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THE ABDUCTION OF
MODERNITY
Part 2: That old time
religion
By Henry C K Liu
Part 1: The race toward
barbarism
From the fall of the Roman Empire to the 15th
century, Islam was the dominant civilization outside of
China. The Islamic world of this period was more
advanced, with greater wealth and a higher level of
culture than the Christian West. Islamic scholars
preserved the texts of the ancient Greek philosophers
and scientists by translating them into Arabic and
Latin, which Renaissance scholars emerging from the Dark
Ages relied on for sources and scholarship on antiquity.
Arabs made path-breaking advances in mathematics,
astronomy, medicine and philosophy, and transmitted to
the West much of what they had learned from China. The
West through the interpretation of Arab eyes
rediscovered much of Western antiquity.
Mohammed
the Prophet entered Mecca in AD 630 and established
Islamic rule. The growing forces of Muslim, 121 years
from that date, after having conquered Spain, North
Africa, Egypt, Persia and much of Byzantium, decisively
defeated the Tang Chinese army in 751 at the famous
Battle of Talas, between modern-day Tashkent and Lake
Balkhash. The Arab victory was aided by a branch of
Muslim Tujue (Turkic) tribes known as Karluks, who
launched a surprised attack on Tang forces from the
rear. The Battle of Talas halted Chinese expansion into
Central Asia.
The Chinese refer to Arabs as
Dashi, from the Syrian word Tayi or the
Persian word T'cyk. The Arabs conquered Samarkand
in the 8th century. For five centuries thereafter,
Samarkand flourished under the Omayyad Arabs as a trade
center between Baghdad and Changan, the capital of
dynastic China, until advances in sea transport in the
13th century finally rendered the Silk Route
economically obsolete. Chinese prisoners captured by
Arab forces at the Battle of Talas in 751 eventually
introduced the art of paper-making to Arab lands and
subsequently to Europe, but only after Arab
paper-makers, jealously guarding the secret from
Europeans for five more centuries, had sold paper to
Europe at handsome profits in the interim. A process to
make paper from vegetable fiber had first been invented
by Cailun in China during the Han Dynasty in 105. The
first paper mill outside of China was established by
Arabs in Samarkand six-and-a-half centuries later in
751. The invention of paper greatly facilitated the
development of language, graphic arts and culture, first
in China, then in the Arab world, and then in the West.
The scientific and industrial revolutions vastly
increased the wealth and power of the West from the
middle of the 19th century. After the defeat of the
Islamic Ottoman Empire in World War I, the Middle East
was taken over by European powers and broken up into
colonies and protectorates. Today, despite
decolonization, nationalism and oil riches, this region
remains poor and underdeveloped, not because modernity
bypassed it, but because modernity arrived in the form
of neo-colonialism. Westernization in these lands has
produced miserable results, forcing the Islamic world to
the conclusion that the solution may be a renewal of the
Islamic faith that reigned in the days of their former
greatness. The West derides this view as a rejection of
modernity, notwithstanding historical evidence of the
Arab world having embraced science and technology at a
time when the best minds in the West were still
prisoners of the flat-Earth doctrine.
The
clash-of-civilizations theme exaggerates unity in
outlook, values, ideas, and loyalties among people who
share the common history and culture that define a
civilization. Modern wars have been fought mostly within
Western civilization, while easy imperialistic conquests
have been the order of the day between Western and
non-Western civilizations. Samuel P Huntington wrote:
"The central characteristics of the West, those which
distinguish it from other civilizations, antedate the
modernization of the West." Thus the modernization of
other civilizations is not in conflict with rejection of
Westernization. The scholar Bernard Lewis, in seeing
hatred of modernity as the main driving force in the
wider context of Islamic terrorism, is confusing
modernity with Western culture.
The rejection of
modernity occurs in every nation and civilization. The
history of the West, dominated by the rise of
Christianity, is strewn with wars of resistance against
modernity. The history of Christianity, the main thread
of Western history, is a continuing saga against
modernity. The US "war on terrorism" itself is a
continuation of this resistance in its emphasis on force
rather than understanding. By abducting the concept of
modernity as a monopoly of the West, Western scholars
obstruct true modernity in a diverse world. Modernity is
defined by the West as a collection of Western values
arbitrarily deemed universal - the secular culture of
circular rationality, materialist science, alienating
individualism, technical innovation, amoral legalism,
selective democracy and exploitative capitalism that
Western imperialism has spread worldwide in different
forms and to varying degrees. Religious fundamentalism
is currently enjoying unprecedented influence over
secular politics within the United States, as
exemplified by President George W Bush's proclamation
that God, not the US constitution, told him to attack
Afghanistan and Iraq. While the separation of church and
state is still a governing tenet in the US, separation
of religion and politics is non-existent.
Modernity, a new version of Rudyard Kipling's
"white man's burden" of old-fashioned imperialism, has
been brought to the world by neo-imperialism, to disarm
resistance to Western neo-imperialist encroachment.
