Asian Religions, page 2
Unwilling to limit myself to a single defining identity (son, student, investor, mother, laborer, engineer, artist, citizen), I seek to develop a multifaceted, protean self – but how can I guide this process in an integrative way, and how can spiritual insight aid me in this process of self-defining and self-becoming?
Pulled in multiple directions by school, work, family, and society, how can I maintain a coherent sense of self, where the various dimensions of my identity can inspire and complete one another?
What is my role as an individual vis-à-vis a wider community – a role not limited to my family or country but extending to the world as a whole? What does my spiritual understanding of myself and my spiritual work, both mental and physical, contribute to my sense of global citizenship? Though my interests are intensely personal, I recognize that they are shared with my cohort, which includes not just the citizens of Taipei (or London or New York), but the citizens of every country and the adherents of every religion.
In reading through these questions, you may have picked up on their individualistic emphasis. While “individualism” is a modern Western phenomenon (with its own history and cultural contingency), it is increasingly the driving motivation and self-conception of educated persons around the world. It is no longer accurate to describe individualism as exclusively Western or to generalize an individualist West in contrast to a collectivist East. Indeed the thesis of Western individualism in contrast to Eastern collectivism is an overstated generalization, even when applied to traditional culture. And this is all the more true today, when the individualist tendency is as pronounced in Asia as it is in the West. This is partly a function of globalization and Western “influence,” but even more of the modern development of societies around the world, as they become more diverse and decentralized, and of economic trends that favor creativity, mobility, and adaptability. More and more, the scope of cultural self-expression (including spiritual self-cultivation) is focused on the individual, interacting with natural, social, and global environments.
So this book is directed primarily to individuals. Its goal is to stimulate self-reflection and personal engagement. It is my hope and expectation, as author, that the reader will ask, and ask repeatedly: “What does this mean to me? How does this resonate with my own experience and understanding? How might I be able to apply this insight or practice to my own life?” In teaching courses on Asian religions to students in Texas, USA, I urge my students to think of their education as an exercise (“exercise” means application and action, not just passive learning) in what I call “sympathetic imagination” – imagining oneself sympathetically or empathically as “believing” and “doing” what “other people” in “other religions” believe and do. Only in this way can they begin to understand others (the practicality of which should be obvious in today's interpenetrating world) and only in this way can they begin to appreciate the power and potential of Asian religions in their own lives. Sympathetic imagination often leads to creative adaptation – going far beyond passive understanding.
I have taught a course on Asian Religions for 20 years at Trinity University, a liberal arts college with selected pre-professional programs in San Antonio, Texas. I have emphasized both humanistic and more “practical” benefits of the study of religion – including self-reflection, appreciation of human diversity, and cultural understanding, as well as in the service of international trade, government diplomacy, and global citizenry. This orientation – with head in the clouds and feet on the ground – is one that I have learned to embrace, and it has forced me to examine the role of religion in culture more deeply than a purely humanistic approach alone would permit. Religion is embedded in the economic, political, and social dimensions of human cultures. It shapes and is shaped by worldly pursuits. This is the basic orientation of this book.
I am indebted to Trinity University for granting me an administrative leave in spring 2012, after seven years as chair of the Department of Religion, affording me the time to devote to this project. During that semester I was in residence in the Department of History at National Chengkung University in Tainan, Taiwan, Republic of China, and I am indebted to the former and current chairs, Professors Cheng Wing-sheung and Chen Heng-an, for their hospitality. I also benefitted from conversations with Professor Tsai Yen-zen of the Institute of Comparative Religions at Chengchi University in Taipei on the category of “religion” as a means of comparative cultural analysis and understanding. Finally, I wish to express my special appreciation to Tang Ming-jer, president of Tunghai University, for his commitment to holistic education and interdisciplinary research in the humanities and in natural and social sciences. I am grateful to Mackenzie Brown, Bradley Kayser, Fernando Triana, and to friends new and old for inspiring me to write a book that would be interesting not only to scholars or students, but to a general audience of interested readers: I have tried to address you as my conversation partners in writing this book. I am indebted to my anonymous readers and to Rebecca Harkin, General Editor of Religion at Wiley Blackwell, for helping me to sharpen the language and to address errors and infelicitous phrasing in early drafts; whatever errors or misleading generalizations might remain are my responsibility. And I am forever grateful to my wife and my children for their understanding and support through the transition rites, both painful and immensely satisfying, of high school and college graduations, and bold steps forward in life. Thank you, Ruth, Miranda, and Adrian. You have all inspired me to take risks, to find joy in others, and to find self in family. It is to you that I dedicate this book.
