The Hybridity of Buddhism: Contemporary Encounters between Tibetan and Chinese Traditions in Taiwan and the Mainland ed. by Fabienne Jagou (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- The Hybridity of Buddhism: Contemporary Encounters between Tibetan and Chinese Traditions in Taiwan and the Mainland ed. by Fabienne Jagou
This volume brings together eight papers generated from the project “Practices of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan,” supported by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchanges from 2012–2015. The chapters each offer insight into a different aspect of the development of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan, and in some cases in the Kham Tibetan area within the PRC. This represents an important step forward in the scholarship on this important topic; previous works in English can be counted on one hand, with only a little more in Chinese or French.
This volume is not only the first to collect the work of scholars focusing specifically on Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan, but it also moves forward the small but growing field of scholarship on the interactions between Tibetan Buddhism and the broader Chinese-speaking world. Furthermore, many of the chapters address major themes of interest to a wide audience of scholars and more general readers with interests in Tibetan, Chinese, and Global Buddhism, as well as contemporary dynamics of religion more generally. These include: transnationalism, ecumenicalism, and the tensions between seeking legitimacy through traditional transmission and efforts at religious reconstruction and innovation.
The volume takes the form of a collection of detailed, but narrow and stand-alone, case studies, rather than a definitive introduction to the current development of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan, or a sustained discussion of those larger themes. Therefore, I expect that the audience for the volume will be limited to specialists already working in the intersection between Tibetan Buddhism and Chinese/Taiwanese religion. Scholars may further pick and choose among the articles according to their specific interests. The following section sketches each chapter, then the review concludes with some further thoughts on the potential and limitations of the volume.
Chapter 1, by Cécile Campergue, provides an overview of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan based on a survey of lay participants and visits to temples in 2013 and 2014. It covers a variety of topics, from demographic characteristics of lay participants to political, cultural, and religious dimensions of lay people’s engagement with Tibetan Buddhism and of centers themselves. Interpretation of findings is primarily done with reference to the spread of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. This chapter is in French, the only non-English chapter in the volume.
Sarah E. Frazier’s chapter on the changing architecture of Tibetan Buddhist temples in Taiwan offers the only other chapter with a somewhat broad reach. Using six Tibetan Buddhist temples across the island as examples, it identifies a major shift around 1997 with the appearance of much more elaborate and “traditional” Tibetan Buddhist architecture. She argues that this effort to construct visible Tibetan Buddhist “holy lands” is motivated [End Page 98] by concerns for legitimacy and propagation, is produced by complex transnational linkages, and has served to raise the profile of Tibetan Buddhism on the island.
Chapter 3 begins a series of more focused case studies. Fabienne Jagou takes us through some of the early history of Tibetan Buddhism in Taiwan with an examination of the lives, Buddhist activities, and treatment of the relics of two figures: the Changkya Qutuγtu (1891–1957) and Elder Gongga 貢噶老人 (1903–1997), the latter perhaps the most important figure in the development of Tibetan Buddhism on the island in the twentieth century.
Cody R. Bahir’s chapter illuminates an overlooked dimension of the contemporary development of esoteric Buddhism in Chinese societies—the revival (perhaps reinvention) of primarily non-Tibetan esoteric traditions through Japanese Shingon (Ch: Zhenyan 真言). This rich and stimulating chapter delves into three critical issues for contemporary Buddhism of any tradition or location: the conundrum of religious innovation when legitimacy relies on the mantle of tradition, challenges to legitimacy from broken/weak links in transmission, and efforts to articulate trans-sectarian...
