苗建时（James Miller） 加拿大女王大学
道教是中国本土的有系统的宗教体系。道家重点关注获得“道”（作为不断变化的宇宙中的生命力不可名状的源头）。在道教2000多年的历史上，实现这一目标的方法虽然经过修正和调整，但大体可以理解为在身体的流体能量、社群和宇宙三者之间进行调整。道教关注内在身体的微妙能量，并且从事于冥想修炼的活动，旨在恢复和增强身体的机能，以获得长寿和精神超越。道家还崇拜等级复杂的神圣权力，包括最高层的三清（道本身的自然化体现）以及许多个人神（曾经是人，但在其生命的轨迹中实现了超越，有时也被理解为不朽）。 (More…)
Quick! Picture China’s biggest environmental problem.
I bet you saw in your mind the polluted skies of Beijing and its citizens wearing face masks as they go to work. The western news media have been filled with alarming stories of China’s poor air quality, especially in the north, where China relies more heavily on coal-fired power stations.
But a recent Toronto Star story entitled China Wakes Up to its Water Crisis gets to the heart of an even more serious problem: China has only 7% of the world’s fresh water, but 20% of its population. While electricity can, in the long run, be produced by more renewable means, water cannot be manufactured out of nowhere.
China’s massive population and its relative scarcity of natural resources magnifies the impact of China’s environmental problems. As the world marches towards a population of 10 billion people, the reality that Chinese people face today will soon become the reality faced by the most of the world. China is now beginning to export its pollution to neighbouring countries and even to Africa and Latin America, which, like the Canadian tar sands, are undergoing massive natural resource development in part to meet China’s demands.
Soon the grim environmental reality that China’s citizens face could be shared by the rest of the world.
But here’s the good news.
There is no debate in China as to whether climate change is real. While some American leaders act like King Canute watching the ever rising tides that will eventually submerge them, the Chinese are already preparing sustainable megacities, and the massive sustainable agriculture systems that will feed them over the coming century. All of the world’s leading architectural and engineering practices are undertaking revolutionary work in China on the sustainable design of buildings and cities, and the whole world will benefit from the massive experimentation that is currently taking place in China.
Comparison of Countries’ Actions and Policies on Climate Change
Since 2011, China’s environmental policies have been declared better than those of North America by Oxford University’s Smith School. While not as good as some countries, they are definitely moving in the right direction.
China has accepted that lower economic growth is the price worth paying for not destroying the planet, and in March this year China’s premier declared war on pollution just as China once declared war on poverty. It’s hard to imagine Western leaders declaring that their policy objective is to have lower economic growth than in previous years. The fact that this is occurring in a developing country makes this all the more remarkable.
China’s consumers are the second greenest out of seventeen countries measured in National Geographic’s Greendex. The report measures consumers’ attitudes towards recycling, eating vegetarian food, using public transport and other important lifestyle choices. Remarkably, Chinese consumers have become even more green as they have become rich. As the Greendex report highlights:
Chinese consumers’ Greendex score has consistently increased since 2008 despite rapid development in China. Consumers in the other emerging markets surveyed, including Brazil, Russia, and India, have not seen this upward trend in scores.
If this trend continues, it will be one of the most significant developments in consumer culture in the world.
Finally, China’s ancient cultural traditions, long neglected in the rush for modernization and development, have the capacity to underpin China’s postmodern engagement with a new and more sustainable form of civilization. While American Christians go to war on environmentalism, Chinese Confucians, Taoists and Buddhists have a long and complex history of recognizing the significance of the natural world for human wellbeing, as my new co-edited book on Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China demonstrates.
In the end, China will solve the world’s environmental problems, because it has to. While Canadians and Americans debate the reality of climate change, and wonder whether they can afford to invest in public transport infrastructure, Chinese people have no such luxury. Their investment in sustainability is already taking place. If it is successful, it will be a boon for the whole world.
James Miller. 2013. “Is Green the New Red? The Role of Religion in Creating a Sustainable China.” Nature and Culture 8.3: 249-264. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/nc.2013.080302
The Chinese Daoist Association has embarked upon an ambitious agenda to promote Daoism as China’s “green religion”. This new construction of a “green Daoism” differs, however, from both traditional Chinese and modern Western interpretations of the affinity between Daoism and nature. In promoting Daoism as a green religion, the Chinese Daoist Association is not aiming to restore some mythical utopia of humans living in harmony with nature, but instead to support a nationalist agenda of patriotism and scientific development. At the same time, as I shall argue, this agenda may deliver positive benefits in the form of protecting the local environments around important sacred sites that are located in areas of outstanding natural beauty.
China, culture, Daoism, environment, religion, sustainability
That religion might play a role in creating a sustainable future for the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases might seem at best to be hopelessly idealistic, and at worst a category mistake. Though the ideological frameworks espoused by China’s modernizers over the past century have undergone remarkable reforms and revolutions, they have remained consistent in relegating religion to the arena of reactionary forces that hinder China’s quest for political and economic autonomy. Religion, like global warming, the energy crisis, or social unrest, is just one more problem that China’s leaders have to grapple with in steering the Chinese economy toward a peaceful and sustain- able future. Despite the recent resurgence of interest in traditional Chinese culture, religion has not been emphasized. In elevating Con- fucius to the status of national hero, for example, China’s rulers are hoping that the spiritual crisis afflicting China’s people, endlessly tossed about in a swirling sea of social transformation, will be resolved by the nontheistic, nonreligious, and ultimately nonthreatening values of filial piety, social responsibility, and educational self-improvement. The government’s uncharitable and ideologically charged view of religion is, unsurprisingly, not shared by China’s religious organizations. The Chinese Daoist Association, in particular, is working to construct an image of Daoism as China’s green religion and to position Daoism as a source of ecological wisdom that can make a positive contribution in China’s transition to an ecologically sustainable economy. In doing so they are drawing on a wealth of philosophical insight, moral values, and historical practice that are particularly relevant to the way the contemporary ecological crisis is culturally construed and represented in China. These values are oriented toward a nationalist agenda aimed at preserving elements of Chinese heritage and contributing to the future success of the Chinese nation.
Before examining the current activities of the Chinese Daoist Association with respect to nature and the environment, it is helpful to consider the cultural frames that shape the way that Daoism and nature are seen to be related, both in China and the West. This is because the ecological crisis is not simply amenable to scientific analysis and technological remediation, but has also been consistently construed by Western social science and humanities theorists such as Plum- wood (2002) as a philosophical, cultural, and even spiritual crisis: it is a crisis in the way that human beings envision themselves in rela- tion to their natural environments; and it is a crisis that has a specific cultural genealogy and normative taxonomy. In terms of genealogy, the ecological crisis has been associated most clearly with the values of instrumental rationality that arose in the European Enlightenment era. The worldview that regards nature as having only an instrumental value in relation to human goals—and not having any intrinsic value in and of itself—is, according to this analysis, a uniquely modern, Western view. Viewed from this perspective, the ecological crisis has become identified on the cultural level not as a universal problem confronting human beings everywhere and always, but as a problem identified in particular with Western intellectual history, colonial ag- gression, and industrial development.
Given this dominant cultural framing of the ecological crisis, it is hardly surprising that modern Western devotees of “environmentalism” should look beyond the West for sources of wisdom and value in addition to critically engaging their own traditions. In fact, the cultural genealogy of the ecological crisis lends itself to a normative taxonomy of ecological wisdom that privileges modernity’s others. It is commonly assumed by my students, for instance, that Lynn T. White Jr.’s famous essay (1967) is an indictment of Christianity as a whole: they tend to overlook White’s positive framing of Franciscan Christianity because it does not fit into their normative expectations regard- ing the Western tradition. Conversely, they are often positively pre- disposed toward Asian values to be found in Buddhism or Daoism for the simple reason that they view these traditions as “others”, opposed to the dominant discourse of modernity.
The identification of the ecological crisis with Western philoso- phy and history entails a corresponding cultural taxonomy of non- Western marginalized “others”, such as women, indigenous societies, and colonized peoples. In the normative taxonomy of the ecological crisis adopted by environmentally concerned cultural commentators in the West, these “others” become identified as possessing an eco- logical wisdom and living “closer to nature”, often without any con- crete evidence one way or the other. (As regards women’s supposed affinity to nature, see Ortner [1974].) Indeed, there exists a distinct body of research that questions the extent to which indigenous soci- eties have exhibited cultures that can be construed as “environmen- tally friendly” by today’s standards (e.g., Pine 1982). This in itself is evidence of the power of the cultural framing of non-Western others in relation to the natural world. As regards Daoism, for instance, Goldin (2005) takes pains to explain “Why Daoism Is Not Environ- mentalism.” Although this mistitled article focuses narrowly on the philosopher Zhuangzi, who cannot properly be said to represent Daoism as a whole, its significance, like others of its type referring to non-Western traditions, is that it reveals the normative cultural frame by which such traditions have come uncritically to be associated with ecology and environment.
This reverse-Orientalist prejudice is one reason for the role Dao- ism could play in China’s quest for a sustainable future. Take, for in- stance, the way Daoism has been framed by Doris LaChapelle:
Now after all these years of gradual, deepening understanding of the [D]aoist way, I can state categorically that all these frantic last-minute efforts of our Western world to latch on to some “new idea” for saving the earth are un- necessary. It’s been done for us already—thousands of years ago—by the [D]aoists. We can drop all that frantic effort and begin following the way of Lao Tzu [Laozi] and Chuang Tzu [Zhuangzi]. (1988: 349, quoted in Paper 2001: 10)
As Paper (2001) notes, this is a hopelessly simplistic view of Daoism, conflating over two thousand years of tradition with just two Daoist texts. But on the other hand, it would be wrong to dismiss the cultural power that LaChapelle’s view may have in the West, or even, for that matter, in China. Indeed, the views of academic scholars such as Pa- per may pale in significance when faced with a dominant cultural paradigm, ill-informed and uncritical though it may be. If Daoism and ecology are identified in the public imagination simply because they are viewed as opposed to the dominant discourse of Western moder- nity, the disapproval of historically sophisticated scholars such as Pa- per may be relatively unimportant. Note here that I am not arguing in favor of a kind of expedient ignorance with respect to China’s tradi- tions. I am simply noting that one reason for the possibility of Dao- ism’s role in China’s quest for sustainability may simply be the fact that it is identified, rightly or wrongly, as an Other to the cultural hegemony of instrumental rationality.
