Interpretative Commentary on Falun Gong: Phenomenology, Sociology, Theology

Following a week in which many of you offered reflection on the difficulty of defining religion itself, we attempt in this most recent installment of the weblog to attempt a comparative consideration of the cultic and religious aspects of Falun gong.  In doing this we will employ the historical and theoretical material we have acquired from our reading in Peter Brown, Emile Durkheim, and Daniel O'Keefe to see how it illuminates the cosmology, theory, and practice of Falun gong.  Make certain in this assignment that you cite the relevant passages from Brown, Durkheim, and O'Keefe in corroborating your comparative claims. How is Falun gong like a cult, or  subcult of a "routinized" religion? How does the dialectic of magic and religion help to explain this emergent spiritual phenomenon? How can Durkheim's researches into the psychology, sociology and symbology of religion assit us in comprehending the powerful appeal of Falun gong?

Reflections on a Research Topic

OK. Unlike previous weeks where we have explored a question or concern I offered as a provocation, this week I expect you to put forward your thoughts on the salient points that you have obtained from the class to this juncture. What particular issues has it introduced you to and what specific questions has it raised for you about religion, cults, magic, and the other phenomena we have studied? With these outstanding features I would like each of you to give some thought to the critical areas of focus that we should address as we wind our way toward the final presentations for the class.




On another interpretative front:


To provide some additional fodder for our continued reflection on the dialectical relations between religion and magic and cults and religion (as we talked about in some detail this week) here is a rather perceptive paragraph by the anthropologist Marshal Sahlins, who is commenting here on the manner in which the apparently incommensurate worlds of the Hawai'ians and Captain Cook and his men in 1778 actually overlapped meaningfully as each appropriated the other into their pre-existent categories of understanding.




QUOTATION:

The problem [e.g. finding a truer synthesis of
structure and historical event] comes down to the
relation of cultural concepts to human experience, or
the problem of symbolic reference: of how cultural
concepts are actively used to engage the world.
Ultimately at issue if the being of structure _in_
history and _as_ history. But, I begin more simply
by making two elementary observations, neither of them
novel or my own discovery. The first is the venerable
Boasian principle that, "the seeing eye is the organ
of tradition..." Human social experience is the
appropriation of specific percepts by general
concepts: an ordering of men and the objects of their
existence according to a scheme of cultural categories
which is never the only one possible, but in that
sense is arbitrary and historical. The second
proposition is that the use of conventional concepts
in empirical contexts subjects the cultural meanings
to practical revaluations. Brought to bear on a world
which has its own reasons, a world-in-itself and
potentially refractory, the traditional categories are
transformed. For even as the world can easily escape
the interpretive schemes of some given group of
mankind, nothing guarantees either that intelligent
and intentional subjects, with their several social
interests and biographies will use the existing
categories in prescribed ways. I call this double
contingency the risk of categories in action.
.....[T]he experience of human subjects, especially as
communicated in discoure, involves an appropriation of
events in terms of a priori concepts. Reference to
the world is an act of classification, the course of
which realities are indexed to concepts in a relation
of empirical tokens to cultural types. We know the
world as logical instances of cultural classes. Formal
classification is an intrinsic condition of symbolic
action.

Marshall Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago:
Unversity of Chicago Press, 1987), 145-146.

Considering the Cultic and Religious

It is time to get our intellectual muscle working out on the subject at hand--Chinese religion and Falun gong's place within it or outside it. At the last class we explored a new interpretive turn in our study of religion in China by examining some of the key theological and philosophical implications of Zhuan Falun. It is clear that the moral claims of FLG theology (origin of the universe is zhen-shan-ren) entail a specific program of cultivation (the fa or practice) to recover an ancient original unity of the universe and man and to open human consciousness and body to higher levels of understanding. The seriousness of our discussion (which included an exploration of the syncretic properties of the philosophy and practice) revealed that we are prepared to assess the status of Falun gong as faith or cult or practice.  So in this installment of the blog let us take a few moments to reason through our thoughts about this phenomenon. What exactly is Falun gong? What about its teachings do you find strange or objectionable? Why? What aspects of the practice do you consider worthwhile and deserving of imitation? Why?






A Note on Reading this Week:
    
This week as you read Zhuan Falun and The Cult of the Saints you should keep the definitive tension between official and popular religion that we have discussed earlier this semester in mind. You should also note the rhetoric used by practitioners of popular religion (whether Christian or FLG) in defining what distinguishes them from outsiders, especially those who question the legitimacy of their conception and practice. Can you discern how these cults have generated a comprehensive religious worldview that with time contests the authority of the official relgion against which they struggle?

Jiwei Ci's Diagnosis, China's Dilemma and Falun gong

Through this week we have obtained a more informed understanding of the perilous dialectic between faith and repression that has obtained between Falun gong practitioners and the Chinese state. From David Ownby we have learned of the redemptive properties of Falun gong, something that has been confirmed by the testimony of practitioners who visited our class and also Jennifer Zeng's memoir. For this weekend's blogpost I would like you to take what you have learned this past week and reflect on the following quotation from Jiwei Ci.