Part I
Introductory Material
1
Religion
There are plenty of books on the market which describe Asian religions for the introductory college course or the casual reader. They define Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Shintō as distinct beliefs and practices. More recent textbooks are conscientious about presenting Asian religious traditions in multiple aspects – not just as scriptural traditions or “systems of thought,” but as living religions, especially in their behavioral and ritual dimensions. Many are illustrated, or contain photographs of an ethnographic nature. Most are accurate, making use of both academic scholarship and insider experiences. I recommend these books for seeing how important religion has been and continues to be in Asian cultures.
This book may differ from others of its kind in recognizing that the study of religion has intrinsic value (it is humanistic) but at the same time supports the practical objective of intercultural exchange. One goal of this book is to further social and cultural commerce – a word that is related not only to trade, but also to communication, understanding, even appreciation. I do not subscribe to the prejudice that humanism and practical work are mutually opposed. In fact they inform one another.
The impact of religious tradition is felt in virtually every dimension of cultural life: politics, economics, medicine, ethics and law, marriage and family, human rights, media and communications, science and technology. The role of religion in shaping these institutions may no longer be obvious or apparent, but it runs so deep that, had religion been absent, the shape and contour of these cultural traits would have evolved in utterly different ways or would never have come into existence at all. In this sense, the study of religion also involves description of cultural practices, as well as personal understandings of social purpose and value. I often tell my students that my courses deal less with “religion” in a narrow sense than they do with “culture” as a whole: Whom do people marry, and why? How do people order themselves – who is higher in status, who lower? Who has the right to rule, and why should we follow them? How are families organized, how do they stay together? What accounts for economic progress or collapse? What do people like to eat? How do they prevent and treat illness? What kinds of artistic expression are funded, supported, encouraged or reviled?
These are, indirectly, “religious” questions, because so much of cultural and social history has been shaped by the impact of religious practices and conceptions on economics, politics, sexuality, ethnicity, and aesthetic expression. In the nineteenth century the German sociologist Max Weber wrote, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, that the most dominant economic system in the world – capitalism – would not have emerged if not for the Protestant Reformation.1 Similarly, we can better understand East Asian economics in relation to Confucian values, Southeast Asian practices surrounding death and dying in relation to Buddhist cosmology, Japanese trade and immigration policies in relation to Shintō conceptions of purity and pollution, Indian marriage and sexuality in relation to the conflict between freedom and duty in Hindu practice, and so on. In this sense, “studying religion” involves the description of institutions and practices across a wide spectrum of social structures and individual experiences.
Some of these may not seem explicitly religious at all, in that their modern social expressions may be have become completely “secularized,” their followers having lost sight of the religious conceptions, priestly commands, or behavioral norms that first inspired them. Most Chinese are “family-oriented,” make regular offerings to their ancestors, and enjoy delicious combinations of vegetables, spices, meats, and grains without thinking of themselves as “Confucian” or “Taoist” – but these norms and practices certainly had their roots in religion. Most Japanese would never dream of burying or cremating the dead without the sponsorship of a local Buddhist temple, and yet they describe themselves (in sociological surveys) as “non-religious.” Most Indians try to balance individual identity and achievement with a sense of duty and responsibility, and yet they may not see this goal as especially “Hindu.” And so on. This is to say, the impact of religion on daily life is far more subtle and more pervasive than the declaration of “beliefs,” the citation of scriptures, or the “great thoughts” of religious leaders. It is this cultural dimension – inclusive of a great range of personal and social beliefs, norms, and practices – that we will examine here.
This book represents a different approach from others in the university library in that it assumes an understanding of religion that is more cultural than theological, more practical than abstract, more behavioral than conceptual, more embedded than distinct. At the same time it recognizes that religions, in all their various forms, respond to basic, universal needs, hopes, and fears.
The comparative study of religion affirms “otherness,” and a second purpose of this book is to highlight differences in the values, worldviews, and psychological and spiritual assumptions that people of Western and Asian cultures make about their everyday lives. I will point out contrasts, not in an effort to defend superiority or inferiority, but in an effort to affirm what should be a very simple, obvious fact: the fact of religious pluralism. At the same time, by showing how others view the religious problems of meaning, of value, of “reality,” it is hoped that this book will provide the Western reader with a lens, a new perspective through which to view – and to understand, even to critique – his or her own religious experience.
While acknowledging cultural contrasts, we should recognize that people are much alike: there are no cultures that “lack” religion, and there is a profound sense in which people are religious by nature, whether one defines this as a religious “mind” or predisposition, or even as a “religion gene.” Some patterns of thought and practice are universal; they are religious patterns that individuals-in-community share across cultures. Another way of saying this is that all religions meet basic human needs: the need for hope in the face of death or despair, for order in the midst of chaos, for unity in the midst of division and strife. In this sense, the basic materials of Asian religions are no different from those of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They respond to the same concerns, address the same questions, provide behavioral and conceptual solutions to the same problems; that is, they speak to us on a human level. Perhaps this is why Asian religions have become so popular in the West: because they answer universal questions and address universal wants and needs in a way that is new and fresh. Who has not lost a loved one, or faced her own mortality? Who has not confronted illness or disappointment, or sought a way out of trouble? Who has not fallen in love, or yearned to satisfy emotional and sexual needs that would otherwise remain unfulfilled? Who has not found meaning and belonging in family, friendship, calling or career, cooperative effort, ethnic or national pride, and religious identity? Asian religious traditions are grounded in the same ideals and the same anxieties. To understand them is to understand human life – and this is why the study of religion is, at heart, a humanistic enterprise.