While the views of LaChapelle may seem far from the contemporary Chinese scene, contemporary Chinese intellectuals such as Tu Weiming have made a similar move in positing a sharp distinction between the Enlightenment mentality and “traditional Chinese philosophy”:
The modern West’s dichotomous world view (spirit/matter, mind/body, phys- ical/mental, sacred/profane, creator/creature, God/man, subject/object) is diametrically opposed to the Chinese holistic mode of thinking … Informed by Bacon’s knowledge as power and Darwin’s survival through competitive- ness, the Enlightenment mentality is so radically different from any style of thought familiar to the Chinese mind that it challenges all dimensions of the Sinic world. (2000: 201)
In this argument, Tu is explaining why Chinese modernizers paradoxically embraced Western values in their quest for national autonomy: it was, he argues, a strategic necessity. As such, the rejection of Chinese tradition is not, as it were, an ontological necessity for modern China, but simply an expedient necessity that may be reversed. As China experiences the downside of Western-style industrial modernization, it is no surprise that it should once again return to its traditions, in a kind of “back to the future” moment: since modernization and Westernization were conflated in the politically expedient cultural sleight of hand of China’s modernizers, logic would dictate that a questioning of those values should create cultural space for the reassessment and reemergence of China’s traditions.
This is not to say, however, that the resurgence of tradition in con- temporary China does not have its critics. He Zuoxiu, a noted theoretical physicist closely allied to the Communist Party, sparked a debate about the unscientific nature of Chinese medicine, and in 2005 engaged in a debate with environmentalists over whether or not the concept of “revering nature” (jingwei ziran, 敬畏自然) was anti- scientific. He wrote:
I want to challenge the contention that people ought to respect and hold na- ture in awe, advanced by one professor. He asserts that mankind should not use science and technology to transform nature, but maintain an attitude of respect and awe. Such an attitude is “anti-science”, especially when we are confronting natural disasters like the tsunami or epidemic outbreaks. I hold the opposite view. We human beings should try our best to prevent and re- duce losses incurred in natural disasters. Reverence and awe make no sense. (2005: 20).
As this excerpt notes, science is associated with humanistic progress; conversely, being “antiscience” is regarded as a kind of reactionary nonsense. This is, in fact, an argument that goes back to the early days of China’s modernization. In 1915, Chen Duxiu, one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, published a famous essay in his jour- nal New Youth (Xin qingnian, 新青年) in which he called for a new kind of leader to help modernize China: someone who was inde- pendent, not servile; progressive, not conservative; aggressive, not re- tiring; and cosmopolitan, not isolationist (see Lawrance 2004: 2–3; Miller 2006: 31). This value system was used in particular to attack China’s traditional monastic forms of religion. Chen writes that “it is our natural obligation in life to advance in spite of numerous difficul- ties” (quoted in Lawrance 2004: 3). This meant that now was not the time to live in hermitages on remote mountainsides. In the worldview of China’s modernizers, informed by Marx’s theory of religion as a narcotic, to treat nature with reverent awe, or to introduce “spiritual- ity” into environmental issues, could only be a step backward. From such a theoretical perspective, religion cannot possibly do anything constructive in terms of dealing with environmental issues.
In responding to He Zuoxiu’s charge, however, Liang Congjie, the head of Friends of Nature, China’s leading environmental nongovern- mental organization, criticized He’s humanistic, anthropocentric val- ues. Of particular interest here is the fact that Liang saw no reason to shy away from associating reverence for nature with China’s tradi- tional values. “Numerous Chinese classical works,” he writes, “have shown that we have always placed great value on nature, far more than just being a tool” (2005: 14). This theme was also invoked by Vice Minister Pan Yue of the State Environmental Protection Agency as early as 2003. In an essay on “Environmental Culture and National Revival,” he wrote that “China’s environmental culture is an inheritance from and further development of traditional Chinese culture,” and went on to cite numerous examples of environmental values in Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism (2007: 6–7).
It would be a mistake, however, to interpret the association of tra- ditional Chinese culture and environmentalism as a romantic return to some premodern idyll. Notwithstanding the fact that there is no clear historical evidence that traditional China was any more environ- mentally “reverent” than premodern Europe (see von Glahn 1987; Elvin 2004), the invocation of traditional Chinese values should rather be seen as a patriotic argument consistent with the development of Chinese national identity. As Pan Yue makes clear at the start of his essay:
The rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is a century-old dream—the un- remitting pursuit of Chinese people living all over the world. A key founda- tion of national revival is cultural revival. The rise in the culture of environ- mentalism in the world creates a great opportunity for the revival of Chinese culture. The development of a socialist environmental culture with Chinese characteristics is to strive for the revival of Chinese culture and the rejuve- nation of the Chinese nation. (2007: 1)
The association of environmental values with traditional Chinese cul- ture is thus presented as part and parcel of China’s quest for self- determination. To be an environmentalist is to be a patriotic Chinese citizen and an advocate of Chinese values.
In the present ideological climate, therefore, while there is space in the cultural imagination within China and beyond for religion to play a constructive role in how humans come to envision themselves in relation to the wider environment, this space is ideologically charged—and by no means uncontested—in China in ways that are different from the West. In particular it seems that foreign religions, notably Christianity, will have little role to play; and there will be more space for Daoism to assert itself as a “green religion” not sim- ply because of the normative taxonomy of “environmentalism” in a Western sense, but because Daoism is the indigenous religion of China. Rarely does Daoism appear in the Chinese press without the epithet Zhongguo (Chinese) attached to it. In the pluralist context of modern China, Daoism’s unique identifier is that it is the only truly “Chinese” religion.
Until recently, the main way of assessing the possible contribution of Daoism to the fostering of an ecological consciousness in China was either historical or theoretical. Indeed, the volume of essays produced in the Harvard University series (Girardot et al. 2001), which I co- edited, aimed to provide evidence that the affinity between Daoism and ecology was more than a romantic wish of contemporary envi- ronmentalists for an exotic non-Western Other. Rather, environmen- tal values were actually grounded in the worldview of Daoist religion and concretely manifested in Daoist history.
This worldview is founded on the understanding of the “Way”, or Dao, a spontaneously emerging principle of cosmic creativity. This principle is manifested in the transformative powers of the natural world, leading to a core value of naturalness (ziran), and an ethic of nonassertive action (wuwei). Liu Xiaogan explains the philosophical foundations of this ethic as follows:
Dao represents forever the unknown final reason of the world surrounding us, reminding human beings of their limitations. As average members of the ten thousand things in the universe, humans have no power to do what they wish without facing unexpected consequences. Therefore, prudent behavior and action, namely, wuwei, are important and beneficial. (2001: 324)
The counterintuitive insight preserved in the Daoist tradition is that awareness of a fundamental mystery grounding the world should impel humans not toward technological dominance but toward creative engagement. In Liu’s terms, the ethic of nonaction means “better re-sults, not pure negating of all actions” (2001: 332).
It is also instructive to consider the application of wuwei in Daoist history. Take, for example, the early Daoist religious movement known as the Way of the Celestial Masters (Tianshi dao), founded in 142 CE, which constitutes one of the two main lineages of Daoism to- day. In its early days, this movement functioned through a text the Celestial Masters adopted and transmitted, known as the One Hundred and Eighty Precepts (Yibai bashi jie, 百八十戒). In his study of this text,
Kristofer Schipper (2001: 82–83) notes that not less than twenty [of the precepts] are directly concerned with the preservation of the nat- ural environment, and many others indirectly:
14. You should not burn [the vegetation] of uncultivated or culti- vated fields, nor of mountains and forests.
18. You should not wantonly fell trees.
19. You should not wantonly pick herbs or flowers.
36. You should not throw poisonous substances into lakes, rivers, and seas.
47. You should not wantonly dig holes in the ground and thereby destroy the earth.
53. You should not dry up wet marshes.
79. You should not fish or hunt and thereby harm and kill living beings.
95. You should not in winter dig up hibernating animals and insects.
97. You should not wantonly climb in trees to look for nests and destroy eggs.
98. You should not use cages to trap birds and [other] animals.
100. You should not throw dirty things in wells.
101. You should not seal off pools and wells.
109. You should not light fires in the plains.
116. You should not defecate or urinate on living plants or in water that people will drink.
121. You should not wantonly or lightly take baths in rivers or seas.
125. You should not fabricate poisons and keep them in vessels.
132. You should not disturb birds and [other] animals.
134. You should not wantonly make lakes.
In answer to the question of why the earliest Daoist communities were concerned with the state of the natural environment, Schipper draws the conclusion that the natural environment functioned as a kind of sanctuary, in the sense of a sacred space and in the sense of a place of refuge from the human world. There is also, he argues, a more fundamental point at stake here, which is evident in the language used: the precepts are directed at members of the community, and in fact we know that they were adopted as the code of practice for the heads of the Celestial Masters community, known as libationers (jijiu 祭酒). The precepts, thus, are to be understood not as abstract laws (“it is illegal to light fires in the plains”), but rather as admonitions di- rected at the community leaders (“you should not light fires in the plains”). The implication of the imperative “you should not” is that the libationer himself, and by extension the community as a whole, will suffer the consequences of failing to abide by the precepts.
