Eastern Spiritualities
Liquid Tibetan Buddhists in Contemporary China: Tibetan Lama, Tibetan Buddhist Followers, and Sino-Tibetan Buddhist Interaction
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ya Cuo
Through over ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in Amdo Ngawa (Tibetan region in China) and among Sino-Tibetan Buddhist communities in Chengdu (urban China), this paper examines liquid Tibetan Buddhists as an instance of the Sino-Tibetan Buddhist’s interaction bridge in contemporary China. It narrates the workable definition and classification of liquid Tibetan lamas/monks, and then it seeks to demonstrate the convoluted social network pertinent to liquid Tibetan lamas covering mainland China and Tibetan regions. Based on the above findings, it attempts to interpret why liquid Tibetan Buddhists are dedicated to building a transregional, trans-ethnic, and trans-cultural linkage in Chinese wider society. Three factors are woven into the cause behind it: the individual factor, the institutional factor, and the religious-social factor.
Here and Not Here: Nonabiding Nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita nirvāṇa) and the Social Order
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shodhin Geiman
The Buddhist figure of the bodhisattva cuts an appealing profile in the minds of many. Focused on awakening, always aiding sentient beings, selflessly moving in and through all circumstances no matter how painful or distasteful, the bodhisattva serves as a prototype of compassionate action in the world. As with any prototype, however, one needs to know how to "read" the figure of the bodhisattva, lest one miss its meaning. Nonabiding nirvāṇa (apratiṣṭhita nirvāṇa) is a description of the way a bodhisattva moves in the world. It has been described as a state "restricted neither by the uncontrolled suffering of saṃsāra nor by a quiescent state of liberation that would have [one] powerless to help beings in saṃsāra" (Makransky, 1997). This means that a bodhisattva is aware of circumstances, but is not swayed by their pleasantness or unpleasantness they way most are. Further, because she is able to view beings as the merely the products of conditions, she shows no preferential option for any one (class) of them. Finally, because all conditions are equally empty, the bodhisattva strives neither to ameliorate social conditions nor hide from their effects. The bodhisattva is thus an unavailable ally, but a fierce friend. Attempts to develop a "Buddhist social theory" often rely on the figure of the bodhisattva to ground transformative social action. I show not only why that is a misuse of the bodhisattva's character, but also why one would not want to use the figure of the bodhisattva to that end.
Knowledge Destroyed Eden: Returning to the Garden with Eastern Spiritualities and the New Sciences
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Radha Jhappan
Lynn White’s elucidation of the culpability of the Abrahamic religions for our ecological crisis (with the Industrial and scientific revolutions), argued that their destruction of pagan animism “made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects." Christian ecology's rehabilitative "stewardship" model, however, has neither achieved widespread uptake among Christians, nor transcended the dualistic assertion of alpha species status, deputized in charge of "dumb" creation. Radical challenges to this anthropocentrism pervade the new sciences, which seem ever more affirmative of Eastern and Indigenous metaphysics. From quantum physics to cell biology, the materialist, mechanistic, and dualist view of humans vs. nature is being superseded by holistic monism. Systems ecology and Gaia theory comprehend Earth as a synergistic, self-organizing, self-stewarding, complex system that maintains the conditions for life. At the macro level, plant, animal, and microbial consciousness studies centre "the feelings of natural objects." Renewed focus on panpsychism posits a pervasively conscious, even self-aware universe down to the subatomic level of all matter. Recent microbiome studies reconceive humans as symbionts or "superorganisms," complex ecosystems of trillions of microorganisms which regulate both body and (significantly) mind. These developments, with other new scientific insights into who we are and how nature flows in and through us (to be elaborated), suggest fresh approaches to reintegrating humans into the natural world. The paper offers some potential paths to reconciling the new sciences with Christianity, especially in light of Pope Francis’ “integral ecology” in his Encyclical of 2015, “Laudato Si."
