Interrelatedness in Chinese Religious Traditions

Interrelatedness in Chinese Religious Traditions PDF

Author: Diana Arghirescu

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-11-17

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1350256862

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The study of religions is essential for understanding other cultures, building a sense of belonging in a multicultural world and fostering a global intercultural dialogue. Exploring Chinese religions as one interlocutor in this dialogue, Diana Arghirescu engages with Song-dynasty Confucian and Buddhist theoretical developments through a detailed study of the original texts of the Chan scholar-monk Qisong (1007-1072) and the Neo-Confucian master Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Starting with these figures, she builds an interpretive theory focusing on “ethical interrelatedness” and proposes it as a theoretical tool for the study of the Chinese religious traditions. By actively engaging with other contemporary theories of religion and refusing to approach Chinese religions with Western frameworks, Arghirescu's comparative perspective makes it possible to uncover differences between the various Western and Chinese cultural presuppositions upon which these theories are built. As such, this book breaks new ground in the methodology of religious studies, comparative philosophy and furthers our understanding of the Confucian-Buddhist interaction.

Confucianism in China

Confucianism in China PDF

Author: Tony Swain

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-09-07

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1474242456

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This accessible history of Confucianism, or the 'Way of the Ru', emphasizes the religious dimensions of the tradition. It clearly explains the tradition's unique and subtle philosophical ideals as well as the 'arts of the Ru' whereby seemingly simple acts such as reading, sitting quietly, good manners, and attending to family and state responsibilities, became ways of ultimate transformation. This book explains the origins of the Ru and documents their impact in imperial China, before providing extensive coverage of the modern era. Confucianism in China: An Introduction shows how the long history of the Ru is vital to comprehending China today. As the empire drew to an end, there were impassioned movements both to reinvent and to eradicate Ru tradition. Less than forty years ago, it seemed close to extinction, but today it is undergoing spectacular revival. This introduction is suitable for anyone wishing to understand a tradition that shaped imperial China and which is now increasingly swaying Chinese religious, philosophical, political, and economic developments. The book contains a glossary of key terms and 22 images, and further resources can be found on the book's webpage http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/confucianism-in-china-9781474242462/.

Chinese Ancestor Worship

Chinese Ancestor Worship PDF

Author: William Lakos

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2010-09-13

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 144382528X

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This book is a new approach to how we in the West understand China and Chinese culture. It challenges the master narrative of Confucianism and shows that ancestor worship has underpinned Chinese culture in many influential and vital ways and provides a nuanced and more efficacious paradigm through which Chinese culture may be viewed. It is an exposition and analysis of Chinese ancestor worship and its correlations, especially filial piety and ritual, and it shows the intrinsic importance of ancestor worship to Chinese culture. By using a practice theory—ritual—and communication theory approach this work highlights the relationship between the rituals of ancestor worship and their meaning within Chinese culture. In emphasizing the efficacy of ritual to cultural meaning it also questions and compares the master narrative of Confucianism in its role as the prime cultural symbol and paradigm of Chinese culture. China and Chinese culture is conventionally understood by the West through the paradigm and its articulated discourse of Confucianism. In order to ameliorate and overcome the epistemological problematic of a cross-cultural understanding of China, a new approach to the understanding of China and Chinese culture is proposed. The thesis approach is ‘meta-disciplinary’ and multi-viewed, and draws on a range of evidence and theories which focus on the problematic of ‘cross-cultural understanding.’

Chinese Religion in Contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan

Chinese Religion in Contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan PDF

Author: Fabian Graham

Publisher:

Published: 2022-05-10

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 9781526167774

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In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell's 'enforcers', the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple's spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia (and their counterparts in Taiwan) through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions about the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham's innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the destigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions PDF

Author: Randall Laird Nadeau

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 9781782683254

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Comprising the most up-to-date, interdisciplinary research on the study of Chinese religious beliefs and cultural practices, this volume explores the rich and complex religious and philosophical traditions that have developed and flourished in one of the world's oldest civilizations. Covers the main Chinese traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism as well as Christianity and Islam. Features a unique organizational structure, with groups of readings focused on historical, traditions-based, and topical elements of Chinese religion. Explores a number of contemporary religious topics.

The Tenacity of Chinese Folk Tradition

The Tenacity of Chinese Folk Tradition PDF

Author: Morris I. Berkowitz

Publisher: Institute of Southeast Asian

Published: 2018-06-11

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13:

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A new synthesis of the work of two studies: the first (Folk Religion in an Urban Setting) investigates the religious organization at village level and the second (Urban Chinese) shows practices from most of the various levels of possible Chinese practices as expected in a mixed community of urban dwellers. Reviews data and attempts to interpret it in terms of changes in traditional religious practices currently appearing and their implications for the future . With two figures.

Making the Gods Speak

Making the Gods Speak PDF

Author: Vincent Goossaert

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-11-20

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 1684176530

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For two millennia, Chinese society has been producing divine revelations on an unparalleled scale, in multifarious genres and formats. This book is the first comprehensive attempt at accounting for the processes of such production. It builds a typology of the various ritual techniques used to make gods present and allow them to speak or write, and it follows the historical development of these types and the revealed teachings they made possible. Within the large array of visionary, mediumistic, and mystical techniques, Vincent Goossaert devotes the bulk of his analysis to spirit-writing, a family of rites that appeared around the eleventh century and gradually came to account for the largest numbers of books and tracts ascribed to the gods. In doing so, he shows that the practice of spirit-writing must be placed within the framework of techniques used by ritual specialists to control human communications with gods and spirits for healing, divining, and self-divinization, among other purposes. Making the Gods Speak thus offers a ritual-centered framework to study revelation in Chinese cultural history and comparatively with the revelatory practices of other religious traditions.

Monks in Motion

Monks in Motion PDF

Author: Jack Meng-Tat Chia

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0190090979

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In Monks in Motion, Jack Meng-Tat Chia explores why Buddhist monks migrated from China to Southeast Asia, and how they participated in transregional Buddhist networks across the South China Sea. This book tells the story of three prominent monks--Chuk Mor (1913-2002), Yen Pei (1917-1996), and Ashin Jinarakkhita (1923-2002)--and examines the connected history of Buddhist communities in China and maritime Southeast Asia in the twentieth century.

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