Concern for the natural landscape in which Daoist sites were lo- cated even became a matter of national pride for sites that were the subject of imperial patronage. Mt. Wudang, for instance, attained national prominence in the Ming Dynasty when it came under the pa- tronage and protection of the imperial court. The court even issued edicts in 1417 and 1428 to prevent deforestation in the area and to protect the aesthetic balance of religious architecture and natural environment (Yang 2010). Even if the imperial court was motivated nar- rowly by the desire to preserve a site in which it had invested much religious and financial capital, it cannot be denied that the designa- tion of a particular space as sacred motivated concrete measures to protect the environment.
A second example can be seen at Mt. Qingcheng, now a UN- ESCO World Heritage Site. During a field visit in 2002, I noted that one of the several signs along the path that leads up the mountain recorded the actions of the abbot Peng Chunxian in the Republican era of the early twentieth century. Abbot Peng decreed that all who would visit him “should plant a tree along the mountain path.” This, declares the sign, demonstrates the essence of Daoism’s “return to na- ture.” Although, according to Elvin (2004: 470–471), such instances were historically the exception rather than the rule, they nonetheless provide a historical basis upon which contemporary efforts to associ- ate Daoism and ecology can be founded.
Such official efforts by the Chinese Daoist Association (CDA) go back at least to 1995, the date of their Declaration on Global Ecology. On the final page, the declaration summarizes the ecological aims of the CDA in three bullet points:
- We shall spread the ecological teachings of Daoism, lead all Daoist followers to abide in the teachings of self-so or non-action, observe the injunction against killing for amusement pur- poses, preserve and protect the harmonious relationship of all things with Nature, establish paradises of immortals on Earth, and pursue the practice of our beliefs …
- We shall continue the Daoist ecological tradition by planting trees and cultivating forests. Using traditional hermitages as an organizational base, Daoists will conscientiously plant trees and build forests, thereby making the natural environment beautiful and transforming our hermitages into the paradise worlds of the immortals.
- We shall select some famous Daoist mountains as exemplars of the systematic task of environmental engineering. We expect to reach this goal by the early years of the new century. (Zhang 2001: 370)
This statement is instructive for understanding the contemporary engagement of Daoism and ecology because it locates this engagement not principally in an abstract theoretical statement about the Way of nature, but rather in terms of a practical concern for “environmental engineering,” which is to say, creating a particular type of environmental space that is conducive to Daoist practice. It is worth considering, then, that particular environments might have a topographical as well as historical significance in terms of the practice of Daoist religion.
Although the Daoist priestly tradition is one in which portable al- tars can be erected at any time and place to meet the liturgical desires of the community, the tradition has also favored specific locations and features for meditation. According to the Tang Dynasty patriarch Sima Chengzhen, Daoists should meditate in chambers where light and darkness are in balance, and should sleep in rooms with their bodies facing south and their faces turned to the east (see Kohn 1987). The attention paid to the physical space in which meditation should take place, in this case the meditation chamber, gives a clue as to one rea- son why Daoists were anxious to preserve the natural environments in which monasteries were located. Such locations might be valuable not simply for historical reasons—that they were “sanctuaries” or “sa- cred spaces” inhabited by Daoists over the centuries—but because of their particular environments and topographies. Caves, for instance, are of particular importance as meditation sites because they provide a controlled environment that enables the practitioner to focus more readily on the meditative discipline of inner observation. Indeed, one might even make the argument that the urban Daoist’s “chamber of seclusion” was in fact modeled on the cave as the ideal space for Daoist meditation. Following this line of interpretation, it can also be argued that trees on mountains are desirable not only for aesthetic reasons, but because of their filtering effects on the sunlight: ample fo- liage creates a balance of yin (shade) and yang (sunlight) in the prac- titioner’s environment and thus lends itself to successful meditation. From this perspective, Daoism can be understood as a religion that demands the preservation of very specific environmental features for the continuance of its traditions. This denotes a religious sensibility that is not always present in other religious traditions and gives a spe- cific reason for why Daoists have historically engaged in the protec- tion of their immediate environments. In this regard it may not have been concern for nature in and of itself that motivated Daoist environ- mental protection efforts, but rather a concern to preserve those fea- tures of the landscape that were relevant to their religious activities.
In 2008 the CDA outlined its ecological agenda when it published the Maoshan Declaration along with an accompanying Eight- Year Plan. Together these represent the CDA’s most recent attempt to systematize and oversee the practical engagement of Daoists with their local environments, and in so doing represents Daoist organizations and temples not simply as religious institutions but also as places of environmental education, demonstration sites of green technology, and spaces that are practically engaged with China’s future well-being. It is instructive to note that the focus of these plans is not to create sustainable environments in China’s rapidly expanding urban conglomerations, but to preserve a certain experience of nature in mountain Daoism. The association of Daoism and ecology is not general, but particular: it is focused on specific sites and specific environments.
A field visit to Maoshan in 2010 gave significant insight into the way Daoism and nature are represented together in contemporary Chinese culture. The evidence suggests that just as Daoist organiza- tions are competing and also collaborating with local governments and other enterprises for control of the natural spaces in which monasteries are located, they are also engaged in ideological conflict over the meaning of these spaces. The battle over administrative con- trol over natural spaces where Daoist sites are located is, like the de- bate between He Zuoxiu and Liang Congjie, an ideological contest over the meaning of nature. This suggests that in contemporary China, as in the West, the meaning of nature is contested in part by means of its association with concepts such as “the sacred” (see Szerzynski [2005] for discussion of this in the West). However, the precise mean- ings invoked in the conflict over nature and religion are somewhat different in China.
Evidence of ideological conflict can be seen in the use of signs that aim to offer visitors to Maoshan the “correct interpretation” of the natural spaces through which they are traveling. Two examples of this can be found in the Huayang Cave and the Feichang Path. The Hua- yang Cave was a site for Daoist meditation, associated in particular with the Highest Clarity Patriarch, Tao Hongjing (456–536 CE), who took as his epithet “Hermit of Huayang” (Huayang yinju, 华阳隐居).
The main entrance to the Huayang Cave, however, makes no refer- ence to the religious significance of this sacred space, noting it only as a cultural relic famous for its wall carvings dating from the Tang (608–906 CE) to the Qing (1644–1911 CE) dynasties. It no longer functions as a living sacred space, but as a “cultural relic” under the “protection” of the Jiangsu Province Cultural Relics Protection Unit. Another sign close by gives a geological explanation for how the cave came to be formed. The uninformed observer will thus be educated solely as to the secular, scientific value of the space, whose sacred quality exists only as a cultural memory.
A slightly different story can be found along the Feichang Path. The term “Feichang Way” or “Feichang Dao” comes from the first line of the Daode jing, which states: “The Way that can be told is not the constant Way.” In Chinese, “not constant” is feichang (非常), and the Feichang Path is a newly resurfaced, twisting footpath that leads from the base of the mountain to the temple on top. At regular intervals along the path, verses from the Daode jing are carved onto wooden panels, beginning with chapter 1 at the bottom and ending with chap- ter 81, the last, at the top. As climbers make their way to the summit, they are thus engaged in a meditative encounter with the text of the Daode jing, reputed to have been authored by Laozi, the mythical sage of Daoism, later revered as a high god. The space through which the traveler passes is thus textualized and sacralized and, through the encounter with the text, a firm association between the natural beauty of the mountain and the traditions of Daoism is established in the visitor’s experience.
This association is, however, not entirely unambiguous. Along the way it is possible to see evidence of earlier texts carved in rock that have not been restored and are difficult to read. Moreover, there are several small shrines along the path that appear to have fallen into disrepair, whether through deliberate neglect or otherwise. Although the mountain path is a sacred path, its sacred quality comes not from the maintenance of tradition, but rather from the presentation of a modernized form of Daoism, one that deemphasizes concrete, mate- rial religion in favor of the more mystical and abstract verses of Daoist literature. Although Daoism and nature are represented and experi- enced together, it is a particularly modern, “Protestant” version of Daoism that is emphasized, a version that finds authenticity in a sin- gle founding text in particular, rather than in the complex layers of in- stitutional history.
Two further themes are in evidence at the Maoshan site and exist in intriguing juxtaposition to the nexus of religion and nature. The first theme to be noted is a deliberate attempt to educate people about en- vironmental issues. Again, this is through the use of signs in Chinese and English, which urge people to take care of the environment and respect the plants and animals that live in the space through which they are traveling. Such education also extends beyond the open space into the temple, where recycling bins exist side by side with regular bins, and injunctions to conserve water appear by the taps. Such small efforts at environmental education further reinforce the sense that the mountain space and the temple space are particularly deserving of careful respect. Indeed, the paved road up to the top is lit at night by lamps that are charged by solar panels during the day. This sense of environmental care, however, stands in stark contrast to the festive spirit of the many visitors, whose principal objective in coming to the mountain peak is to participate in the spectacular and ostentatious offering of enormous sticks of incense. For people who do not get many opportunities to participate in traditional rituals in sa- cred natural spaces, it would seem particularly strange not to make as grand and joyous an offering as possible. In this sense, the “official” culture of conservation proclaimed throughout the site is studiously ignored by those for whom the site is chiefly a space for conspicuous ritual celebration.
The second theme that is juxtaposed alongside that of religion and nature is that of nationalism. The Maoshan site is significant in modern history not for its Daoist religious associations, but as a site that is sacred to the Fourth Army in its battle against the Japanese, who invaded China in 1937. During my field visit, a school of army cadets was also visiting the site, which, as well as featuring temples and cultural relics, is the location for a patriotic monument and grand museum dedicated to the army. An informant told me, in fact, that the renovation of the entire site had been carried out by the People’s Lib- eration Army, including the building of an excellent road to the monastery on the peak. As a result, the entire mountain complex is designated by the Chinese government as an AAAA tourism site (only one step lower than the highest AAAAA designation), and it is a site for “red tourism”, a program established by the central government in 2004 to emphasize the “ideological essence” of “communist ideology, traditional Chinese virtues, and patriotism” (Li and Hu 2008: 158).
