery in Chengdu, as well as with Guopang of Tiexiang Nunnery, outside Chengdu. In Hangzhou, I talked at length in 1998 and 2002 with the scholar Chen Xing, Director of the Hongyi and Feng Zikai Research Centre. In Beijing (1995–98) and Wutaishan (September 1998), during the celebrations for anniversary of two thousand years of Buddhism in China (Jinian Zhongguo Wutaishan Wuding Wenshu pusa kaiguang fahui 紀念中國五台山五頂文殊菩薩開光法會), I was lucky to share the numerous insights and profound knowledge of the Chinese Buddhist world of Professor Tian Qing (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). In Shanghai, where I have lived for extended periods since 1999, I have continuously conversed and interviewed practitioners and visited all major Buddhist monasteries and sites, often taking part in ceremonies and rituals, together with prominent scholars and lay persons, including Qian Renkan. I have also been fortunate enough to meet Feng Zikai's daughter, Feng Yiyin and Liu Zhiping's son Liu Xueyang, and numerous laymen and laywomen, including Song Haidong and Zhu Julan. I have also conducted numerous visits to Putuoshan and to the Jingling Buddhist Press in Nanjing.

³McDannell (1995) and Moore (1994) have eloquently shown that the distribution of popular religious goods, including images of Jesus, wax crosses, morality tales and theatrical revival sermons, have been an integral part of the American religious experience since the late 1700s.

⁴Cf. Strickmann (1996) and Foulk and Sharf (1993–94).

⁵For the practice of liberating animals in later Buddhism cf. also J. Handlin-Smith (1999).

⁶Note, however, that the notion of animated icon, that predates Buddhism's spread in China, ran against elite intellectual doctrinal approaches and thus some early canonical sources indicate that images are only made so that people can ‘make merit.’ See especially Faure (1991 and 1996) but also Strickmann (1996), Foulk and Sharf (1993–94). Cf. also Barrett (2005).

⁷Cf. also Liu Shufen (2007, 2009).

⁸There are several theories and several different classification systems regarding the nature of Buddha's ‘bodies.’ The list of ten bodies, for example, includes the body of enlightenment, the body of transformation, the body of preservation of the true teachings (these being the relics of the Buddha), the body adorned with excellent physical characteristics due to great merit, the body manifested at will according to occasion and so on, cf. Guang Xing (2005: 161).

⁹On pilgrimage cf. also Reader and Walter (1993); on recent attitudes to pilgrimage in Japan see Reader (1987); on new technologies and charismatic non-Western religious movements see for example Hackett (1998).

¹⁰An interesting example of Buddhist cosmopolitan modernity in Japan is the transformation of the hanamatsuri花祭 (the celebration of Buddha's birthday) into the Lumbini Festival, marking the passage from a local festival to an international one and a public mass spectacle (Snodgrass 2009).

¹¹Here, Chang is referring to the work of the Wen brothers, pioneers of the Chinese animation industry and active in Shanghai in the 1930s.

¹²I suggested elsewhere that in the 1920s Chinese Buddhists became conversant with internationally circulated discourses and practices regarding the relationship between religion and the modern media. The very flexibility of the terms and the technologies involved allowed them to be translated around the globe as well as be adapted to local circumstances and to generate local meanings.

¹³For the religious context in China at end of the 19th century see Goossaert (2006: 307–336). For Buddhist-inspired cultural activism in pre-Communist-era Shanghai see Barmé (2002), Brooks-Jessup (2010), Tarocco (2007) and Welch (1968).

¹⁴Between 1909 and 1913, Hardoon and his wife Luo Jialing also sponsored the publication of the Chinese Canon of Buddhist scriptures, one of the largest collections of texts in the world, a huge scholarly and financial undertaking for a private individual and donor; cf. Barrett (n.d.).

¹⁵For examples of Buddhist transnational wealth and activities see Ashiwa (2000), Chandler (2004) and Snodgrass (2009).

¹⁶See Welch (1967: 501, n. 22).

¹⁷Cf. Welch (1967: 343–344 and passim). China's most famous Buddhist reformer, Taixu, among others, is also portrayed in countless photographs.

¹⁸This practice was still very common in 20^th-century China, as attested by various sources, including Prip-Møller (1937: 179) and Yetts (1911: 699–725). 

¹⁹Cf. the sources underlying the biography of Xingci 興慈, Chen Qubing (2002).

²⁰The image has been reproduced in many commemorative volumes of the master's life that I have seen. Cf. Lin Ziqin (1995). It is also available online, cf. for example Thomas Hahn's http://hahn.zenfolio.com/p368676071/h20c4842#h20c4842.

²¹On mofa-related teachings, practices and prophecies of decline cf. Hubbard (1999).

²²Stories about miraculous images (ruixiang) were recorded in various text sources compiled during the sixth and seventh centuries and range from the Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng zhuan 高僧傳, T.2059, 50: 322–424) by Huijiao 慧皎, from around 531, to the Assembled Records of Response of the Three Jewels in the Spiritual Realm (Ji shenzhou sanbao gantong lu集神州三寶感通錄, T#2106, 52: 404–435), compiled in 664 by Daoxuan 道宣(596–667).

²³ The Biographies of Eminent Monks (Gaoseng zhuan) was completed around 530 by Huijiao (497–554). Earliest references to the creation of a first image by Udyāna (優填 or 優陀延王), King of Vasta, are found in two canonical scriptures on image making: the Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on the Making of Buddha Images (佛說作佛形象經, T. 692, 16:788a-c) translated in the Later Han-dynasty (25–220), and the Sutra Spoken by the Buddha on the Retribution of Merits [Attained by] Making and Installing Buddha Images (佛說造立形象福報經, T. 693, 16:788c-790a) translated in the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420).

²⁴Cf. Muller (2007), http://buddhism-dict.net/ddb.

²⁵Cf. A New Century Chinese Dictionary (2002: 1781–1782).

²⁶Cf. Qian Renkang (1995) and Qian Renkang et al. ed. (1990).

²⁷Interview with the layman Liu Xueyang, Shanghai, 12 August 1999. Interview with the cleric Shi Rending, Chengdu, 13 April 1996.

²⁸Interview with the layman Liu Xueyang, Shanghai, 12 August 1999. Interview with the cleric Shi Rending, Chengdu, 13 April 1996.

²⁹Interviews with customers of Gongdelin restaurant, Shanghai, May 2010. On Buddhist vegetarian ideals and practices in China see Kieschnick (2005).

³⁰For a pioneering study on religion and the Internet in Japan see Baffelli et al. (2010).