Sensing the Purity of Guanyin’s Abode: The Meanings of Qingjing and its Logics as an Ideal Sensory Experience for Visitors at Contemporary Mount Putuo

Introduction

This paper examines qingjing 清净/清静 (pure and calm), a common Chinese expression in everyday dialogue that refers to the quiet and pure sensory experiences, in the contexts of contemporary Mount Putuo. Attracting millions of visitors every year, Mount Putuo is famously considered the abode of Guanyin, a compassionate bodhisattva who helps anyone seeking her assistance. In 2023, I conducted a two-month ethnographic fieldwork focusing on the sensory experiences of Mount Putuo visitors. Visitors consider qingjing as an ideal sensory experience at Mount Putuo, but they also pursue another sensory experience seemingly contradictory with qingjing: xianghuo 香火 (incense fires). This paper examines the meanings of qingjing at Mount Putuo and how it can coexist with xianghuo despite their seeming incompatibility. It mainly argues that qingjing and xianghuo share the same basis of the efficacy (ling 灵) of Guanyin and Mount Putuo, i.e., their power to respond to visitors[i]. Based on this argument, three specific logics of qingjing are analyzed: in the “absence”, “complementation”, and “distraction” of xianghuo.

Framework

The sensory experiences of honghuo 红火 (red and hot) in Chinese contexts have attracted the analysis from the perspective of sociality[ii], but this approach shows limitations in understanding the qingjing at Mount Putuo. First, visitors mainly make wishes (and thus gather) at Mount Putuo due to the presumably strong efficacy of Guanyin and Mount Putuo to respond to their wishes, instead of sociality. Second, qingjing seems opposite to red-hot sociality and xianghuo, but sociality cannot explain why it is an ideal sensory experience for visitors as well.

For better analysis, this paper uses Ishii’s theory of “contingent coaction between persons and things” to understand the relationships between efficacy and sensory experiences. For Ishii, such coactions can actualize the links between human and nonhuman actors and are thus crucial to the formation of the divine world, as the “contingency, uncontrollability, and unpredictability are indispensable features” of the sacred things that represent the power of spiritual beings[iii]. Projecting their wishes to Mount Putuo, visitors expect the efficacious Guanyin and Mount Putuo to respond to their wishes. Therefore, if visitors capture the uncontrollable sensory stimuli, their sensory experiences, including qingjing and xianghuo, become “the contingent coactions” and actualize the efficacy of Guanyin and Mount Putuo. Thus, no matter qingjing or xianghuo, the sensory experiences can be ideal for visitors if they show the efficacy of Guanyin and Mount Putuo. Thus, this paper analyzes the logics of qingjing based on efficacy in relation to xianghuo.

Findings

First, I provide a brief review of the usage of qingjing. Pronounced the same way, qingjing can be written in two different ways: 清静 and 清净. The usage of 清净 in Buddhist texts was likely an influence of 清静 from Daoism, and qingjing 清净 was probably the origin of the later Chinese word jingtu 净土 (pure land) and naming of Pure Land Buddhism[iv]. Thus, qingjing shows the power of a Buddha or bodhisattva to create their pure land, which corresponds to visitors’ presumed efficacy of Mount Putuo as Guanyin’s Pure Land.

For Mount Putuo visitors, the first logic of qingjing is “absence”. Mount Putuo has qingjing places where visitors can stay away from the excessive xianghuo, a result of too many visitors making wishes and burning incense for efficacy. Qingjing in the temples can refer to the quiet and solemn environment, but it usually does not mean absolute quietness. Rather, the absence of xianghuo allows visitors to feel relieved from the excessive xianghuo and perceive the sensory stimuli that they can hardly notice in it[v]. Thus, qingjing also means internal mental relief, which is connected to but not decided by the external environment.

The second logic of “complementation” looks at Mount Putuo as a whole. Temples with vigorous xianghuo and qingjing are mutually complementary to show the holistic picture of Guanyin’s abode: it is not only efficacious to attract numerous wishes of visitors but also an idealized pure land created by Guanyin. In other words, Guanyin’s efficacy can create both xianghuo and qingjing at Mount Putuo, which are compatible to show the different dimensions of efficacy.

In the third logic of “distraction”, xianghuo can directly lead to qingjing as a mental relief or luminosity. The intense xianghuo and numerous temples at Mount Putuo may easily distract visitors, who would thus contemplate the lost, confused status of the self in distraction[vi]. In such contemplations, qingjing as inner peace can emerge exactly due to the distraction of xianghuo. Xianghuo here is not only compatible with but also the basis for qingjing.

In conclusion, the three logics of qingjing overlap and emphasize internal relief more than external environment. Qingjing and xianghuo can constitute each other on the same basis of Guanyin’s efficacy to present different ideals of sensory experiences. This finding complicates the general understanding of sensory experiences in Chinese religious life.

[i] Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü, Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China (University of California Press, 1992); Chün-fang Yü, Kuan-Yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteśvara (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

[ii] Adam Yuet Chau, Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2006); Adam Yuet Chau, “The Sensorial Production of the Social,” Ethnos 73, no. 4 (December 2008): 485–504, https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840802563931.

[iii] Miho Ishii, “Acting with Things: Self-Poiesis, Actuality, and Contingency in the Formation of Divine Worlds,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2, no. 2 (September 2012): 371–88, https://doi.org/10.14318/hau2.2.019.

[iv] Yue Xiao, “A Study on the Buddha’s Names (Amituo/Wuliang Qingjing) in the Early Recension of the Larger Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra,” The Bulletin of the Association of Buddhist Studies Bukkyo University, no. 15 (2009): 53–86.

[v] Anette Stenslund, “A Whiff of Nothing: The Atmospheric Absence of Smell,” The Senses and Society 10, no. 3 (September 2, 2015): 341–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/17458927.2015.1130305.

[vi] Justin Thomas McDaniel, Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks, Contemporary Buddhism (Honolulu (Hawaii): University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2017).