Historical evidence as well as contemporary fieldwork reveal a complex set of issues when it comes to the relationship of Daoism and ecology in China. These issues, furthermore, are somewhat different from what one might expect based on the normative taxonomy of “environmentalism” in relation to non-Western others, which struc- tures popular cultural (mis)understandings in the West. Far from Dao- ism being construed as a premodern “worldview” sympathetic to a romantic feeling for wilderness spaces, Daoists have engaged in prac- tical works to preserve specific natural spaces for specific religious reasons. Moreover, under the patronage of the state, whether in the Ming Dynasty or today, sacred sites and their environments can also be protected for nationalistic and patriotic reasons. In these cases, the impetus to preserve the landscape of sacred sites may not derive from a particular “respect for nature” except inasmuch as the nature in question is unequivocally identified with a uniquely Chinese heritage. This would be similar to the way in which pandas are protected by the state because of their status as national icons.
Under this complex of cultural meanings, the meaning of “green” spaces such as Maoshan is quite ambiguous. On the one hand, “green” is associated with Chinese tradition and Daoist respect for life and the flourishing of nature. On the other hand, “green” is also as- sociated with a patriotic agenda and with modern technology such as solar panels. The Chinese Daoist Association, in allying itself with a green agenda, is clearly aligning itself with the values of modern Chi- nese nationalism as well as technological development. In this sense, one could argue that “green is the new red:” it is a symbol for Chi- nese national identity and the technological development that will ensure China’s survival in a resource-hungry world. If Daoism has something to offer to the greening of China, it is not in the sense of fostering a worldview of a universal ecological consciousness or “sav- ing the planet”. That is a trope that owes its origins to Christian mil- lenarian theology and has little relevance in traditional Chinese culture (Kohn 2001: 379).
Rather, Daoism and ecology engage most clearly in the particular spaces in which Daoists have sought to engage in meditative cultiva- tion. In this regard, Daoist ecology is thoroughly implicated in Chi- nese national identity. While the abstract modernity of urban living is seamlessly replicated from Shanghai to Stockholm, “nature”, it would seem, constitutes, by contrast, the particular differences associated with various nations and their cultural identities. While it may be pos- sible to build replicas of Venice in Las Vegas or Macau, the majesty of the Alps or the Himalayas retain a particularity of experience that can- not be so easily copied. Here nature is a source of experience that de- fies the banality of modern urban life. The particularity of meaning that emanates from unique natural spaces aligns well with the Chinese Daoist Association’s agenda to preserve features of Daoist spaces in contemporary China. As John Lagerwey (2010) notes, the history of religion in China has been one of continuous contractual negotiation between the state and local society. As much as the green agenda of the Chinese Daoist Association may rhetorically serve the ideologies of nationalism and modernization, it may yet hold out the prospect of protecting marginal, local, and natural spaces.
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Daoism, also spelled Taoism, is China’s organized, indigenous religious system. Daoists take as their focus the goal of obtaining the Dao, or Way, the unnameable source of generative vitality in a universe of constant transformation. The methods for realizing this goal have been revised and reinvented throughout Daoism’s 2,000 year history but can be generally understood in terms of mediating between the fluid energies of the body, the community and the cosmos. Daoists pay attention to the subtle energies of the inner body and engage in meditative cultivation practices that aim to restore and enhance the functioning of the body with the goal of bringing about long life and spiritual transcendence. They also worship a complex hierarchy of sacred powers that includes at its apex the Three Pure Ones, impersonal instantiations of the Dao itself, and also a wide variety of personal gods who were once humans beings but who, over the course of their lives, achieved transcendence, sometimes understood as immortality.
From the perspective of an outside observer, Daoism has two distinct characters: an elite tradition of monks and priests who are dedicated to the quest of obtaining the Dao; and a communal tradition integrated into local society and patronized by non-initiated lay people. The elite tradition is focussed on maintaining and transmitting the teachings of the various lineages to a relatively small number of initiates who are deemed to be suitably qualified by virtue of their religious commitment. This elite tradition is esoteric, in that the contents of its teachings are not generally transmitted to non-initiates, and it generally has a hierarchical structure so that initiates must demonstrate their accomplishment at a lower level of teaching before receiving transmissions of a higher level of teaching. This elite tradition is by definition somewhat obscure and tends to jealously guard its distinct identity and sacred authority.
At the same time, however, Daoism also embraces the common Chinese religious tradition that pays little heed to religious distinctions. In this tradition, non-initiated lay people patronize temples to pray for good fortune, to mark the changing of the seasons, and to conduct rituals for the departed. The patrons of such temples and services may not be aware whether their temple is run by Daoists, Buddhists or other local religious traditions. The main thing is that they regard the temple as having spiritual efficacy. Within this common religious framework, however, there are specifically Daoist rituals for funerals and exorcisms that call upon distinctively Daoist gods and have specific Daoist characteristics that can be easily detected by the trained observer. The most distinctive Daoist ritual is the jiao, generally a complex multi-day event aimed at restoring the balance between the community and the cosmos. The most lavish of these is the the rite of cosmic renewal staged only once every sixty years, to mark the beginning of a new cycle of the Chinese calendar.
From an internal perspective, however, Daoists generally categorize themselves according a variety of distinct lineages each with its own genealogy of sacred authority. Daoists are initiated into a tradition by a master, receiving sacred texts and teachings into the methods taught by that tradition. Historically these various traditions were often centred on particular sacred mountains, and are frequently referred to by the name of the mountain. For this reason, some Daoist lineages tended to have strongholds in distinct regions of China and, at times these affiliations have maintained their various historical and geographic distinctions. In the modern period, however, all lineages and forms of Daoism have been increasingly subjected to mechanisms of centralization, nationalization and bureaucratization under the aegis of a single organizational framework, known as the Chinese Daoist Association (CDA). The CDA is based at the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing, which is one of the most important monasteries associated with the Complete Perfection (Quanzhen) tradition of monastic Daoism that dominates northern China. For this reason contemporary Daoism at the national level tends to reflect this elite monastic form though, historically, this is a relatively late Daoist movement which does not really represent the whole of the tradition. The CDA is itself supervised by the State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA).
The concepts of development (fazhan) and, in particular, scientific development (kexue fazhan) are key terms in the ideology espoused by China’s modernizers since the beginning of the twentieth century. Such revolutionary terms were developed, however, in direct opposition to earlier conceptual frameworks regarding the basic functioning of human society, its relationship to the natural environment and the cosmos. The modern concept of development is, essentially, predicated on a linear theory of time, in which human activity contributes in a cumulative, meaningful way towards some final goal or purpose. This was not the generally received view of traditional Chinese governance, set in place some two thousand years earlier in the dominant theory of Dong Zhongshu, which held that the relationship between the three realms of humanity, earth and heaven should ideally be one of reciprocity or mutual resonance (ganying; see de Bary 1960: 208). The sacred duty of the emperor in this view was to conduct rituals to ensure the positive correlation between humanity, earth and heaven so as to bring about the most optimal flourishing. Indeed the success of the empire was thought to depend in part upon the ritual activity of the emperor that sought to correct periodic imbalances in the relationship between humans and the cosmos (see Miller 2012a). In such a view, the function of religion was a mediating one: to bring everything back into alignment so as to create a balanced, homeostatic organism. This cyclical view can even be seen in the traditional Chinese system for measuring time based on the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac and the five elements, according to which the clock is reset every sixty years.
It is entirely understandable, therefore, that China’s modernizers should see “development” as a revolutionary concept that aimed not towards the continuous cyclical alignment of humanity, earth and heaven, but rather the relentless transformation of the same towards some positive goal. This view placed progress in opposition to Chinese traditional views, especially Confucianism and Daoism, and was one reason why these traditions were particularly scorned by revolutionary modernizers. A prime example of this can be see in the work of Chen Duxiu (1879-1942), a founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who, in a now-famous essay, advocated four chief characteristics among China’s revolutionaries: that they be independent, not servile; progressive, not conservative; aggressive, not retiring; and cosmopolitan, not isolationist (Lawrance 2004: 2-3). In all four cases, Chinese religions in general, and Daoism in particular, were found wanting.
Daoism like all religions, contains a conservative element within it. While, from a spiritual perspective, Daoists might believe they advocate independence rather than servility, the institutional structures of Daoism are designed along a hierarchical basis in which students cannot simply “think” their way into enlightenment, but must generally be guided by teachers and have their progress validated by the religious community. Secondly, Daoist elites aim to preserve their authority through the transmission of classic scriptures, and seek to indoctrinate new generations with values and beliefs developed centuries ago. From this perspective it can hardly be regarded as a “progressive” movement. Thirdly, Daoists are noted for seeking sanctuary in remote mountain areas and in withdrawing from the conventions of ordinary human society. At the same time, Daoists explicitly deprecate aggression and value non-interventionist ways of acting in the world. Finally, Daoists tend to value the inner, spiritual life. They are not missionaries, nor generally do they seek to transform the external world. Doubtless Chen Duxiu would regard them as isolationist in attitude. In all four aspects that he enumerates, it is easy to see how Daoism can easily be classified in the negative of the binary pairs. From Chen’s perspective, therefore, it is well nigh impossible to imagine how Daoism might contribute something to development.
The classification of religion as a hindrance to development was only made worse by Marx’s view of religion as a narcotic. From this point of view, Daoism, like other religions, is not simply a set of values and beliefs that may be regarded as ideologically opposed to the values of social development. Rather, religions also have the social function of hindering historical progress. Given the widespread adoption of these views of religion by China’s modernizers, it is not surprising that they came to view religion as a enemy in the goal of political revolution, social and economic progress and scientific development. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Chinese communist revolutionaries engaged in iconoclastic campaigns to destroy temples, denigrate Confucius and eradicate all forms of what they perceived to be superstitious thinking that was opposed to scientific materialism.