How is this orientation reflected here? I ask the reader to relate his or her own experience – at this basic human level – to the values and practices of South and East Asian religious traditions. Through surveys and questions for discussion or consideration, I encourage the reader to reflect upon questions of life and death, nature and spirit, the “existence” or role of gods and spirits, gender and sexuality, physical and mental well-being, ethnicity and nationalism, and social identity. The surveys can be found online, and, as readers react to them, a database of responses will be generated that will be accessible to anyone who participates in them. The goal of these surveys is both to promote a sympathetic appreciation for Asian religious beliefs and practices and to serve as an instrument for sociological analysis.
“Religion” and the Religions
One of the effects of globalization – and in particular of new technologies of communication such as the internet – is the weakening of boundaries. These ever more porous boundaries – between nations, cultures, languages, religions – make people less inclined to define themselves in narrow terms, as “simply” an American, an English speaker, a heterosexual male, a Caucasian (as I once would have defined myself), but rather as “hybrid” or “protean” individuals. Travel, education, internet access, consumption – all have become both more global and more universal. More and more young people regard themselves as “citizens of the world” who can see and experience, and buy from, every country and culture. They are no longer constrained by resources, race, or religion – at least at the level of exposure to the alternative modes of living that they can see every day on a television set or computer screen.
Social and cultural interconnectedness also extends to religion and the religions. In the commercially and technologically networked world in which we live in the twenty-first century, religions increasingly come into contact with and mutually influence one another. Buddhists and Christians promote inter-religious dialogue (there is a society dedicated to this work, as well as a journal published by the society),2 and the effect is in many cases a level of sharing and participation that is truly hybrid: I am no longer a “Christian” encountering a “Buddhist,” but a “Buddhist Christian” or a “Christian Buddhist.” Such dialogues are taking place between other traditions as well, and, in some sense, they are replicating a pattern of religious hybridization or syncretism that is a central part of the history of most of the great religious traditions of the world. Christianity, for example, arose from both Jewish and local “pagan” roots, while developing its own vision and practice, and thus was itself a product of such “dialogue.” Shintō, the indigenous religious tradition of Japan – a religion that we tend to think of as closed and self-contained – is also a product of hybridity, influenced especially by Japanese forms of Buddhism such as Shin'gon. Buddhism in Sri Lanka today borrows institutional structures and patterns of congregational identity from European and American Christianity and has been described as “Protestant Buddhism.”3 Modern Hinduism is a product not only of ancient Vedic religion, but also of the European Enlightenment and of cultural encounters with the West. And we could cite innumerable other examples, all demonstrating that virtually every religion in the world, including those that would seem to be the most “closed” and “exclusive,” were products of several others. What is different now, however, is that this process is occurring at an accelerated pace, stimulated by communication technologies and higher levels of education worldwide. More and more, people yearn to formulate a syncretistic or eclectic religious identity, drawing upon many traditions.
Not only are the “religions” porous, but so is the concept of “religion.” Traditionally, scholars defined “religion” as “supernaturalism” or the belief in gods (or God). While this traditional definition serves the West adequately (the belief in God is arguably the central and defining characteristic of the Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), it raises two fundamental problems when we look at religion from a more global or comparative point of view.
First, the definition of religion as the belief in God or gods overemphasizes “belief” – a kind of “mental” affirmation or activity. But even a cursory understanding of religion shows that religion is hardly limited to “belief”; indeed most religions put greater store on practices, whether behavioral (the realm of ethics and morality) or liturgical (the realm of religious ritual). Some traditions are so focused on practice that belief becomes virtually irrelevant: this is certainly true of Confucianism, which most scholars of religion identify as “religious” even in the absence of religious “beliefs,” and, arguably, can even apply to Judaism – where religious leaders, especially in the Reform tradition, will often counsel their followers not to worry about “beliefs or doubts” but to keep the tradition intact through practice. On the whole, the emphasis on belief shows a Christian bias, derived from its Greek philosophical roots, professing the credo (Latin meaning “I believe”) of intellectual affirmation. The emphasis on belief as a defining characteristic of religion is parochial and Christo-centric. (It should be noted, however, that, even among Christians, “belief” is empty if not accompanied by liturgical and ethical practice.)
