This panel provides a pioneering contribution to the emerging fields of research on emotions and Chinese religion by exploring emotive facets of religious experience, including their impact on self-cultivation, elite discourse, and devotional practices such as pilgrimage. Paper #1 examines these issues at an individual level, with a case study of an accomplished visual artist and musician who became a Buddhist monk at mid-life and entered a distinctively different community of emotions. The panel’s second paper explores the profound significance of humor for an emotional community of Chinese elites who directed laughter of derision at female spirit mediums. Paper #3 treats emotional communities of Hakka families that experience the joys of going on pilgrimage together to a Guanyin temple in northern Taiwan, while the panel’s final paper assesses the emotive aspects of pilgrimage in communities of men and women who worship the Goddess of Mount Tai.
This paper explores how the affective aspects of reciprocity in the deity-human relationship are essential to understanding the vitality of pilgrimage practices in the cult of the Goddess of Mount Tai. Inspired by Monique Scheer’s use of practice theory in the history of emotions and Barbara Rosewein’s work on emotional communities, this paper explores how exhortations about pilgrimage practices in three widely circulated baojuan 寶卷(precious scrolls) shape what devotees do and feel. I showcase how these texts use the word gandong 感動 (stimulate and move) to depict the Goddess as physically stimulated and emotionally moved by her devotees’ prayers, and propose to appropriate the indigenous notion of gandong as an interpretive lens to capture an intimate deity-human relationship unmediated by the impersonal, metaphysical correlation of cosmos and virtue.
When accomplished visual artists join the monastic Order in Buddhist China (and thus enter a new “community of emotions”), is there room for continued expression of emotions through artistic engagement? Abundant primary sources enable granular study of Hongyi (1880-1942), a notably accomplished man of the arts who became a monk at age thirty-eight. Here we will consider complex issues related to emotions, discipline, and creative activities through examination of: (1) the eminent monk Yinguang’s written teachings to Hongyi in the 1920s about calligraphy (including blood writing) and its procedures in monastic contexts; (2) the witness of Hongyi’s sustained body of visual work created in this new context - what he actually created (and why), as well as what he no longer created; and (3) after he came to maturity as a Vinaya master, Hongyi’s cautionary yet encouraging statements and teachings regarding the role of artistic expression within a monastic vocation.
This paper contributes to research on emotions and Chinese religion by examining the laughter of derision directed at female spirit mediums. These women occupy an ambiguous role in Chinese historical texts. Some accounts depict them as vital intermediaries who communicate with the unseen for the benefit of local communities, while others condemn them as charlatans who undermine social morality. The article analyzes the literary trope of mocking female mediums in three stages: from the Han dynasty, through the late imperial period, and into the Maoist era. Through their derisive laughter at female mediums, Chinese elites crafted narratives about civilization, modernization, and revolution. Yet even as these women became objects of ridicule, their portrayal in elite writings inadvertently reveals their crucial role in local religious life. The power dynamics of laugher offer important insights into the intersections of gender, emotion, and politics in Chinese religious history.
This paper explores the emotional facets of Hakka pilgrimage practices at a temple to the bodhisattva Guanyin 觀音 situated on the outskirts of the town Daxi 大溪in northern Taiwan. Its analytical framework draws on Tuan Yi-fu’s concept of “topophilia” (defined as “the affective bond between people and place or setting”) to hypothesize that sacred sites like the Guanyin Temple lie at the heart of what I tentatively term a “cultural nexus of feelings” featuring the moving experience of journeying on pilgrimage accompanied by family members along paths trodden by one’s ancestors that inspire memories of individual lives and family histories. Thus, worshippers at the Guanyin Temple experience feelings of well-being due to its serving as a ritual and affective venue for coping with life’s challenges, while also joining with family members to enjoy time together and recall memories from their childhood or stories told by their forebears.