Opposition to exploitative policies and actions of the
imperialist West is dismissed as irrational hatred of
modernity. Kipling (1865-1936) confused Western
materialist advancement with moral superiority, as
measured by a standard based on virtue. Kipling's
romantic portrayal of the model Englishman as brave,
honorable, conscientious and self-reliant, while
popularly accepted in the English-speaking West, would
be generally rejected in the East by those with direct
exposure to the breed as being still unwashed of
animalistic instincts. The idealized image would be
recognized as being a wishful manifestation based on
Kipling's apologetic colonial mentality toward his
social betters in his home society. It is also a
compensation for Kipling's own inferiority complex
derived from his love-hate relationship with the
richness of Indian culture, to which he was attracted
but which he was unable to appreciate fully because of
his deep-rooted racial prejudice as a product of Western
culture.
The "white man's burden" is a world
view for justifying imperialism. The term is the name of
an 1899 poem by Kipling, the sentiments of which give
insight into this world view.
The first verse of
the Kipling poem reads:
Take up the White
Man's burden -
Send forth the best ye breed -
Go,
bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and
wild -
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil
and half child.
In this view, non-European
cultures are seen as childlike and devilish, with people
of European descent having a sacred and selfless
obligation to dominate them in perpetuity for their own
good and salvation.
The poem was originally
published in a popular US magazine (McClure's). It was
written specifically to address US isolationist
sentiments after the Spanish-American War in 1898, from
which the United States would emerge as a world power of
consequence. Kipling wrote this poem specifically to
help sway popular opinion in the US, so that a
"friendly" Western power would hold the strategically
important Philippines after the collapse of the Spanish
empire in Southeast Asia.
The view and the term
by now are widely regarded as racist. Nevertheless, it
served the purpose of allowing colonization to proceed
in the context of US anti-colonialism self-image and to
legitimize historical racism in the United States.
The colonial powers relied on the excuse of
"civilizing" indigenous peoples to rationalize
colonialism. Archeological findings in South Africa were
suppressed for fear that the existence of sophisticated
urban culture in southern Africa prior to European
colonization would pose a threat to the argument that
white rule was necessary to "civilize" the region.
The term "white man's burden" is sometimes used
in the present time to describe double standards toward
those of European descent because of perceived
responsibility or culpability for historical wrongs. It
is the main moral argument for affirmative action in the
United States. Increasingly vocal demands are heard from
the black community and the nations of indigenous people
in the US for an official apology and a program of
restitution to address such historical wrongs
perpetrated by one people on others.
Cultural
imperialism is the practice of promoting the culture and
language of one national civilization in another for the
purpose of political and social control. This can take
the form of active, formal policy, such as in education
and job opportunities, or a general attitude of
superiority complex.
Empires throughout history
have been established using war and physical compulsion.
In the long term, the invading population tended to
become absorbed into the dominant local culture, or
acquire its attributes indirectly. Cultural imperialism
reverses this trend by imposing an alien culture on the
conquered. One of the early examples of cultural
imperialism was the extinction of the Etruscan culture
and language caused by the imperial policies of the
Romans.
The Greek culture built gymnasiums,
theaters and public baths in places that its adherents
conquered, such as ancient Judea, where Greek cultural
imperialism sparked a popular revolt, with the effect
that the subject populations became immersed in the
conquering culture. The spread of the koine
(common) Greek language was another large factor in this
immersion.
The prayer-book rebellion of 1549,
when the English state sought to suppress non-English
languages with the English-language Book of Common
Prayer, is another example. In replacing Latin with
English, and under the guise of suppressing Catholicism,
English was in effect imposed as the language of the
Anglican Church as a dominant societal institution.
Though people in many areas of Cornwall did not speak or
understand English at the time, the Cornish language
fell into disuse as a result. The Cornish people
protested against the imposition of an English prayer
book, resulting in large numbers of protesters being
massacred by the king's army, their leaders executed and
the people suffering harsh reprisals.
Throughout
the 18th and 19th centuries the dominant English
establishment attempted to eliminate all non-English
languages within the British Isles (such as Welsh, Irish
and Scottish Gaelic) by outlawing them or otherwise
marginalizing their speakers. Many other languages had
almost or totally been wiped out, including Cornish and
Manx. "Cultural imperialism" is a term first applied to
the British Empire, with its many measures to impose the
conquering culture on the conquered. These ranged from
pound-sterling hegemony, to the preferred social status
given the game of cricket and English dress codes, to
mandatory use and teaching of English, further to
establish Britain's control on nations and territories
within the empire. Language imperialism is the basic
element in cultural imperialism. The discriminatory
practice of proper elocution is a component of in-group
cultural imperialism.
As exploration of the
Americas increased, European nations including Britain,
France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal all
raced to claim territory in hopes of generating
increased economic wealth for themselves. In these new
colonies, the European conquerors imposed their
languages and cultures on lands whose indigenous
population was too large or too established to
annihilate. The same took place in Africa and Asia. The
record of US policy and abuse of native Americans is
atrocious, going beyond cultural imperialism to
genocide.
During the late 18th, the 19th and the
early 20th centuries, the Swedish government continually
repressed the Saami culture. Repression took numerous
forms, such as banning the Saami language and by
forceful removal of many cultural artifacts, such as the
magic drums of the naajds (Saami shamans). Most
of the drums have not to date been returned. Even as
late as the 1960s the Sweden-Finnish people of the Torne
Valley had their native Finnish dialect banned from use
in schools and public records.