Such anti-religion thinking was by no means confined to Communist modernizers. Duara (1991) details how Nationalist aspirations conflicted with the local networks of religious power in the first half of the twentieth century. Yuan Shikai, for instance, “sought to systematically dismantle the institutional foundations of popular religion” by appropriating local temple property and establishing schools and government offices in their stead (Duara 1991: 76). Nationalist modernizers further made use of the political distinction between religion and superstition in their attempt to centralize the power of the newly-emerged Republican state. The anti-superstition campaigns of the late 1920s and early 1930s, proscribed popular religious practices such as geomancy and physiognomy while simultaneously advocating the cult of national figures such as Confucius and Laozi. As Duara (1991: 80) demonstrates, the effect of this was to consolidate national power over local society by bringing ‘legitimate’ religious activities under state control while at the same time excluding from the definition of religion those popular practices that it could not easily control. “Superstitious” practices involving charms and talismans were also associated with secret societies and local religious organizations, which had also historically functioned as networks of dissent against central state power.
The ideological distinction between legitimate religious organizations and popular “superstitious” activities was maintained in the Deng Xiaoping era after the hardline leftist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) came to an end. National religious associations were revived and placed under the oversight of the Religious Affairs Bureau, now the State Administration for Religious Affairs. More recent times, however, have seen the emphasis placed on pragmatic, rather than ideological, considerations regarding the role of religious activities in China’s continued development. Religious leaders now form part of the Central People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the Communist Party has instead formed a broad coalition of ruling elites, including religious figures, on whom it depends for its continued legitimacy. This has led to a renewed understanding of religion from a broad socio-cultural perspective rather than in purely ideological terms, and a rethinking of what religion might positively contribute to social development. Following Gramsci in recognizing the value of the “cultural” sector (Zeng 2011: 773), China’s leaders have reconsidered the value of traditional Chinese culture, rehabilitated Confucius, and permitted the overt functioning of authorized religion, while maintaing an ever closer watch on undesirable religious and cultural phenomena. The resultant “religious boom” has cost the government considerable sums of money in terms of vacating and restoring confiscated religious properties and subsidizing the operating expenses of authorized religious organizations (768).
At the same time, the goal of rapid economic development has come to be supplemented once again with “back-to-the-future” virtues such as “harmony” (hexie) and “spiritual civilization” (jingshen wenming). Such emphases on spirituality and culture are designed to help ensure broad social stability, and crack down on official corruption and dissident social movements.
Putting aside the dominant narratives that have come to frame Daoism in the modern period, it is possible to examine the ways in which Daoists have historically interacted with local communities in terms of social and economic development. The earliest Daoist community of which we have a clear understanding was known as the Way of the Orthodox Unity (Zhengyi dao), and functioned as a theocracy in south-west China for about 70 years from 142 CE. Common to most traditional Chinese communities it operated on a collective basis, collecting an annual tax from each household and imposing regulations governing the upkeep of the communal environment, such as not wantonly felling trees, picking flowers, digging holes or drying marshes (Schipper 2001:81). Such concern for the common spaces were no doubt advantageous for the the wellbeing of the community as a whole and may be regarded as characteristic of Chinese society in which the interests of the group are accorded a high priority. In Schipper’s (2001: 89) analysis, however, these injunctions they draw on an older tradition “rooted in the rejection of the feudal society and the ritual practices of the public cults of the city-states.” That is to say, the ethical foundation for the community was one predicated on a sense of being a different kind of society with a different kind of ritual life. These earliest Daoist communities thus tended to be in this sense peripheral communities, predicated on a rejection of the conventional social order and embracing a life based on simple communities and natural sacred spaces.
As Daoism became more integrated into mainstream Chinese society, however, it tended to merge with local religious organizations and embedded itself in the common religious life of Chinese people. In a later publication, Schipper (2008) makes the argument for understanding Daoism as the primary framework within which Chinese religious life takes place. In its transition from the periphery to the mainstream, however, it brought about a change in the relationship between local communities and religious institutions. In particular, the “covenants of purity” (qingyue) specified that Daoist gods were not to be offered animal sacrifices and Daoist priests were not to receive salaries. As a result of the latter, temples came to be owned and funded by the collective rather than by priestly lineages. Thus in contrast to affiliation-based religions in which people pay tithes to a religious organization that is distinct from secular society and governed by a special class of religious professionals, Chinese people founded community associations (hui) or common management organizations (gongsi; now the term for “corporation”) in order to manage their collective religious lives. As a result the gap between “religious” activities and other local economic, educational or charitable activities becomes harder to discern. These communal associations, for instance, became significant managers of local wealth held in trust for the benefit of the community. In keeping with their originally religious motives, some of these funds are typically devoted to religious activities, but in many cases a significant proportion could be channeled into local enterprises or educational activities.
Despite the attacks against local religions and “superstitious” activities throughout the 20th century, local religious collective are still important drivers of development in rural China. Tsai (2002), for instance, provides evidence of how rural development projects at the village level in mainland China are actively initiated and managed by temple or lineage organizations. At one research site in Fujian province, for instance, a village temple committee took over the responsibility of building roads. From the 400,000 yuan in annual donations to the temple in 2000, the temple committee paid for four roads to be paved, and village basketball courts to be constructed (11). Tsai makes the positive conclusion that “the use of community social institutions to provide village services makes coercive strategies unnecessary while empowering citizens to participate in civic life” (24). Where religious institutions are owned by the community as a whole they are able to play a role in local development. In these cases, government authorities do not wish to condemn such local religious organizations as “superstitious” but rather bring them under the wing of the state as officially-authorized “venues for religious activities (zongjiao huodong changsuo)” (Chau 2005: 245).
The positive effect of local religious activities perhaps goes against traditional theories of the function of social function of religious activities, whereby religious rituals are most commonly associated with “festival time” in Chinese rural society. As Tam (2006: 78) explains, the rhythms of rural Chinese life are traditionally divided into an “ordinary time” where labour and commerce are paramount, and a “festival time” that emphasizes play, theatre and social exchange. From the perspective of economic development, therefore, the ritual activities of local festivals might seem to function in opposition to significant economic development. Festival time does not produce a vast amount of direct economic activity, except for the expense of mounting religious rituals, staging operas and hosting lavish banquets. The traditional Chinese understanding of the value of these times of relative economic inactivity was that they were a time to “keep the bow unstrung” (79), that is to say, times of quiet and passivity rather than intense economic activity.
Chau (2005), however, challenges this traditional view of religious activity as economically otiose. His fieldwork in northwest China demonstrates how the local temple association used community donations to engage in a wide range of economic, philanthropic and educational activities:
Besides being a site of both individual and communal worship, a temple is also a political, economic, and symbolic resource and a generator of such resources. A beautifully built temple and a well-attended temple festival attest not only to the efficacy of the deity but also to the organizational ability of the temple association and the community. (Chau 2005: 238)
As Laliberté et al. (2011: 148) note, although it might seem that festival activities such as opera troupes and folk music performances organized by local temples are not directly related to philanthropic endeavours, the money spent on candles and incense, plus the funds left in donation boxes during these times can generate substantial revenues. In the case of the area studied by Chau, these funds were used to build a primary school and launch a reforestation project that attracted international acclaim. In these cases, “temples are like enterprises that generate prosperity for the local economy (especially if they are regional pilgrimage centers) and income for the local state. It is thus in the interest of the local state to protect local temples as they would local enterprises” (Chau 2005: 245).
Although it is important to pay attention to the “hard” economic value contributed by Daoist and other Chinese community religious associations to local development, the “soft” value of such organizations should also not be underestimated. Tam (2006) emphasizes the way in which religious activities play an important role in creating and performing networks of interaction within and between local communities, and notes, for instance, notes how religious festivals in south-east China contribute to a broader sense of community by bringing together various extended family networks and local ethnic groups, even to the extent of overloading local cellphone networks (Tam 2006: 71). From this example, we can see that Daoist ritual activity functions as a kind of social lubricant, orchestrating and coordinating the mutual interaction of various communities. The work of contemporary anthropologists such as Chau and Tam, therefore, plays an important part in demonstrating the significance of Daoism for development not only in economically quantifiable terms, but also in terms of the development of social capital.
In both these cases the value that religion brings to the table is not characterized in terms of values or beliefs, but rather in the way that ritual activities serve the social function of maintaining healthy networks of community association. There is, however, an underlying set of values that reinforce Chinese religious approaches to community organization, and which deserves further explanation. In this regard it is important to understand that Daoists have not tended to regard the communities with which they engage as monolithic, unchanging entities. Rather, the normative model for understanding community has been that of the body, i.e., an organism whose wellbeing is constituted by the proper functioning of its internal systems as much as external or environmental factors.
In the Daoist view, the outward health of the body is determined by a complex internal system in which Qi, or vital energy, is distributed via a network of meridians, each associated with the major organs or viscera: heart, liver, lungs, spleen and kidneys. Health obtains when Qi flows smoothly through the entire system and all the organs are in communicative reciprocity with each other. This view of the body is the foundation for Chinese medicine and also for Daoist meditation practices. It relies on a theory of wellbeing defined as optimal harmony that obtains within a system. In principle this theory can be applied to define what is good and bad in a wide range of analogous systems: good can be defined as what brings about the flourishing of the whole system; evil can be defined as deviations of Qi that produce negative effects upon the whole system. From this systems perspective, good is a function of the relationships between the various actors, and is something that is distributed across the network rather than isolated in one particular area.
As an example of this, we can turn to ancient Chinese political theory in which the operations of the state were understood by analogy with the body. Just as the health of the body depends on the free flow of the various fluids, so also the health of the state was thought to depend on the free circulation of power and knowledge among the various ranks of government. In the view of the 3rd century B.C.E. document, known as the Springs and Autumns of Mr. Lü (Lüshi chunqiu), the “virtue” of the ruler is viewed as a kind of fluid that circulates throughout the organism of the state.
