Daoism - Apocalypse

Apocalypse, in a broader sense, refers to the cosmology which the religion practice is based on. For any religion, it is undeniable that understanding of its apocalypse is of great importance. This is not only because the bliss of any religion is to seek for salvation, but also this salvation can only be accomplished based on that religions' cosmology. In a highly secular society like china(175, Encyclopedia of Taoism), for most students, their first formal encounters with Daoism are in history class which briefly narrates the founder, Laozi, as a representative of the philosophy school - Daojia, sees the world as evolving from the unchanging reality - xuwu (nothingness) and Dao(way to follow). In High school, the history textbooks do more evaluation and demonstration on daoist apocalypse by depicting Laozi as a pessimistic philosopher towards the development of the society and see a society of renunciation governed by nonaction (wu wei) as an ideal society. (3, 人教版高中历史必修)

With the advent of the informative era of technology, Daoism are increasingly interacting with the social media. Thus, nowadays, students attain knowledge of daoist apocalypse not only from the textbook but also from popular fictions, movie series, and social network. The popularity of these social media widely spread daoist apocalypse through literature, movies, and social networks. In this paper, I’ll feature on Chinese fantasy and blogger Xing Yang (a daoist priest). The reason why I choose them is that they are most accessible to the young generation and has a huge impact on their knowledge of modern daoism. For example, Dou Po Cang Qiong (斗破苍穹), one of the popular Chinese fantasies, managed to attract 1.4 hundred million hits in one single book-reading website. Additionally, the daoist master called Liang Xing Yang from Quan Zhen gained followers up to forty thousand recently. Although the general trend is mutual absorption, there are still fundamentally differences between both sides. While comparing elements from daoism in pop culture and modern formal daoism, I’ll try to argue that there is a trend of ongoing mutual interacting absorption and separation of the pop culture Daoism and the more formal Daoism.

LIANG XING YANG

As we all know from the lecture, Ming Tai Zu divided Dao jiao into Zheng Yi, founded by Zhang Dao Ling, and Quan Zhen, founded by Wang Chong Yang. Liang Xing Yang is a daoist priest of quanzhenjiao. Xing Yang is also the secretary general of daoist association in Chang An. He advocates practice religion must be done with closely interaction with the worldly life. In his blog (weibo), his latest post is about a charity fund-raiser. He reposts a lot about his black cat and some of his portrayal drawn by his follower. He also has an online shop in Taobao (Chinese version of amazon). He is actually highly creative. In his Taobao shop we see a variety of products like clocks, backpacker, books, cups, adhesive tapes… He posts his talisman of 12 zodiacs. And put them as logos on his products. He also made fun of the old fashioned customs of democratic progressive party in Taiwan when they doing a ritual jianchou(罗天大醮). He said that with a talisman adhere on their forehead, they make perfect zombie march. (all quotes from Xing Yang’s weibo)

CHINESE FANTASY

Xiu zhen, also called xiu dao, is a terminology in both field of Daoism and Buddhism. In a broader prospective, “Xiu” means practice, while “zhen” or “dao” refers to the ultimate truth, the un changing reality beyond this world, thus, to take together, xiuzhen refers to practice of the ultimate truth. In Daoism apocalypse, xiu zhen has a more specific meaning which is to using fake-self(body) as a vehicle to accomplish one’s true-self (mental and spiritual) fulfillment through the self-correction in one’s actions. The ultimate goal is to emerge into the existence of the nature, to control all natural elements and to be immortal.( Encyclopedia of Taoism) Chinese fantasy is a genre of fiction that developed on the basis of daoist practice system. It commonly uses Daoist alchemy, talisman, meditation, and other religious practices as a primary setting. The endings are most likely to be the protagonists achieve immortal-hood but also gain ultimate power to uphold justice. It usually has some strong Buddhism elements as well as western fantasy elements added to the story which I’ll explore in the following paragraph. Now let’s look at some similar trend of some elements from pop culture Chinese fantasy and more formal daoism narrated by blogger-yang.

INTERACTIONS

With globalization, the most obvious trend is the interaction with technology. In Xing Yang’s online shop, he just launched a watch with dial design of the twenty-four solar terms and picture of Tai Chi Ba Gua. This up-to-date daoist product is very likable in general and more than 700 watches were sold so far. Technology added to Chinese fantasy is always connected with the plot of millennialism. As all stories are likely to happen in an imagined world, often the final stage of prosperity, high-tech weapon which is charged by qi are created in most of the novels. In some book, you can even see cellphone made by special stone are composed by the writer.

Back in time, Dao is “beyond the grasp of the sense and is imperceptible”(291, Taoism: an overview) , there is a huge shift in people’s conception of Dao today. One reason is the use of vernacular chinese instead of classic chinese, but what is more important is that Chinese fantasies literature incorporate more and more visual description. Many fictions, over five hundred and thirteen million words, are all republished in manga version. Visual description put an emphasis on descriptiveness as well as understandable language. This actually shows the trend of complying with human nature. Instead of putting Dao as intangible and unspoken truth, Daoism conceptions are put into understandable descriptive words, as shown in Xing Yang’s blog. Xing Yang rarely posts anything incomprehensible; instead, he posts a lot of interesting visual images that coule be construed as extremely cute or self-monckery.

Since in Modern China, bloggers and fictional novelists barely emphasizes renunciation anymore, the representation of Daoist element has to come in a commercialized form to adapt to the society. To promote his blog, Xing Yang hold many daoist gifts lottery program. If you repost his posts, he’ll draw a number of destined (you yuan) followers and give them either books or items which has his blessing after the ritual. He says that all he wants to do is promoting daoism; he is determined to try all means to make Daoism more accessible to Chinese people. In fact, Xing Yang’s commercial promostion has proven to have made huge profits. On the other hand, in many popular Chinese fantasies, commercialized daoist elements and important plots are also popular selling points. This phenomenon of involving commercilizaion into Daoism does not resonate with the original purpose of the Daoist religion.

SEPERATION

Although with the same primary doctrine applied in both fields, standardized Daoism still draws a clear line from the pop culture by emphasizing their traditions. This is reflected in Xing Yang’s critiques of Daoist priest’s customs both in TV shows and Taiwan. He also writes a lot about the right gesture of ritual and this is another thing interests me.

Another manifestation of the separation is the view on fate. Yang talked about fortune-telling in one post. He starts by affirming that fortune telling is not superstitious. He argues that hen we were born, we have eight inborn characters operating as we live on; these characters are affected by the qi from the change of five elements, which is referred by us as fate. In other words, our fate is the process of the qi of five elements when we were born being affected by qi of five elements in this world. Therefore, it is obvious the fate is not predestinate. However, in Chinese fantasies, fate of the protagonist is always predestinate; all the hopes count on the rise of messiah at the turning point of worldly catastrophe. We see elements of apocalypse in every Chinese fantasy with no exception. Thus, it is obvious that fate in Chinese fantasy is always predestinated as a messiah which lacks logic while fate in formal Daoism is more a “scientific” matter with a rich context.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, two forms of modern Daoism gained popularity among young generation. Both fiction and Daoist priests are adapting themselves to the modern world. We see the trend of ongoing mutual interacting absorption and separation of the pop culture Daoism and the more formal Daoism. This makes anthropological approach to study modern Daoism more applicable. We should not overly generate and simply say modern Daoism deviate from the real origin daoist doctrine---it is more reliable to see this as a cultural system involving and update with the time.

Works cited

Xing Yang’s weibo http://weibo.com/p/1001603785116286594075

Dou Po Cang Qiong http://www.qidian.com/Book/1209977.aspx

Taoism: an overview

Encyclopedia of Taoism