Cultural
imperialism since World War II has primarily been
connected with the US. Most countries outside the United
States view the pervasive US cultural export through
business and popular culture as threatening to their
traditional ways of life or moral values. Some
countries, including France and Canada, have adopted
official policies that actively oppose
"Americanization". Representatives of al-Qaeda stated
that their attacks on US interests were motivated in
part by a reaction to perceived US cultural imperialism.
Edward Said of Columbia University, one of the
pioneers of post-colonial studies, has written
extensively on the subject of cultural imperialism. His
work highlights the misconceived assumptions about
cultures and societies and is influenced by Michel
Foucault's concepts of discourse and power. Foucault
views the intellectual's role as no longer to place
himself somewhat ahead and to the side in order to
express the stifled truth of the collectivity. Rather,
it is to struggle against the forms of power that
transform him into its object and instrument in the
sphere of knowledge, truth, consciousness, and
discourse. In this sense theory does not express,
translate, or serve to apply practice: it is
practice. But it is local and regional and not
totalizing. This is a struggle against power, a struggle
aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is
most invisible and insidious. It is not to awaken
consciousness that we struggle but to sap power, to take
power; it is an activity conducted alongside those who
struggle for power, and not their illumination.
Colonialism, the political theory governing imperialism,
is based on a belief that the mores of the colonizer are
superior to those of the colonized on the basis on
power. This colonial mentality explains why former
colonies such as Hong Kong cling to the myth of the
superiority of their colonial culture.
According
to Said, the Orient signifies a system of
representations framed by political forces that brought
the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness,
and Western Empire. The Orient exists for the West, and
is constructed by and in relation to the West.
Orientalism refers to the study of Near and Far Eastern
societies and cultures, generally by Westerners. It is a
mirror image of what are inferior and alien ("Other") to
the West. Although this term had been abandoned as
archaic by the late 20th century, Said argues that the
term should be redefined to apply to any current study
of such societies to correct current accounts of the
Middle East, India, China, and elsewhere that reflects
long-held Western biases. The discourse and visual
imagery of Orientalism are laced with notions of power
and superiority, formulated initially to facilitate a
colonizing mission on the part of the West and
perpetuated through a wide variety of discourses and
policies.
Critical theorists regard Orientalism
as part of an effort to justify colonialism through the
concept of the "white man's burden", and to wield the
sword of modernity against allegedly "backward"
civilizations. A critical theory is an account of
morality that is sensitive to the historically
contingent nature of the culture that spawned it: by
adopting a hypothetical stance toward their own
traditions and on this basis grasping their own cultural
relativity, participants in the formation of a critical
theory take a questioning stance toward their own
practices while nonetheless avoiding the paralysis of
moral relativism. The current coercive application of
the Western concept of democracy, rule of law,
individual freedom and market fundamentalism as
universal truth is a legitimate target of critical
theory.
Promoters of this Western version of
modernity see its birth in the West through a radical
transformation of its past. The West of the Middle Ages,
built around a world view of Christian Scholasticism,
was a society of religious philosophy, feudal law, and
an agricultural economy. Out of this past, the
Renaissance and Enlightenment produced a substantially
new mentality of science, individualism, industrial
capitalism and imperialism. The cultural foundation of
this new mentality is that reason, not revelation, is
the instrument of knowledge and arbiter of truth; that
science, not religion, leads to truth about nature and
life; that the pursuit of happiness in this life, not
the quest for spiritual fulfillment, or suffering in
preparation for the next, is the cardinal purpose of
existence; that reason can and should be used to
increase human control through economic and
technological progress; that the individual person is an
end in him/herself with the capacity to direct his/her
own life, not a communal member of society with a
prescribed social role; that individuals should be
encouraged to indulge in inalienable rights to freedom
of thought, speech, and action; that religious belief
should be a private affair rather than a collective
awareness, that intolerance is a social disease, and
that church and state should be kept separate.
As the West grows stronger, tolerance of other
cultures and of those within the West itself who refuse
to participate is viewed increasingly as a sign of
weakness. Domination takes on sophisticated, less
visible forms. National sovereignty is pushed aside in
the name of replacing command economies with markets,
warfare with trade, and rule by king or commissar with
token democracy. To resist neo-imperialism is to resist
modernity. This view justifies the new empire of the
sole superpower, self-proclaimed inheritor of Western
civilization.
Yet this view of modernity
misreads history. Thomas Aquinas (1225-71) benefited
intellectually from his exposure to translations of
works of Aristotle from Greek into Latin by Arab
scholars to whose world view he became much indebted. He
also profited intellectually from the rise of
universities in Europe during 12th and 13th centuries,
notably the University of Bologna (1088), known for its
studies in law, the University of Padua (founded by
dissidents from Bologna), the University of Paris, and
Oxford University, all founded as centers of learning in
theology, not science. In this new intellectual milieu
in Europe, Aquinas applied Aristotelian syllogism as
interpreted by Arab minds to medieval mysticism of
revelation. His Summa Theologica (1267-73) was a
systematic exposition of theology on rational
philosophical principles worked out by the ancient
Greeks as modified by Arab precision and algebra, which
pioneered the use of variables in problem-solving in
logic.
Up to that time, while Scholasticism, as
advanced by St Augustine (354-430), would vindicate
reason in theology, it would carefully differentiate
between theology and philosophy. It would do so by
confining theology, proceeding from faith, to
investigations of revealed truths, while it would limit
philosophy, based on reason, from concern with truths
that transcended reason. Revealed truth would be
proclaimed as discoverable only through faith.