When the ruler’s virtue does not flow freely [i.e., if he does not appoint good officials to keep him and his subjects in touch] and the wishes of his people do not reach him, a hundred pathologies arise in concert and a myriad catastrophes swarm in. The cruelty of those above and those below toward each other arises from this. The reason that the sage kings valued heroic retainers and faithful ministers is that they dared to speak directly, breaking through such stases.
(Sivin 1995: 6).
Here we can see clearly a notion of what disorder consists, namely, the “hundred pathologies” and “myriad catastrophes” that “swarm in” when the fluid, charismatic virtue of the ruler does not flow smoothly throughout the nation. Conversely, communal wellbeing obtains when the ruler’s virtue flows unhindered throughout the nation.
Throughout Chinese history, Daoists have consistently emphasized the wellbeing of the individual body and the communal body in these terms, seeking to bring about healing within the body (of the individual or the community) and also to defend the body from negative environmental factors characterized in Chinese mythology as demons and ghosts. Thus as Laliberté et al. (2011: 142) explain, “Daoist priests were expected to provide protection against diseases and demons through rituals, exorcism, and healing. The most common form of Daoist charity was to provide free medicine and medical care to the needy.” Daoists have thus undertaken significant work in the area of healthcare regarding it not so much as an adjunct charitable activity directed towards helping the needy, but as a part and parcel of their worldview in which health and long life are regarded as fundamental virtues.
To give two examples of the involvement of Daoists in healing arts and science, the first general classification of Chinese herbs was undertaken by the Daoist Tao Hongjing (456-536). This work, the Divine Farmer’s Materia Medica (Shennong bencao jing) contains 365 recipes for drugs classified in three levels (Kohn 2005: 171). Tao’s work drew on a long tradition of Daoist preoccupation with herbs, fungi, minerals and animal parts whose properties were thought to aid the promotion of long life and even immortality. Similarly, the later physician and Daoist master, Sun Simiao (601-693) compiled an even more extensive compendium, and is widely revered in Daoist temples across China as the God of Medicine. Daoism and health are thus firmly intertwined in the popular imagination in China, and in the West, so much so that there is often much confusion about whether various concepts or practices ought to be understood as “Daoist” or “medical” or “religious” (Kohn 2005: 7-8). This confusion is indicative of the fact that the Western category of religion does not always make sense out of the Chinese cultural situation, in which the lines between what we would call religion, culture, economy, politics and medicine are often drawn in different ways than in the West. Thus Daoists are not known for establishing hospitals as discrete centres of medical treatment in which the body is treated separately from an emphasis on religious or spiritual matters. Rather community temples and temple associations form nodes in the networks through which Chinese people deal with health issues.
This interconnection of Daoism and health continues to play a role in shaping Chinese people’s values in regard to public policy. Using data from the 2006 Taiwan Social Change Survey, Chang (2010) performed a statistical analysis of religious values and preferences for various redistributive social policies in contemporary Taiwan. Part of the impetus for conducting this research was the although spending on social care has grown substantially in Taiwan, the country has also been facing increased economic inequality as the result of globalization and economic liberalization (102). In such a context, understanding the motivations for public attitudes towards redistributive social policies becomes all the more important. The key finding was that Protestant Christians tended to favour social insurance and welfare programs, whereas Buddhists and Daoists favoured the government’s role in providing healthcare (81). While Chang’s article does not offer any specific evidence about Daoism it does conclude that inheriting the values of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism “leads to differences in preferences for redistributive policies [compared] with those of Western Christian societies” (102). There is at least initial evidence for supposing that in a modern East Asian society Daoists continue to hold identifiable values regarding these key aspects of public policy, and that healthcare is a particular focus for them.
Cyclical models of economic activity have once again come to the fore as linear models of economic development push up against the ecological limits imposed by the natural carrying capacity of the earth. Prominent ecological economists such as Daly (1996) argue for “steady state economics” (SSE) rather than conventional growth economics. For now, however, international work towards climate change mitigation has pushed China to focus not on limiting growth in absolute terms, but in reducing the intensity of carbon emissions per unit of economic activity. The climate change policies promoted in China’s twelfth five year plan (2011-2015) call for the development of “circular economies” in which the waste product of one economic process becomes a valued input for another process (Information Office of the State Council 2011). Typically two or more enterprises are co-located so as to facilitate this economic synergy. China’s Vice Minister of Environmental Protection argues that although industrialization broke through through the “static, circulating economic pattern” of traditional agriculture, this model is ultimately unsustainable as it demands high energy consumption and produces massive pollution (Pan Yue 2007: 11). He continues, “Human beings obtain materials and energy from nature, and they must return them to the circulating system and do their best to reduce waste and destruction. Such an energy circulating system operating in line with the law of as nature is exactly what was put by ancient Chinese as ‘round and round goes the divine order of things.’’ This is a paraphrase of chapter 16 of the classic Daoist text, The Way and Its Power (Daode jing) which articulates a fundamental insight of the Daoist worldview, namely, a basic cosmic pattern of emergence and decay, activity and stillness, yang and yin. Daoists regard this pattern as natural, and derived it from the observation of the rotations of heavenly bodies through the sky. If Daoist philosophy has anything to contribute to notions of development, it is from within this circular perspective, in which the functioning of a system is basically understood not as a simple linear growth but as continuous exchange. Translated to an economic sphere this invites a theory of development rooted not in Christian or post-Christian faith in continuous linear development towards some ever-unattainable utopian ideal (see Gray 2004), but rather a more realistic and holistic view that pays attention to the overall health and wellbeing of the community.
Given the political realities in contemporary China, however, it is not surprising that the Chinese Daoist Association (CDA) has avoided the role of critiquing China’s economic policies. This does not mean, however, that it has completely avoided the issue of the environment as a key religious question. Such efforts go back to at least 1995 when the CDA issued a Declaration on Global Ecology. The final page of this declaration summarizes the whole in three bullet points:
• We shall spread the ecological teachings of Daoism, lead all Daoist followers to abide in the teachings of self-so or non-action, observe the injunction against killing for amusement purposes, preserve and protect the harmonious relationship of all things with Nature, establish paradises of immortals on Earth, and pursue the practice of our beliefs…
• We shall continue the Daoist ecological tradition by planting trees and cultivating forests. Using traditional hermitages as an organizational base, Daoists will conscientiously plant trees and build forests, thereby making the natural environment beautiful and transforming our hermitages into the paradise worlds of the immortals.
• We shall select some famous Daoist mountains as exemplars of the systematic task of environmental engineering. We expect to reach this goal by the early years of the new century.
(Zhang 2001: 370).
While this goal may have been hopelessly optimistic, there is no doubt that the seeds sown in 1995 continue to bear fruit in the present, with ongoing attempts by the Chinese Daoist Association (CDA) to preserve Daoist sacred spaces as paradigmatic locations for contemporary urban Chinese to encounter China’s “lost” nature. The CDA’s Maoshan Declaration (2008) and its accompanying Eight Year Plan advocate that Daoist sacred sites be regarded not simply as places where religious activities take place but also as sites of environmental significance and locations for environmental education (Miller 2013). Moreover, in a partnership with the Alliance for Religions and Conservation (ARC), the CDA established a small Daoist Ecology temple in a conservation site near Taibaishan, Shaanxi. While it is perhaps too soon to be able to measure the practical effects of such policies and activities, it is at least worthwhile noting that a major national religious organization in China has embraced the preservation of specific environments as a central religious value.
Duara (2011: 24) speculates that what we may be seeing here is the embrace of sustainability as “an emergent ideal, a new type of transcendence and sacrality with the capacity to motivate and mobilize persons and groups.” From this perspective, Daoism may be regarded as contributing to the development of an alternative to the conventional paradigms of secular modernization and economic development, namely, ecological sustainability. In so doing, whether it realizes it or not, the CDA is playing an certain role in contributing to a national conversation in China about what development and modernization should look like. In contrast to the Maoist ‘utopian urgency’ of “Let’s attack here! / Drive away the mountain gods, / Break down the stone walls / To bring out those 200 million tons of coal” (quoted in Shapiro 2001: vii), there is now a sense that the preservation, rather than destruction, of natural environments has not just a positive effect on the wellbeing of the community, but is rather one component of a transcendent value that demands attention in its own right and to which other values must ultimately be subordinate.
Chang, Wen-Chung. 2010. “Religion and Preferences for Redistributive Policies in an East Asian Country.” Poverty & Public Policy 2.4: 81-109.
Chau, Adam Yuet. 2005. “The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China.” Modern China 31.2: 236–278
Daly, Herman E. 1996. Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. Boston: Beacon Press.
Duara, Prasenjit. 1991. “Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China.” The Journal of Asian Studies 50.1: 67-83.
________. 2011. “Sustainability and the Crisis of Transcendence: The Long View from Asia.” Keynote address, Conference on Asian Modernities and Traditions. Leiden University, September 9, 2011. Internet: http://media.leidenuniv.nl/legacy/duarapresentation.pdf
de Bary, Wm. Theodore.1960. Sources of Chinese Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press.
Information Office of the State Council. 2011. China’s Policies and Actions for Addressing Climate Change. Issued on November 22, 2011: http://www.gov.cn/english/official/2011-11/22/content_2000272_10.htm). Accessed January 15, 2012.
Kohn, Livia, in cooperation with Stephen Jackowicz. 2005. Health and Long Life: The Chinese Way. Three Pines Press.
Laliberté, André, David A. Palmer and Keping Wu. 2011. “Religious Philanthropy and Chinese Civil Society.” Pp. 139-151 in Chinese Religious Life edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive and Philip L. Wickeri. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lawrance Allan, ed. 2004. China Since 1919: Revolution and Reform. A Sourcebook. New York. Routledge.
Miller, James. 2012. “Nature.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religion edited by Randall Nadeau. Oxford: Blackwell.
