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?
Friday, October 30, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
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?
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?
Saturday, October 3, 2009
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.
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