Building the Road to Modernity within Tradition: The Construction and Consecration of Vajra-bodhi Stupa in Chongqing in 1931

This paper will discuss how diverse approaches Buddhists adopted to construct modernity in Republican China through the case study of the construction and consecration of the Bodhi-vajra Stupa in Chongqing, China, in 1931. Modernity has been characterized by science, rationalism, and is a departure from tradition.  If modern Buddhism is viewed based on the dualism of modernity and tradition, scholars will come to a conclusion that modern Buddhism is demythologized, deritualized, and this-worldly oriented.  However, this analytical framework, which bifurcates modernity and tradition as two opposite categories, has been critiqued by scholars in Buddhist studies. In his study of modern Chinese Buddhism, Justin Ritzinger calls attention to “premodern roots of apparently modern phenomena” or “Buddhist thought and practice that appear nonmodern..” in modern Buddhism.[i] Instead of viewing modernity as a departure from tradition, he proposes to view modernity as “a particular configuration of values and concerns derived from it.”[ii] In this sense, modernity is not universal, but “historically contingent and culturally grounded.”[iii] Therefore, certain aspects of Western modernity could work with the indigenous framework of Buddhism and give rise to a new form of Buddhist modernity.[1] In the light of his study, this paper will focus on the construction and consecration of the Bodhi-vajra Stupa to discuss how Buddhists creatively integrated traditional views and practices into their conception of modernity in Republican China.

The stupa was built in 1931 under the leadership of Pan Wenhua 潘文華 (1886-1950), the first mayor of Chongqing in the Republican period. When he came to office in 1929, he started a series of modernization projects. As part of his effort to modernize the city, Pan ordered the relocation of thousands of tombs in order to build roads and improve transportation in the city. Not surprisingly, the order of relocating tombs encountered strong resistance from the residents due to the centuries-old tradition of ancestor worship and fear of unsettled haunting ghosts.

As a lay Buddhist and a long-term friend of the eminent Chinese Vajrayanaist lama Nenghai 能海 (1886-1967), Pan Wenhua appealed to Tibetan Buddhism to address the concern of residents.  The mayor and his brother Pan Changyou (潘昌猷 1901-1981) initiated the project of building the Vajra-bodhi Stupa (puti jingang ta) under the guidance of the Tibetan Lama such as Norlha Khutugtu. When the stupa was completed, the mayor invited Geshi Dorje Chopa to hold the Southwest Dharma Assembly for Peace (Xinan heping fahui ) and to consecrate the stupa.

This paper will focus on the published proceedings of the Dharam Assembly to investigate how Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists of this time understood the relationship between esoteric practices and modernity. Instead of interpreting the construction and consecration of the stupa as a way to exorcize and placate the haunting ghosts as many local people would like to believe,  Chinese and Tibetan Buddhists emphasized the transformative power of Buddhist compassion and enlightenment attained through the construction and consecration of the stupa, but sidestepped the exorcism power that the stupa and the consecration rituals might have.  In the view of these Buddhists,  the esoteric Buddhist rituals were conducted to transform people’s minds and enlighten them so that they could be free from ignorance and embrace modernity. Therefore, the construction of the stupa was not superstition, but an expedient means to address the concern of residents, lead them out of ignorance, and eventually to modernize the whole society.

The construction and consecration of the Bodhi-vajra Stupa show that the perception of modernity and modernization in the Republican period is not what is stereotypically assumed to be secularization, separation of state and church, deritualization, and radical departure from past traditions. Instead, Buddhist government officials like Pan Wenhua worked closely with Buddhist monastics and laypeople to innovatively employ Buddhist rituals to support the governmental effort to modernize the city. Although there were different views on the significance of the stupa and the rituals to consecrate it, Buddhist participants in the related events articulated the modern elements deeply rooted in Buddhism and benignly ignored or critiqued the non-modern elements in their interpretation of the significance of the stupa and related rituals. In this way, Buddhists constructed their version of modernity.  

[1] Ritzinger, 7.

[i] Justin Ritzinger, Anarchy in the Pure Land: Reinventing the Cult of Maitreya in Modern Chinese Buddhism (Oxford University Press, 2017), 3.

[ii] Ritzinger, 4.

[iii] Ritzinger, 9.