________. 2013. “Monitory Democracy and Ecological Civilization in the People’s Republic of China.” Forthcoming in Civil Society in the Age of Wikileaks: Challenges to Monitory Democracy edited by Nina Witoszek and Lars Trågårdh. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Pan Yue. 2007. Thoughts on Environmental Issues. Beijing: China Environmental Culture Promotion Association.
Schipper, Kristofer. 2008. La réligion de la Chine. Paris: Fayard.
Sivin, Nathan. 1995. “State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries B. C..” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 55.1: 5–37.
Tam Wai Lun. 2006. “Local Religion in Contemporary China.” Pp. 57-84 in Chinese Religions in Contemporary Societies edited by James Miller. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO
Tsai, Lily Lee. 2002. “Cadres, Temple and Lineage Institutions, and Governance in Rural China.” The China Journal 48: 1-27.
Zeng, Chuanhui. 2011. “Coalition and Hegemony: Religion’s Role in the Progress of Modernization in Reformed China.” Brigham Young University Law Review 3: 759–782.
Zhang Jiyu. 2001. “A Declaration of the Chinese Daoist Association on Global Ecology.” pp. 361-372 in Daoism and Ecology: Ways within a Cosmic Landscape edited by N. J. Girardot et al. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
James Miller, Dan Smyer Yu and Peter van der Veer, eds. 2014. Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China. New York: Routledge.
This book sheds light on the social imagination of nature and environment in contemporary China. It demonstrates how the urgent debate on how to create an ecologically sustainable future for the world’s most populous country is shaped by its complex engagement with religious traditions, competing visions of modernity and globalization, and by engagement with minority nationalities who live in areas of outstanding natural beauty on China’s physical and social margins. The book develops a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition/ modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.
Gene Anderson reviews the book on Amazon.com
This edited volume deserves serious attention from those interested in China and in the environment, and I hope its absurdly high price will not discourage people from looking into it. Like most (if not all) collections of papers, it is uneven in quality, but the best papers are seriously important and worthwhile. I have too little space here to hit all the high points, but a few that are particularly useful and innovative include Deborah Sommer’s on early Chinese concepts of the earth (much more interesting than you might have thought); James Miller’s paper on an early Daoist sect; Chris Coggins on fengshui groves and their exceedingly important role in saving forests and large trees until the Communists destroyed most of them; Rebecca Nedostup’s on how borrowed western “rationalist” concepts of religion from 19th-century cultural evolutionism led to pernicious devaluing and attacking Chinese traditional religions; and Emily Yeh’s really stunning and wide-ranging paper on Tibetan attitudes toward the environment, the changes of these in modern times, and the various western-world idealizations of them. I am in awe of these papers; I’ve been working on this material for 50 years and I never got close to making all these points. There are many other valuable papers here.
Much of this book (not the paper by Coggins or Yeh, however) represents book-driven, text-based approaches. My approach comes from human biology and has been field-driven and broadly materialist. So I had a lot to learn here. But, also, a thoughtful point emerges. Book-driven research inevitably leads to privileging elite positions and meditative, thoughtful takes on the world. This can lead to seeing the Chinese as sages living in a world of visions. No paper herein does that, but I can imagine casual readers being lulled into that view. In contrast, the field approach in human ecology can lead to a crassly materialist approach in which too much attention is paid to uses of plants and animals relative to the subtleties of the thought behind such environmental management. I have fallen into this trap on occasion, and Ole Bruun catches me up on it in his paper in this volume. Fair point, but essentializing traditional belief and religion is also shaky as a strategy, depriving us of the lessons we could be learning. That is my one real criticism of this book: there is very little on what the world can learn from China’s successes and failures in managing the environment, or from traditional Chinese (Han and minority) views and ideas about environments. This is a pity, since there is in fact a great deal that the world environmental and conservation community could learn–some good ideas and some (or many) cautionary notes. The editors would no doubt respond that this book is about documentation and analysis, not about recommendation, but in a world where long-predicted catastrophes and nightmare scenarios are rapidly becoming reality, can we afford to do that? Would a medical text on drug-resistant tuberculosis ignore the treatment side?
That said, this is a collection that no one interested in Chinese environmental history can afford to miss.
Read a fuller description of the book on my blog.
| Title | Author | |
| Acknowledgments | James Miller, Dan Smyer Yu and Peter van der Veer | |
| Introduction | Dan Smyer Yu, with James Miller and Peter van der Veer | |
| Part I: Ecology and the Classics | ||
| 1 | Ecology and the Classics | Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim |
| 2 | Conceptualization of Earth and Land in Classical Chinese Texts | Deborah Sommer |
| 3 | “The Great Virtue of Heaven and Earth:” Deep Ecology in the Yijing | Joseph A. Adler |
| 4 | “Hard-Hearted” and “Soft-Hearted” Ecologies: A Rereading of Daoist and Confucian Classics | Chen Xia and Peng Guoxiang with James Miller |
| 5 | Gods and Nature in Highest Clarity Daoism | James Miller |
| 6 | When the Land is Excellent: Village Feng Shui Forests and the Nature of Lineage, Polity, and Vitality in Southern China | Chris Coggins |
| Part II: Imagining Nature in Modernity | ||
| 7 | Finding Nature in Religion, Hunting Religion from the Environment | Rebecca Nedostup |
| 8 | Globalizations and Diversities of Nature in China | Robert P. Weller |
| 9 | Is Chinese Popular Religion Compatible with Ecology? A Discussion of Fengshui | Ole Bruun |
| 10 | Ecological Migration and Cultural Adaptation: A Case Study of the Sanjiangyuan Nature Reserve, Qinghai Province | Qi Jinyu |
| 11 | Reverse Environmentalism: Contemporary Articulations of Tibetan Culture, Buddhism, and Environmental Protection | Emily T. Yeh |
| 12 | Earthwork, Home-Making, and Eco-Aesthetics among Amdo Tibetans | Dan Smyer Yu |
In an online report on Religious Innovation for Sustainable Future (no longer available), Nina Witoszek (Oslo University) surveys a “pastoral renaissance” taking place across the globe.
Image from www.ceres21.org
Does this green spirituality signify a curious “premodern turn” in Western conceptions of human progress?
That is to say, is the pastoral renaissance in world religions and cultures a step back from modernity, a retreat into the past, an end to the project of modernity, of relentless and inexorable progress?
To understand the worldview of modernity, Witoszek produces an acute observation from Daniel Bell, writing in the 1970s:
The theme of Modernism was the word beyond: beyond nature, beyond culture, beyond tragedy—that was where the self-infinitizing spirit was driving the radical self. We are now groping for a new vocabulary whose key word seems to be limits: a limit to growth, a limit to spoliation of environment, a limit to arms, a limit to torture, a limit to hubris – can we extend the list?”
Witoszek’s conclusion is that the affinity between religion and sustainability lies in the way they both regard the question of limit as a central concern. Sustainability is about living within the ecological limits of the planet and not degrading our biosphere beyond its ability to sustain life. Religions are also oriented towards placing limits on people’s behaviour: don’t eat pork; don’t have sex with your neighbour’s wife; don’t harm living beings. Of course these religious limits have also been oriented towards supporting one group of people’s power over another group of people: for example, refusing to admit women as religious leaders. Nevertheless, it can’t be denied that religion is one of the most powerful cultural forces that is oriented around not doing certain things.
From my point of view, it’s no surprise that as the world experiences the downside of industrial modernity, a healthy regard for limits should once again rise to the forefront of our cultural consciousness. In China, the quest for a sustainable future is mirrored in the “back to the future” rise of religions. For sure this is a complex phenomenon: people pray to the gods for wealth and happiness, not for a lower ecological footprint. But at the same time, Chinese religions send messages about reducing desire, non-violence to living beings, harmony with nature, and the value of balance and moderation. Is it any wonder that people should see a profound connection between religion and sustainability?
So to answer the original question, does the renewed interest in green religion signify a retreat to the past? Certainly, as Witoszek notes, the new “pastoral renaissance” can be allied with powerful nationalist forces and reactionary fundamentalist movements (see also my blog post on the rise of a Hindu nationalist ecological movement). At the same time, I remain hopeful that the new spirituality is part of an real and evolving consciousness centred on sustainability as a new form of “immanent transcendence,” one the capacity to root humanity deeply in the world.
For the past six months I’ve been working with Dan Smyer Yu from the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity on a conference which is finally taking place next week at Minzu University in Beijing. The title of the conference is Religious Diversity and Ecological Sustainability in China. Here’s the conference rationale that we wrote.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the health of Planet Earth is affected by human activities on both organizational and personal levels. The industrialist vision celebrating a modern cornucopia has proven itself successful in extracting and harnessing resources from the Earth as well as in producing wastes lethal to the biosphere. The worldwide project of modernization has concurrently brought blessings to human wellbeing as well as displacement of human communities and endangered myriad species. Many of us, who are either socially engaged or theoretically-oriented, have produced works critiquing the environmental consequences of modernity and its grand global material project—modernization. Meanwhile, many of us have also begun to revisit and reinterpret ancient ecological worldviews and practices that are an inherent part of native belief systems for the purpose of either exploring alternative, “green” models of modern life or radically reorienting the course of modernization the world over. Nowhere are these questions more intensely focused and their impacts more keenly felt that China, which has experienced the full brunt of industrialization, population explosion, rural to urban migration at a pace and scale un- precedented in world history.
At the same time, however, it is necessary to resist the simplistic construction of “New China” as exclusively “secular”, “modern”, or “materialistic.” The resurgence of religious expression in contemporary China, the attention paid to minority nationalities throughout China’s diverse environmental contexts, and the resuscitation of Confucius as supreme icon of Chinese culture together compel us to pay attention to the cultural and religious diversity of contemporary China. Doing so leads us to question the binary taxonomies of tradition / modernity, sacred / secular, rural / urban, religion / science that inform the ideology of mo- dernity, and to pay particular attention to the way their attendant ideologies and narratives serve to construct and authorize particular views of nature and environment.