The 13th century was a critical point in
Christian thought regarding the relationship between
faith and reason. The intellectual community in
Christendom at that time was torn between claims of
followers of Averroes (1126-98), Arabian philosopher
from Cordoba in Spain, and claims of followers of St
Augustine, troubled youth turned zealous convert,
founder of Christian theology and spokesman for
Christian mysticism.
Efforts of followers of
Averroes in the 13th century to separate absolutely
faith from truth clashed with the traditional claim of
truth being exclusively a matter of faith. Such a claim
had been made for the past nine centuries by followers
of St Augustine, whose contribution to the evolution of
Christianity was considered second only to that of St
Paul, apostle to Gentiles and the greatest missionary
apostle. Paul laid down the relentless approach of
Western evangelism by applying to his missionary zeal
the same vigor and intolerance he showed toward the
persecution of Christians before his epiphany on the
road to Damascus.
Averroes, Latin name for
Abu-al-Walid Ibn Rushd, whose commentaries on Aristotle
would remain influential for four centuries until the
Renaissance, attempted to circumscribe the separate
limits of faith and reason. He asserted that both could
process truths and that the two separate realms need not
be reconciled because they are not in conflict. Siger de
Brabant of the University of Paris, leader of the
Averroists, claimed in 1260 that it should be possible,
as a matter of veracity, and tolerable, as a license in
intellectual soundness, for a concept to be true in
reason but false in faith or visa versa.
The
doctrines of the Averroists, which include denying the
immortality of the individual soul and upholding the
eternity of matter, ended up being officially condemned
by the Catholic Church.
St Thomas Aquinas,
nicknamed Dumb Ox because of his slow and deliberate
manner of speech, brilliant father of Neo-Scholasticism,
aiming to resolve the dispute between Averroists and
Augustinians, would hold that reason and faith
constitute two harmonious realms in which the truth of
faith complements that of reason, both being gifts of
God, but reason having an autonomy of its own. The
existence of God could therefore be discovered through
reason, with the grace of God.
The theological
significance of this momentous claim by Thomas Aquinas
cannot be over-emphasized. It would save Christianity
from falling into irrelevance in the Age of Reason,
sometimes referred to as the Enlightenment, and preserve
tolerance for faith among rational thinkers in the
scientific world. The Thomist claim remained
unchallenged for five centuries until David Hume
(1711-86) pointed out in his Inquiry into Human
Understanding that since the conclusion of a valid
inference could contain no information not found in the
premise, there could be no valid conclusion from
observed to unobserved phenomena.
Hume let the
logic air out of the Thomist natural-theology balloon,
and in the process showed that even general laws of
science could not be logically justified beyond their
own limits, perhaps even including his own sweeping
conclusion. Hume, the empiricist, would logically
determine that logic is circular and goes nowhere: a
classic position of Taoist skepticism.
Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804) emancipated man's command of knowledge
from Humean skepticism. In his Critique of Pure
Reason (1781), Kant emphasized the contribution of
the knower to knowledge. While acknowledging that the
three great issues of metaphysics - God, freedom and
immortality - could not be logically determined, he
asserted that their essence is a necessary
presupposition. In his subsequent publications,
Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and
Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant asserted as a
moral law his famous categorical imperative requiring
moral actions to be unconditionally and universally
binding to absolute goodwill. Goodwill is singularly
absent in imperialism, classic or neo.
Notwithstanding the enlightened breakthroughs of
English Protestant empiricists such as Thomas Hobbes,
John Locke and David Hume, and perhaps in reaction to
them, Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni
Patris in 1879. It declared Scholasticism, as
modified by Thomas Aquinas, to be official Catholic
philosophy. Unwittingly, Scholasticism legitimized the
independence of secular politics from Church control. If
reason and faith constitute two harmonious realms in
which the truth of faith complements that of reason,
both being gifts of God, but reason having an autonomy
of its own, then politics and religion can also belong
to separate realms in which morality of religion
complements virtue in politics, but politics having an
autonomy of its own. It provided the theological
rationalization for the separation of church and state.
Thus when Sayyid Qutb (1906-66), leader of the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and prolific author of great
influence, wrote: "An all-out offensive, a jihad, should
be waged against modernity so that ... moral rearmament
could take place. The ultimate objective is to
re-establish the Kingdom of Allah upon earth," he was
rejecting not modernity but the modernity of the West.
Qutb was not preaching for suffering in preparation for
the next life as Western scholars such as Bernard Lewis
allege, he wanted his civilization back and he wanted it
now.
Qutb did not write out of ignorance of the
West. His fundamentalism was formed during the two years
he spent in the United States, which seemed to him "a
disastrous combination of avid materialism and egoistic
individualism". Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59), while
admiring the energy and versatility of Americans, also
thought they were too intent on making money and would
be condemned to a commercial culture. In Tocqueville's
opinion, Americans' notion of equality was derived from
their "general equality of condition" rather than from
moral commitment and that their equality might
eventually be endangered by the domination of a new
industrial class. Mawlana Abu'l-A'la Mawdudi (1903-79),
the founder of the fundamentalist Jama'at-i Islami in
India and Pakistan, was also militantly opposed to
individualism. In an Islamic state, he wrote, "no one
can regard any field of his affairs as personal and
private".
