Asian Religions

A Cultural Perspective

Randall L. Nadeau

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118471951
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religiones asiáticas

ASIAN RELIGIONS

"A unique introduction to Asian religions, combining the scholarly rigor of an established historian of Asian religions with the willingness to engage empathetically with the traditions and to suggest that readers do the same. "
Joseph A. Adler, Kenyon College

"Randall L. Nadeau has accomplished what only a few have tried, but which has been much needed in the study of religions. He has written a genuinely novel approach to the religions of Asia… This is a work that should find its way into Asian humanities, history, religion, and civilization courses. "
Ronnie Littlejohn, Belmont University

This all-embracing introduction to Asian religious practices and beliefs takes a unique approach; not only does it provide a complete overview of the basic tenets of the major Asian religions, but it also demonstrates how Asian spiritualities are lived and practiced, exploring the meaning and significance they hold for believers.

In a series of engaging and lively chapters, the book explores the beliefs and practices of Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Japanese religions, including Shint?. Using a comparative approach, it highlights the contrasts between Asian and Western modes of thinking and living, and debates the influence of religion on real-world issues including work, economic growth, the environment, human rights, and gender relations.

Nadeau, a leading figure in this field, takes an empathetic approach to Asian religious and cultural traditions, and considers Asian spiritualities to be viable systems of belief for today's global citizens. Integrating exercises, activities, and an appealing mixture of examples, such as novels and biographies, this refreshing book leads readers to an enhanced understanding of the ideas and practice of Asian religions, and of their continuing relevance today.

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.)

Second, the definition of religion as “supernaturalism” is proven unhelpful when we look deeply at the immense variety of “gods” and conceptions of “divinity” that we find in the world's religions. It is not only the case that some religions deny the existence of gods altogether (this is true of Confucianism, and also of more intellectual forms of Buddhism and Hinduism), but also that some religions, while recognizing the existence of gods, still deny their importance: the Buddha readily admitted that gods “exist,” but he minimized their importance – he denied that gods had the power to heal the spiritual ills of his followers. To give another example, Taoist priests acknowledge that gods and spirits “exist” (and liturgically interact with them), but they claim their own powers to be far greater than those of the gods. If gods are “irrelevant” or “inferior,” then it would seem to be unhelpful to define religion in purely supernaturalistic terms.

If religion is not “supernaturalism,” then what is it? Scholars of comparative religion began to discuss the general concept of “religion” in the late nineteenth century, and the history of the discipline is fascinating in itself. I will not repeat that discussion here, but draw upon two or three definitions that strike me as especially useful; indeed my own definition (and the operational definition for this book) is syncretic, and I am grateful to these scholars for shaping my own identity as a student of religion through their inclusive and insightful analysis. We will see that all of the traditions covered in this book can be understood with the help of an overarching definition:

Humans are religious by nature. They seek patterns of meaning and action that are ultimately transformative. As such, religion is a model of and a model for reality, as experienced by individuals in the context of social, natural, and cosmic existence.

Let's look briefly at the three statements contained in this definition:

1 “Humans are religious by nature.” What does it mean to say that people are religious by nature? Religion is fundamental, and it is universal. No society has existed without religion, that is, without some conception of super-mundane reality (however we might describe it) and ritual and behavioral norms directed toward personal and social transformation. Recently neurobiologists have even tried to identify a “religious gene,” and some have claimed to have found it. My own appreciation for this point follows Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), who, in his book The Sacred a...