International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture, 2024
While the scholarship on premodern Chinese Buddhism has explored the tradition’s rich diffusion t... more While the scholarship on premodern Chinese Buddhism has explored the tradition’s rich diffusion throughout various realms of sociocultural life, the study of modern Chinese Buddhism leans heavily towards its monastic, institutional, and overtly “religious” forms. This split mirrors the logic of modern secularization, whereby religion should be rationally differentiated from the broader social fabric, institutionalized, and delimited within its own discrete functional sphere. This article rethinks the putative rupture between Chinese Buddhism’s past and present incarnations. Through the prism of cinema, a technology that arrived on Chinese shores at the same moment as the Western concept of religion, I illuminate the overlooked continuities between premodern and modern diffusions of Buddhist thought and culture. Drawing from film theory, evolutionary anthropology, and religion and media studies, the first section constructs a selective genealogy of proto-cinematic phenomena across the history of religions in China. I highlight three transmedia genres—lantern shadow plays, medieval “transformation tableaux” paintings, and late imperial vernacular novels—that illustrate how Buddhistic “sight and sound” was enmeshed with religious pedagogy, ritual practices, social ethics, and popular entertainment in premodern society. The second section examines the ways in which film’s advent, indigenization, and growth overlapped with coeval transformations of the Chinese religious field during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At a time when traditional religiosities were being institutionalized or anathemized by political power, the cinema, I argue, served as an intermedial space where Buddhist morals, myths, aesthetics, and epistemic sensibilities continued unobstructed, at least until the early 1930s. Finally, I conclude with brief reflections on some avenues for future research in Chinese Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and religion and media studies.
This article studies the adaptations and applications of religious folklore in two masterworks of... more This article studies the adaptations and applications of religious folklore in two masterworks of Japanese cinema: Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff, JP 1954) and Kaneto Shindo's Onibaba (JP 1964). While academic approaches will often draw a strict line between narrative genres and discursive forms, these films, I argue, draw creatively from Japanese tradition for both critical and constructive purposes in the postwar context. Besides mounting trenchant criticisms of Japan's erstwhile militaristic violence and imperial ambitions, both filmmakers present their respective female protagonists as models for spiritual and sociocultural transformation in the face of anomie. Embodying humanistic compassion on the one hand and ontogenetic eros on the other, the two women compose complementary poles for reconstruction amidst the painful aftermath of war.
Adapted from the 1966 novel by the Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo, Martin Scorsese’s "Sile... more Adapted from the 1966 novel by the Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo, Martin Scorsese’s "Silence" offers a timely occasion for expanding the critical discourse on adaptive fidelity. This article explores the ways that both texts draw from historical and scriptural sources within the Christian tradition—most notably the biblical tale of Judas—to clarify the meaning of faith in their respective contexts. Employing Andre Bazin’s theory of adaptation, I argue that alongside their source texts, both novel and film compose an intertextual "ideal construct" of religious fidelity as dynamically lived across time and place, a fidelity paradoxically performed via various modes and tropes of adaptive infidelity.
This paper studies the ways that "Walker," a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Mi... more This paper studies the ways that "Walker," a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang, visualizes the relationship between Buddhism and modernity. Via detailed film analysis as well as attention to sources in premodern Buddhist traditions, this paper argues that its filmic performance of Zen walking meditation serves two functions: To present slowness and simplicity as prophetic counterpoints against the dizzying excesses of the contemporary metropolis; and to offer contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource for life in the modern world. By instantiating and cultivating critical shifts in viewerly perspective in the manner of Buddhist ritual practice, "Walker" invites us to envision how a place of frenetic distraction or pedestrian mundaneness might be transfigured into a site of beauty, wonder, and liberation.