Modern Asia cannot be fully understood
without a thorough awareness of Confucianism, Buddhism
and Taoism. Western influence, from Christianity to
liberalism to Marxism, has only been an ill-fitted
costume over an ancient culture deeply rooted in
Confucian values, Buddhist enlightenment mercy and
Taoist paradox. Feudal culture in China has aspects of
what modern political science would label fascist,
socialist, democratic and anarchist. As a
socio-political system, feudalism is inherently
authoritarian and totalitarian. However, since feudal
cultural ideals have always been meticulously nurtured
by Confucianism to be congruent with the political
regime, social control, while pervasive, is seldom
consciously felt as oppression by the general public.
Or, more accurately, social oppression - both vertical,
such as sovereign to subject, and horizontal, such as
gender prejudice - is considered natural for lack of an
accepted alternative vision. Concepts such as equality,
individuality, privacy, personal freedom and democracy
are deemed antisocial, and only longed for by the
deranged-of-mind, such as radical Taoists. This was true
in large measure up to modern times when radical Taoists
were transformed into radical political and cultural
dissidents.
Buddhism (Fo Jiao) first
appeared in China officially in AD 65. Some evidence
suggests that it might have been imported to China from
India as early as 2 BC. Since its introduction, Buddhism
has permeated Chinese society and its economic life,
despite periodic suppression by the state. It had
affected the customs of all levels of society by the
time of the Tang Dynasty some six centuries after its
introduction. Buddhist temples, monasteries and shrines
had been established in every part of the empire. The
services of sengs (Buddhist monks) became
indispensable for all social events, performing
religious ceremonies for funerals and weddings,
blessings for newborns, administering temples for the
faithful and attending family shrines for the elite.
Sengs functioned as preachers, teachers, scribes,
artists and even doctors. Often they would become top
advisors to the huangdi (emperor), and many
sengs would even become powerful political
figures both at court and at the local level.
The name Buddha (Fo) is a Sanskrit word
meaning Enlightened One. It is the appellation conferred
by the faithful on Indian Prince Siddhartha Gautama
(563-483 BC), who came from the southern foothills of
the Himalayas.
Buddhism originated at the end of
5th century BC in the valley of the middle Ganges in
India. The religious sect first rose as a plebeian
reaction to claims of spiritual and social supremacy by
Hindu Brahman priests who were the ruling elite of the
Indian caste system. Since that time, Buddhism has
spread across political, social and ethnic boundaries as
one of the three great religions of the world, the other
two being Christianity and Islam.
Curiously,
acceptance of Buddhism remained sporadic in India, its
birthplace. The incorporation of Buddha by Hinduism as
the ninth incarnation (avatar) of its god, Vishnu,
seriously adulterated the autonomous uniqueness of
Buddhism in India. The Muslim invasion of India from the
11th century gradually but effectively obliterated
remaining Buddhist communities there. Similarly,
Christianity remains a minority religion in the Middle
East, its holy place of origin.
Kanishka, an
ardent patron of Buddhism, was king of the Kushan
Empire, which dominated northern India during the 2nd
century AD. He was also known in history as the sponsor
of a Greco-Buddhist style of sculpture, labeled by art
historians as the Gandhara school, typified by
curly-haired seated Buddha statues, which became the
dominant Buddhist art form in East Asia. A gilded bronze
Buddha of the Gandhara school is on display at the
Harvard Fogg Art Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
More significant, Kanishka was instrumental in
introducing Buddhism into Central Asia, whence it spread
first to China, then Korea and finally Japan.
The branch of Buddhism that diffused into East
Asia would take on different characteristics from the
early sects of Buddha's own time. It would come to be
known as Mahayana (Dasheng, meaning major
vehicle), the scripture of which is written in classical
Sanskrit, distinguishing itself from the older Hinayana
(Xiaosheng, meaning minor vehicle), the scripture
of which is written in a vernacular dialect (Prakrit)
known as Pali. Hinayana Buddhism, remaining closer to
ancient Buddhism, is practiced widely in Southeast Asia
today.
The Sermon of the Turning of the Wheel of
the Law, delivered by Buddha at Sarnath around 500 BC,
elucidates the secret of a happy life by means of the
Four Exalted Truths:
Truth I: Existence encompasses
sorrow.
Truth II: Sorrow emanates from
desire.
Truth III: Sorrow subsides when desire
wanes.
Truth IV: Desire can be alleviated by
following the Gracious Eight-Spectrum Path.
This
Gracious Eight-Spectrum Path consists of:
Spectrum 1:
Virtuous conviction.
Spectrum 2: Virtuous resolution:
to renounce sensual pleasure, to harm no living
creatures and ultimately to achieve
salvation.
Spectrum 3: Virtuous speech.
Spectrum
4: Virtuous conduct.
Spectrum 5: Virtuous
involvement.
Spectrum 6: Virtuous effort: to keep the
mind free from evil and devoted to good.
Spectrum 7:
Virtuous contemplation.
Spectrum 8: Virtuous
meditation: to achieve an awareness of internal
selflessness and external detachment.
Buddhist
concerns are more ethical than metaphysical, focusing on
human suffering, which is considered as inherent in life
itself. Suffering can be dispelled only by abandoning
desires such as ambition, selfishness, envy and greed.
This approach to life is the diametrical opposite of the
Western concept of modernity.
Detachment is key.