Nihilism, then, as applied to China, refers to a situation in which reality and meaning have become so separated that the gap between them no longer seems to offer the possibility either for the meaningful interpretation of present reality or for hope-inspired action with a view to the future.  In such a situation, it is possible to act but no longer to act meaningfully, possible to entertain abstract tenets of meaning but no longer to relate them to actual experience, so that hedonism seems the only way out. Nihilism is not an intellectual position that in leisurely contemplation one can choose to take or not; it is the product of a way of life--of thinking, feeling, hoping, and acting--having come to grief. Although it may require intellectual effort to raise this condition to the level of conscious reflection, it takes only the capacity for the acquisition and loss of meaning, which everyone has, to be open to the experience of nihilism. Indeed, an outstanding feature of the Chinese utopian project was its mobilization of an entire people, and insofar as utopianism, the psychological antecedent of nihilism, affected an entire people, so by the same token did its sequel, nihilism. (Jiwei Ci, Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution, 5-6)

How does this characterization of China's larger crisis of meaning help explain the phenomenon of Falun gong? How can we understand Ownby's interpretation of Falun gong as a "redemptive society" in this particular context of meaninglessness? Does Ci's comment here help to account for the antipathy that exists between Falun gong and the Chinese Communist Party?

Reflections on Spirit Possession & Shamanism

This weekend I would like you all to write about what some European Sinoogists have called "the shamanic substrate." By this term they mean that the Chinese religious imagination, indeed its entire universe is constituted on the ground of shamanism. Of course, shamanism is a practice, but it is what it assumes that is key--a continuous relationship between the living and the dead and between the human and natural worlds where spirits operate within the social and political order. We have had some exposure to this phenomenon in our recent readings in Dorfman and Potter and I want you to offer some reflections on it. Compare the behavior and beliefs demonstrated in the two essays. How exactly do spiritual forces effect change in the human realm? How are such changes recognized and dealt with? How is the social structure of community affected by the shamanic work required to restore the original balance of forces between humans and spirits? Lastly, consider what is explicitly different in the shamanic operations as observed by Dorfman and Potter.

Free Writing Commentary on Falun gong

With the reading you have done last week and the new assignments for the coming week I would like you to attempt to describe your sense of Falun gong. Knowing what you do about the sociology of religion and the dialectical relationship between magic and religion, as well as the interpretation of religion and politics as distinct symbol systems consisting of key words and expected practices, see if you can explain the phenomenon of Falun gong. Its founder Li Hongzhi has steadfastly maintained that Falun gong is NOT a religion (zongjiao) and yet one cannot help but recognize as religious certain aspects of the practice, and the behavior of practitioners. The government, of course, has denounced Falun gong as an "evil cult"(xiejiao), yet it is not entirely clear that the movement is a cult at all. Schechter offers a different take altogether by removing himself from these partisan debates and focusing on the "human rights" dimension of the government's persecution of followers of the movement. Well by now you know enough about cults, religion, government policy on religion, and Falun gong to say something about what it adds up to so far. Just write down what you think and see if you can employ the theory we have learned to explain what Falun gong means to you four weeks into the semester. 

Constitutional Protection of Religion in China

OK everyone, I am back from my trip out of town and have recovered from the Irish misfortune of this afternoon. You are to write this weekend about your observations and comments on Article 36 of the Chinese Constitution. The constitution may be found at:


http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.html


I also asked you to have a look at Document 19, that is if you can get a page capture of it from Google Books. A portion of this was published in English in Donal E. MacInnis, Religion in China Today Policy and Practice (Maryknoll: Orbis , 1989) We read a page or two of discussion of this document in Anthony Yu's work on State and Religion in China. You can revisit his commentary and the quotes from it there.


Given the wording of the Constitution's Article 36, why is it that there has been so much difficulty with religion in both theory and practice? How does Document 19 contribute to our understanding of this complex relationship? Another question to consider would emerge from rereading the quotation I sent you last week on the Chinese state as a critical force in traditional religion. Here is the quote again for you to ponder as you reflect on the tension between state and religion:


He goes on to suggest that "belief" in the state was one of the principal forms of traditional Chinese religion, and that this belief entailed adopting its rituals.We may wonder, in this regard, whether anything basic has changed in contemporary China. Certainly, the requirement of belief in the state and participation in its prescribed rituals has not. Indeed, we might say that, insofar as belief in the state and participation in its ritual sis central to the definition of the "modern" state, China is truly, as we saw Faure to suggest, the first nation-state. 


(John Lagerwey, "State and Local Society in Late Imperial China," T'oung Pao 93 (2007): 475.





OK let's see what's on your minds.