We aim to do so by weaving together three separate spheres of inquiry. The first aims towards an historical understanding of China’s traditional constructions of nature and environment and of how those constructions have been reconfigured by modern narratives of secularization, nationalism, or scientific development. The second engages an understanding of China’s diverse environmental contexts and the ways in which minority nationalities, popular culture and official religions have constructed and engaged their local ecolo gies and environments. The third analyzes contemporary urban China and the concepts of space, nature, technology and environment that inform and authorize contemporary archi- tecture, urban planning and utopian dreams of eco-cities. In these three ways we develop a comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that goes beyond the tradition / modernity dichotomy, and illuminates the diversity of narratives and worldviews that inform contemporary Chinese understandings of and engagements with nature and environment.
To generate this breadth and depth of knowledge requires a multidisciplinary approach, the first stage of which will take place by means of a workshop at Minzu University. In this workshop, both the historical studies of larger traditions and the ethnographic discussions of eco-religious communities among non-Han populations are part and parcel of the ongoing worldwide scholarly effort to discern the diverse superstructures and axiomatic roots of human ecological practices. On one hand, the workshop explores the “green” facets of religions in China, and, on the other hand, traces origins of modern ecological views, ethics, and practices from ancient times. The inclusion of ecological discourses from the non-religious sphere in China is meant to acknowledge the social reality of contemporary China, in which approximately 90% of the population is “non-religious.” This does not mean the secular society of China is constructed of social behaviors absent of belief systems and religiosity. The path of China’s modernization, despite its changing forms, bears a millenna- rianist trademark ranging from scientism to the current modernization trends, in which the vision of a “saved” China has always been projected into a not-yet-manifest future depicted as a paradise on earth with abundance, equality, and fair division of labor. This enchanted utopian trait of China’s modernity deserves an ecological reading from the perspective of religious studies as does contemporary field studies in smaller scale communities negotiating modernity and their own traditions in a globalized era. We look forward to working with a diverse body of scholars bringing fresh theoretical perspectives.
If you visit the Max Planck website and download the conference brochure, you will see that we are bringing in a group of top-notch scholars from Europe, North America and China. I fly to Beijing on Saturday, and the conference takes place from March 6-9. After the conference I will be going on a brief lecture tour with Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim from the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. I will report back with some of the highlights over the next few weeks.
This term I have the privilege of co-teaching a new seminar course at Queen’s (with Emily Hill) on the topic of Green China: Environment, Culture, Politics. The course examines the intersections between religion, culture, politics, and the natural environment in China over the past century.
One of the first books we read was Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan, a travelogue by the American agricultural scientist Franklin Hiram King (1848-1911). The book extols the virtues of what we might today call “organic farming” or “sustainable agriculture,” practices that King observed in his eight month travels to the Far East in 1909. (Note how the publisher of this new version on the left has changed the subtitle to make it more relevant to a contemporary market.) His designation of this form of agriculture as “permanent” was meant to differentiate it from the “orthodox agriculture” advocated by the USDA, and signals what the Oxford scholar John Paull terms a “clash of ideologies … which remains to this day.” In recent years, interest in King’s book has multiplied amongst advocates of alternatives to industrial agriculture and, having emerged from copyright protection, has attained the status of a classic work. A free edition is available from the Gutenberg e-text website.
One of King’s key observations regarding the ‘permanent’ nature of China’s agricultural practices at the turn of the 20th century regarded the use of human manure as fertilizer, thereby returning key nutrients to the soil. He describes in detail the practice of recycling human manure to the soil, which he observed throughout the Far East. Then he launches into a withering attack on the supposed civilization of the West (Chapter IX):
On the basis of the data of Wolff, Kellner and Carpenter, or of Hall, the people of the United States and of Europe are pouring into the sea, lakes or rivers and into the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000 pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus per million of adult population annually, and this waste we esteem one of the great achievements of our civilization. In the Far East, for more than thirty centuries, these enormous wastes have been religiously saved and today the four hundred million of adult population send back to their field annually 150,000 tons of phosphorus, 376,000 tons of potassium, and 1,158,000 tons of nitrogen comprised in a gross weight exceeding 182 million tons, gathered from every home, from the country villages and from the great cities like Hankow-Wuchang-Hanyang, with its 1,770,000 people swarming on a land area delimited by a radius of four miles.
Man is the most extravagant accelerator of waste the world has ever endured. His withering blight has fallen upon every living thing within his reach, himself not excepted; and his besom of destruction in the uncontrolled hands of a generation has swept into the sea soil fertility which only centuries of life could accumulate, and yet this fertility is the substratum of all that is living. … The rivers of North American are estimated to carry to the sea more than 500 tons of phosphorus with each cubic mile of water. To such loss modern civilization is adding that of hydraulic sewage disposal through which the date of five hundred millions of people might be more than 194,300 tons of phosphorus annually, which could not be replaced by 1,295,000 tons of rock phosphate, 75 per cent pure.
King’s language reveals the exasperation of a scientist who can readily see the folly of his own culture’s practices but finds himself powerless to change them.
For me the issue here is that “waste” and “pollution” are key categories in anthropology. What falls into these categories and how we behave in relation to them are governed by social habits that are deely ingrained and culturally specific. Terms for human waste are obscenities in the English language, and readily convey the particular distaste that we have developed for these substances. The pervasive Gnostic / Christian emphasis on the soul, rather than the body, as the location of the divine also contributes to the notion that little good is to be found in the material we excrete from our bodies. Cultural barriers such as these make it particularly hard to advocate the recycling of human waste.
Curiously, this reminded me of the famous discussion in Zhuangzi chapter 22.
Hmong woman carrying nightsoil (Image: Brad Houk)
Dongguozi asked Zhuangzi, “Where is this Dao you speak of?”
Zhuangzi said, “There is nowhere it is not.”
“You must be more specific.”
“It is in the ants and crickets.”
“So low?”
“It is in the grasses and weeds.”
“Even lower?”
“It is in the tiles and shard.”
“So extreme?”
“It is in the piss and shit.”
The notion that the Dao subsists in all things, even what we regard with the greatest disdain, was clearly meant to shock, but it is certainly the logical outcome of a resolutely monistic philosophy, the notion that the Dao underlies and pervades all things in the cosmos. Zhuangzi would probably not have been surprised to learn that, from a scientific perspective, the Dao really does lie in human excrement.
I would argue, however, that it is precisely Zhuangzi’s way of thinking, shocking though it may be, that makes it more possible to contemplate recycling human waste, rather than flushing it into the sea. When human waste is viewed as the location of the Dao, rather than as a polluting substance that makes us ‘feel dirty,’ then it becomes more possible to implement systems that incorporate our waste into the agricultural cycle.
Paull is right, then, to see the battle between ‘permanent’ agriculture and the USDA ‘orthodoxy’ as an ideological battle. But in my view, what we consider to be “waste” and “pollution” and how we behave towards it is also a matter for cultural/religious anthropology.
Laozi Statue on Maoshan
In May this year I had the opportunity to visit Maoshan (Mt. Mao) a Daoist mountain sacred to the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) tradition of Daoism that I studied in my most recent book. Located in Jiangsu province, it is about an hour’s bus ride south of Zhenjiang, a stop on the main high speed railway from Shanghai to Nanjing.
I was interested to visit Maoshan not only because of my historical research, but because it was the site of the Maoshan declaration, which in 2008 committed China’s Daoist Association to a ten year program of ecological protection.
The result of my visit is a mixed assessment of the possibilities and problems associated with the practical implementation of Daoism and ecology. I’ll be presenting the full details of my conclusions at the forthcoming SASASAAS conference at Furman University on September 24-25, but I’d like to present some key findings now.
First of all, the encounter between Daoism and Ecology has to be understood from the perspective of China’s engagement with modernity and especially science. “Ecology” in Chinese does not signify a Romantic attachment to nature undefiled by human habitation, but rather a modern, scientific and ultimately technological enterprise. To make Daoist sites more “ecological” means to install green technology such as solar panels, and to showcase Daoism not as a “traditional” culture but as modern and scientific.
Secondly, the encounter between Daoism and Ecology is an economic enterprise. A chief incentive for Daoist sites to engage in ecological protection is to respond to the demand for ecotourism. As such Daoist sites work with local governments to develop the whole areas surrounding Daoist temples as ecotourism sites. Engaging with ecology thus helps drive economic development. As a case in point, the Maoshan site was developed not only by the Daoist Association but by the People’s Liberation Army which operates a memorial to soldiers of the 3rd Army who fought in the Anti-Japanese War of 1937-45. Nearby the museum is a garish 99 metre high statue of Laozi, the legendary author of the Daode jing. Maoshan is thus an ecotourism site, a patriotic memorial, and a Daoist temple site, all in one. As a result it obtained AAAA tourism designation, the second-highest national ranking, making it a prime location for “red”, i.e., patriotic tourism activities.
The current implementation of “Daoism and Ecology” in China thus resists simplistic Western notions of Daoism as “the Way of Nature.” It is also a way of economic development, a way of science and modernity, a patriotic and even militaristic way. This should not be surprising to scholars of religion who are well-attuned to the complexities and contradictions that religious cultures historically inhabit. But it may be surprising to those who have sought to frame “Eastern religions” as somehow more authentically connected to nature than the monotheisms of Western religion. Yes, the Daoist conception of nature does have much to contribute to the discussion on religion and ecology, but the practical implementation of this concept in China is caught in a complex political, ideological and economic web.
James Miller attending the Laozi Conference in the Great Hall of the People
I’m at the First Summit on Laozi and Daoist Culture, which is taking place this week in Beijing. The Summit is the work of Prof. Hu Fuchen, one of the leading scholars of Daoism, and a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This morning, we had the opening ceremony, which was held in the Great Hall of the People. It was my first time in this magnificent building.
The purpose of the conference is basically to promote Daoism throughout China and the World. It is being funded by a wealthy donor, and has received backing at a high level from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. (More…)