Buddhists take vows against killing, stealing,
falsehood, unchasteness and intoxication. They practice
self-confession and try to live austere, ascetic lives
with the objective of achieving nirvana, a state of
blissful detachment that, when attained permanently,
known as pari-nirvana, brings an end to the otherwise
never-ending cycle of earth-bound rebirths through
transmigration of the soul. The Four Exalted Truths of
Buddhism have helped devotees deal with the tribulations
of life. The Third Exalted Truth, sorrow subsides when
desire wanes, has application to modern market economy.
A basic Buddhist tenet: the secret of happiness is not
getting what you want, but wanting what you get. So much
for the concept of the pursuit of happiness in Western
modernity. For the Buddhist idea of happiness, if you
have to pursue it, you have lost it.
The reasons
for China's popular embrace of Buddhism are complex and
have been subject to constant reassessment. One commonly
acknowledged reason is that Buddhism, while of foreign
origin, shares commonality with both Taoist and
Confucian concepts that are indigenous to Chinese
culture. The passive side of Buddhism is Taoism, which
practices contemplation and promotes self-awareness. And
the active side of Buddhism is Confucianism, which
advocates respect for authority and submission to
propriety. Furthermore, Buddhism has provided, as it has
evolved in China, elaborate, colorful ceremonies
welcomed by one aspect of the collective Chinese
character, hitherto suppressed through centuries of
Confucian social restraint and Taoist self-denial.
Most of all, Buddhism fills a void left by
traditional ancient Chinese religious concepts, which
are centered rigidly around the trinity: 1) Heaven
(Tian) - God. 2) Son of Heaven (Tianzi) - Emperor
(sovereign). 3) The Hundred Surnames (Baixing) -
People.
Heaven (Tian) is the abstract symbol of
all things supernatural and authoritative, much like the
manner in which the imperial court is referred to as the
authoritative and decision-making body of the secular
empire. God, a term that has no exact equivalent in the
language of polytheistic Chinese culture, has its
closest translation as Tiandi (King in Heaven), who is
the highest god. Heaven as a realm is believed to be
inhabited by a clan of gods and spirits
(shen-gui), with hierarchical ranks, headed by
Tiandi, similar to the Greek hierarchical community of
gods headed by Zeus.
The secular huangdi
(emperor) is the Son of Heaven (Tianzi), and the people,
known as the Hundred Surnames (Baixing), are
wards of huangdi. The people do not enjoy the
privilege of directly communicating with Heaven, the
domain of gods headed by Tiandi. The people's duty is to
pay homage to the Son of Heaven, who alone possesses the
privilege of communicating with and thanksgiving to
Heaven. The most solemn ritual in Chinese feudal culture
is the fengshan rites. It is a ritual that
confers Heaven's abdication of authority on secular
affairs in favor of huangdi.
Thus
religion in China, before the arrival of Buddhism, had
merely been a spiritual subsystem of the secular world.
It was a spiritual extension of the rigid hierarchy of
the ancient Chinese socio-political realm. Buddhism
provided a previously unavailable outlet of direct
religious expression for the common people. It
introduced participatory religious experience into
Chinese society. Whereas, in the context of the rigid
Confucian social structure, Taoism (Dao Jia)
provides the Chinese people with introverted individual
spiritual freedom, Buddhism provides them with
extroverted collective spiritual liberation, independent
of communal hierarchy. Taoism allows the individual to
contemplate privately, freeing him from the mental
tyranny of an all-controlling culture, while Buddhism
allows the people to worship independently, freeing them
from the pervasive control of a rigid secular
socio-political hierarchy.
Religion in China has
a different meaning than in the West. The term
"religion" in the Chinese language is composed of two
characters: zong-jiao, literally meaning
"ancestral teaching". Until the spread of Buddhism,
religious experience for the Chinese people had been
limited to reverence toward the spirits of their
departed ancestors. Buddhism provided the average
devotee with direct access to God without requiring a
denial of reverence for ancestral spirits. Until the
introduction of Christianity, the Chinese were not
required by religion to deny the spirituality of their
ancestors. This demand for the rejection of ancestor
worship was a key obstacle preventing Christianity from
becoming a major religion in China. Incidentally, even
in Christian theology, "God" is translated in Chinese as
Shangdi, meaning "The King Above". It is a celestial
echo of the supreme ruler in the secular political
system.
From its beginning, Buddhism took on an
anti-establishment posture, which it moderated as it
developed in China but never totally abandoned.
Traditionally, in the early part of an emperor's reign,
as soon as his rule was firmly established, he would
perform the elaborate and formal fengshan rites.
These Confucian rites of theocratic feudalism involve
the paying of tribute by Tianzi (Son of Heaven) as
huangdi (emperor), on behalf of his
baixing, namely the people, to Tian (Heaven)
where the head god Tiandi (King in Heaven) reigns.
Through the fengshan rites, the huangdi
received tribute and accepted loyalty pledges from his
vassal lords on behalf of their many minions and
subjects throughout the empire. Anyone besides the
huangdi performing religious rites directly to
Heaven would be committing forbidden acts tantamount to
treasonous usurpation. Buddhism broke the monopolistic
hold of the huangdi on religious celebration and
opened it to all for the taking. Little wonder Buddhism
spread like wildflowers.