Keywords: Buddhism and modernity; contemplative studies; kinhin; slow cinema; transnational Chinese cinema; Tsai Ming-Liang; walking meditation; Zen ritual
This essay engages in a comparative study of Lee Chang-Dong’s "Secret Sunshine" (2007) in light o... more This essay engages in a comparative study of Lee Chang-Dong’s "Secret Sunshine" (2007) in light of the biblical book of Job, focusing on issues of grief, recovery, and theodicy. Drawing from perspectives in philosophical, mystical, and pastoral theology, three allegorical interpretations of the film’s title are suggested. The eponymous ‘‘secret sunshine’’ adumbrates, first, the female protagonist Shin-Ae’s hidden journey toward her true self, a self in which the theological virtues of faith and love are mystically internalized. Second, it intimates the quiet, unobtrusive presence of an emphatic Immanuel in the figure of Jong-Chan, the film’s male protagonist. Finally, through a meditative exegesis of the film’s closing sequences, it will be argued that ‘‘secret sunshine’’ points toward the transcendent beauty and comfort that may be found in the quotidian and commonplace.
International Journal of Buddhist Thought & Culture, 2024
While the scholarship on premodern Chinese Buddhism has explored the tradition’s rich diffusion t... more While the scholarship on premodern Chinese Buddhism has explored the tradition’s rich diffusion throughout various realms of sociocultural life, the study of modern Chinese Buddhism leans heavily towards its monastic, institutional, and overtly “religious” forms. This split mirrors the logic of modern secularization, whereby religion should be rationally differentiated from the broader social fabric, institutionalized, and delimited within its own discrete functional sphere. This article rethinks the putative rupture between Chinese Buddhism’s past and present incarnations. Through the prism of cinema, a technology that arrived on Chinese shores at the same moment as the Western concept of religion, I illuminate the overlooked continuities between premodern and modern diffusions of Buddhist thought and culture. Drawing from film theory, evolutionary anthropology, and religion and media studies, the first section constructs a selective genealogy of proto-cinematic phenomena across the history of religions in China. I highlight three transmedia genres—lantern shadow plays, medieval “transformation tableaux” paintings, and late imperial vernacular novels—that illustrate how Buddhistic “sight and sound” was enmeshed with religious pedagogy, ritual practices, social ethics, and popular entertainment in premodern society. The second section examines the ways in which film’s advent, indigenization, and growth overlapped with coeval transformations of the Chinese religious field during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At a time when traditional religiosities were being institutionalized or anathemized by political power, the cinema, I argue, served as an intermedial space where Buddhist morals, myths, aesthetics, and epistemic sensibilities continued unobstructed, at least until the early 1930s. Finally, I conclude with brief reflections on some avenues for future research in Chinese Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and religion and media studies.
This article studies the adaptations and applications of religious folklore in two masterworks of... more This article studies the adaptations and applications of religious folklore in two masterworks of Japanese cinema: Kenji Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff, JP 1954) and Kaneto Shindo's Onibaba (JP 1964). While academic approaches will often draw a strict line between narrative genres and discursive forms, these films, I argue, draw creatively from Japanese tradition for both critical and constructive purposes in the postwar context. Besides mounting trenchant criticisms of Japan's erstwhile militaristic violence and imperial ambitions, both filmmakers present their respective female protagonists as models for spiritual and sociocultural transformation in the face of anomie. Embodying humanistic compassion on the one hand and ontogenetic eros on the other, the two women compose complementary poles for reconstruction amidst the painful aftermath of war.
Adapted from the 1966 novel by the Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo, Martin Scorsese’s "Sile... more Adapted from the 1966 novel by the Japanese Catholic writer Shusaku Endo, Martin Scorsese’s "Silence" offers a timely occasion for expanding the critical discourse on adaptive fidelity. This article explores the ways that both texts draw from historical and scriptural sources within the Christian tradition—most notably the biblical tale of Judas—to clarify the meaning of faith in their respective contexts. Employing Andre Bazin’s theory of adaptation, I argue that alongside their source texts, both novel and film compose an intertextual "ideal construct" of religious fidelity as dynamically lived across time and place, a fidelity paradoxically performed via various modes and tropes of adaptive infidelity.