By breaking down the
hierarchical religious monopoly implied by Confucian
fengshan rites, Buddhism in its early history in
China unwittingly contributed to the crumbling of the
foundation of a feudal hierarchy already in decline.
Buddhism's populist theology bolstered the emergence of
a secular structure in the form of a centrally managed
empire, replacing autonomous local authority. In this
new secular structure individuals could participate more
freely in social functions, unrestricted by traditional
local hierarchy.
The Buddhist notion of nirvana
runs parallel to the concept of the Mandate of Heaven
(Tianming). Ironically, by claiming that a state of
nirvana could be earned through religious devotion by
any deserving member of society, it implies that the
Mandate of Heaven can also be earned by any deserving
hero. Thus Buddhism invited periodic and recurring
suppression from paranoid emperors who felt obliged to
adopt anti-subversive measures against Buddhism, in
order to defend the imperial claim on the Mandate of
Heaven from challenges by ambitious members of the
aristocracy who were Buddhist devotees.
While
Buddhism serves as the fountainhead of the idea of open
access for all to spiritual salvation, such universal
access is dependent on the grace of detachment as
exemplified by Buddha. This idea is akin to the detached
central authority in an empire structure with the grace
of a distant emperor who is less involved with the
details of daily living of his subjects. It is less akin
to the archaic hierarchical feudalism of autonomous
local lords who control every detail of the lives of his
fief. Thus Buddhism facilitated its own growth at the
same time that it provided the philosophical
justification for the flowering of a distant centralized
political order in a complex, multi-dimensional society.
The development of such a benign centralized political
structure, first budding in imperial China in the 5th
century, gathered unstoppable momentum around the 7th
century.
The Buddhist concept of universal open
access to nirvana had socio-political implications. It
helped shift politics from being a contest among
competing feudal lords refereed by an arbitrating
huangdi to the beginning of an empirewide power
struggle based on class interests. Since people were no
longer dependent on their feudal lords for achieving the
state of nirvana, they no longer felt inseparably bound
to their lords in secular life. Gradually, merchants in
the service of a particular feudal lord found stronger
common interest with other merchants in the service of
competing lords than their traditional commitment to
clannish feudal loyalty. Before long, the same became
true for farmers, scholars, artisans and other
tradesmen. And with the tacit encouragement of expanding
central power, people began to look to the
huangdi as a higher authority to champion
universal justice and to protect their separate class
interests. They also looked to Buddhism to enhance the
moral posture of class solidarity against the Confucian
demand for absolute hierarchical loyalty toward their
local lords. Thus the spread of Buddhism ushered in an
age of strong central imperial authority on top of
traditional feudalism with local autonomy. Through the
spread of Buddhism, an empirewide standard now
overshadowed fragmented local autonomy on basic issues
of proper human relationship, justice and social order.
Simultaneously, however, Buddhist insistence on
a clear separation of ecclesiastical authority from
secular control caused constant conflict between the
central authority of the dragon throne and
independent-minded Buddhist fundamentalists. This
conflict was exploited by freewheeling members of
guizu (the aristocracy) for secular political
purposes, particularly those in the south, where greater
physical distance from the capital translated into
greater local autonomy.
The intellectual role of
Buddhist institutions grew increasingly significant and
pervasive in Chinese culture. Sengs (Buddhist
monks) of various sects, in addition to their religious
undertakings, took to routinely writing philosophy,
conducting schools and keeping libraries. The
independence of Buddhist teaching from forbidding
Confucian scholasticism was an important factor in
Buddhism's popular flowering in China. Buddhist
curricula were admittedly overburdened with
time-consuming, mind-boggling theological studies, but
the discipline acquired from such study methods more
than compensated for the heavy investment in time and
effort. Excellence in exegesis requires scholarship,
research methodology, creative logic and secular
evidential verification, qualities that learned
sengs cultivated. Buddhist seng-scholars
soon dominated the fields of mathematics, alchemy,
medicine, astronomy and engineering. Buddhist impact on
Chinese philosophy was fundamental, introducing new
concepts, abstract terms and new words for the
description and manipulation of previously unfathomable
ideas. Buddhism's influence in Chinese art, architecture
and literature was undeniably crucial. Such influence in
Tang helped liberate Chinese culture from Confucianism's
stultifying repression, particularly on new and creative
ideas, much as Western scientific methods would 12
centuries later.
In literature, Buddhist
sutras (fojing), which were more widely
circulated and popularly read than abstruse and elitist
Confucian classics, paved the way for other new and
lengthy secular literary works, and prepared the reading
public for acceptance of mixing prose with verse, for
handling of multi-dimensional themes and, ultimately,
for the birth of new literary genres such as the novel
and drama.
Buddhist understanding of history and
of the art of statecraft challenged the staid monopoly
of orthodox Confucianism on politics. And Buddhists were
increasingly recognized for relative objectivity in
their judgment of history and for innovative originality
in their approach to secular problems. In both military
strategy and political theory, Buddhist intellectual
contributions played major roles in a fragmented China's
quest for reunification. In return, Buddhism flourished
under those rulers, such as those of the Sui Dynasty
(581-618), who were wise enough to employ universally
potent Buddhist ideas and apply them to political
advantage, let alone exploiting ready-made, broad-based
support of mushrooming Buddhist communities all over the
fragmented political landscape.
The development
of China's culture, politics and spirit cannot be fully
understood without taking into account the influence of
Buddhism since its importation around 2 BC. From the 5th
century AD on, Buddhists both contributed to, and in
turn were affected by, the historic polarization in
China during the era of North-South Dynasties (Nan-Bei
Chao 420-589), a period spanning the late phase of Six
Dynasties (Liu Chao 220-589) that emerged after the fall
of the glorious Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) four
centuries previously. Buddhism adapted itself during
this period in the south to a society characterized by
the independence of a transplanted guizu
(aristocracy), with large estates of client groups. Its
ecclesiastical structure developed into a network of
loosely connected, but individually autonomous,
monasteries.
It was therefore not surprising
that the great southern seng (Buddhist monk)
Huiyun (334-416) wrote an anti-Confucian essay titled
"Treatise on the Exemption of Religious Institutions
from Monarchial Authority" (Shamen bujing Wangzhi
Lun). Written in 404, the treatise asserted the
independence of religion from secular control. It was
among the earliest intellectual treatises on the
principle of separation of church and state.
During the era of North-South Dynasties,
traditional central political authority in the north
forced Buddhism to seek support from the ruling
sovereign, who tended to be the sole source of secular
favors.
For example, with transparent motive and
shrewd purpose, Seng Fakuo (died 420) of the Bei Wei
Dynasty (Northern Wei 386-534), leader of the Buddhist
clergy in the north, claimed Emperor Daowu (reigned
386-409) as the living reincarnation of Buddha. Seng
Fakuo was bestowed high secular titles during his life,
culminating with a hereditary rank of lord.
Buddhists of 7th-century China sought favoritism
from the secular state at the same time they asserted
their independence and separation from traditional
imperial institutions by calling for Buddhist exemption
from taxation, military service and the long arm of
secular law. This inherently contradictory posture still
would not have brought the wrath of the dragon throne on
Buddhists if they had not been simultaneously engaged in
secular factional intrigues and class politics.
Furthermore, growing abuse of religious
privileges and laxity in monastic discipline inevitably
forced the dragon throne to adopt intrusive measures of
control on theology, and secular supervision of
ecclesiastic establishments. Also, proliferation of
clerical ordination and monasterial founding, much of
which was less than legitimate if not outright
fraudulent, began to deprive the state of much-needed
manpower and tax revenue. The removal from the economy
of large tracts of prime land that would be donated
outright, or under formulas of deferred giving, or
sometimes through fraudulent, tax-evading schemes,
caused serious economic imbalance in many areas. The
sanctuary provided by Buddhist monasteries to the
lawless, to tax evaders and conscript dodgers, as well
as to political dissidents, also threatened the
totalitarian authority of the dragon throne and security
interests of the secular order.
The huge expense
of Buddhist temple construction, the costly maintenance
of an ever-expanding clergy population and its
associated lay communities and the drain on the scarce
supply of metal caused by the casting of ever larger and
larger Buddhist statues and bells interfered with the
secular state's own increasingly ambitious plans for
domestic capital construction and for arms production
needed by foreign conquest.
The growing economic
power of Buddhist monasteries, often the main
socio-economic institutions in many regions, also had
destabilizing political implications. While Buddhism was
repeatedly sponsored by secular authorities for
political purposes, official anti-Buddhist pogroms,
known as shatai (ecclesiastical cleansing),
systematically recurred throughout the long history of
China. This continued up to the Christian-supported 1911
Democratic Revolution that established the Nationalist
Republic, not to mention the subsequent Marxist-Leninist
People's Republic, particularly during the Cultural
Revolution of 1966-76.
The distressing
phenomenon of shatai became even more complex
when other issues, such as xenophobia, backlash from
social reform, and preventive suppression of political
revolts mingled with traditional socio-political
pressure for curbing Buddhist expansion into the secular
world. State persecution and state sponsorship of
religion proved always to be two sides of the same evil
coin.
Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1984), Swedish
sociologist-economist, in his 1944 definitive study
The American Dilemma, for which he received the
1974 Nobel Prize for Economics, having declared the
"Negro" problem in the United States to be inextricably
entwined with the democratic functioning of American
society, went on to produce a 1976 study of Southeast
Asia: The Asian Dilemma. In it he identified
Buddhist acceptance of suffering as the prime cause for
economic underdevelopment in the region. Myrdal's
conclusion would appear valid superficially, given the
coincidence of an indisputable existence of conditions
of poverty in the region at the time of his study and
the pervasive influence of Buddhism in Southeast Asian
culture, until the question is asked as to why, whereas
Buddhism has dominated Southeast Asia for more than a
millennium, pervasive poverty in the region only made
its appearance after the arrival of Western imperialism
in the 19th century.
Marxists and nationalists,
many of both professing no love for Buddhism, suggested
that Myrdal had been influenced in his convenient
conclusion by his eagerness to deflect responsibility
for the sorry state of affairs in the region from the
legacy of Western imperialism. As theological apologists
tried to rationalize social misery with an accommodating
theology to capture the appreciation of the secular
polity, Myrdal, social scientist, tried to blame
indigenous religion for the sins of secular geopolitics.
That which Western scholars identify as the
process of modernity appears to have occurred in China's
history more than once.
Next: Confucianism and Taoism
Henry C
K Liu is chairman of the
New York-based Liu Investment Group.
(Copyright
2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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