This paper studies the ways that "Walker," a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Mi... more This paper studies the ways that "Walker," a short film by the Malaysian-Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang, visualizes the relationship between Buddhism and modernity. Via detailed film analysis as well as attention to sources in premodern Buddhist traditions, this paper argues that its filmic performance of Zen walking meditation serves two functions: To present slowness and simplicity as prophetic counterpoints against the dizzying excesses of the contemporary metropolis; and to offer contemplative attentiveness as a therapeutic resource for life in the modern world. By instantiating and cultivating critical shifts in viewerly perspective in the manner of Buddhist ritual practice, "Walker" invites us to envision how a place of frenetic distraction or pedestrian mundaneness might be transfigured into a site of beauty, wonder, and liberation.
Keywords: Buddhism and modernity; contemplative studies; kinhin; slow cinema; transnational Chinese cinema; Tsai Ming-Liang; walking meditation; Zen ritual
This essay engages in a comparative study of Lee Chang-Dong’s "Secret Sunshine" (2007) in light o... more This essay engages in a comparative study of Lee Chang-Dong’s "Secret Sunshine" (2007) in light of the biblical book of Job, focusing on issues of grief, recovery, and theodicy. Drawing from perspectives in philosophical, mystical, and pastoral theology, three allegorical interpretations of the film’s title are suggested. The eponymous ‘‘secret sunshine’’ adumbrates, first, the female protagonist Shin-Ae’s hidden journey toward her true self, a self in which the theological virtues of faith and love are mystically internalized. Second, it intimates the quiet, unobtrusive presence of an emphatic Immanuel in the figure of Jong-Chan, the film’s male protagonist. Finally, through a meditative exegesis of the film’s closing sequences, it will be argued that ‘‘secret sunshine’’ points toward the transcendent beauty and comfort that may be found in the quotidian and commonplace.
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Papers by Teng-Kuan Ng
in China. I highlight three transmedia genres—lantern shadow plays, medieval “transformation tableaux” paintings, and late imperial vernacular novels—that illustrate how Buddhistic “sight and sound” was enmeshed with religious pedagogy, ritual practices, social ethics, and popular entertainment in premodern society. The second section examines the ways in which film’s advent, indigenization, and growth overlapped with coeval transformations of the Chinese religious field during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At a time when traditional religiosities were being institutionalized or anathemized by political power, the cinema, I argue, served as an intermedial space where Buddhist morals, myths, aesthetics, and epistemic sensibilities continued unobstructed, at least until the early 1930s. Finally, I conclude with brief reflections on some avenues for future research in Chinese Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and religion and media studies.
Keywords: Buddhism and modernity; contemplative studies; kinhin; slow cinema; transnational Chinese cinema; Tsai Ming-Liang; walking meditation; Zen ritual
Teaching Documents by Teng-Kuan Ng
in China. I highlight three transmedia genres—lantern shadow plays, medieval “transformation tableaux” paintings, and late imperial vernacular novels—that illustrate how Buddhistic “sight and sound” was enmeshed with religious pedagogy, ritual practices, social ethics, and popular entertainment in premodern society. The second section examines the ways in which film’s advent, indigenization, and growth overlapped with coeval transformations of the Chinese religious field during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At a time when traditional religiosities were being institutionalized or anathemized by political power, the cinema, I argue, served as an intermedial space where Buddhist morals, myths, aesthetics, and epistemic sensibilities continued unobstructed, at least until the early 1930s. Finally, I conclude with brief reflections on some avenues for future research in Chinese Buddhism, secular Buddhism, and religion and media studies.
Keywords: Buddhism and modernity; contemplative studies; kinhin; slow cinema; transnational Chinese cinema; Tsai Ming-Liang; walking meditation; Zen ritual