A Study of Chinese American Religiosity at Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Situating Themselves in the Pure Land of Humanistic Buddhism on Earth: A Study of Chinese American Religiosity at Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Religious Studies by Shou-Jen Kuo September 2018 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Michael Alexander, Co-Chairperson Dr. Amanda Lucia, Co-Chairperson Dr. Matthew King Dr. Jonathan H. X. Lee Copyright by Shou-Jen Kuo 2018 The Dissertation of Shou-Jen Kuo is approved: Committee Co-Chairperson Committee Co-Chairperson University of California, Riverside ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the period that I worked as a lay staff and later as a graduate student, I am most indebted to the community at Hsi Lai Temple, which through nineteen years, hundreds of religious ritual programs and service activities, countless hours of formal and informal interviews, and much homelike courtesy has facilitated me with the intellectual inspiration and the field data that form the core of this dissertation. For those whose anonymity I maintain, you all have my deepest thanks. For Abbess Tzu Jung, Abbot Hui Chuan, Abbot Hui Chi and current Abbot Hui Dong and all monastic members of Hsi Lai Temple, I thank you for your gracious tolerance to allow my scholarly-trained mind to understand and interpret the temple’s people and their activities. I hope you will find this work an interesting and insightful representation of what Humanistic Buddhism is within the life-long vision of our spiritual mentor Master Hsing Yun in common, founder of the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order, my spiritual home in this life. Before and after enrolling in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), I have been the fortunate recipient of intellectual inspiration and guidance from a large number of mentors. At the earliest stage of my back-to-school adventure, it was shepherded by Cristina Bodinger-deUriarte of the Department of Sociology at California State University, Los Angeles, who opened my sociological eye into Hsi Lai Temple and the broader Buddhist world. Cristina also taught me the basic fieldwork methods that I have practiced ever since. In my UCR years, I would like to first thank Vivian Nyitray’s intellectual vision that guided me in revisiting the Chinese religio-cultural world and fostered confidence in studying my own religious iv tradition within American academia. I also thank Ivan Strenski who taught me what a critical thinker would be and could be. Moreover, it was Amanda Lucia who exercised endless patience and expertise in helping me to embrace and refine my growing intellect in the discipline of religious studies. Michael Alexander, who compassionately agreed to co-chair my dissertation committee with Amanda, gave me the first advice of deploying my dissertation project immediately after I passed comprehensive exams, and promoted the progress of my research toward a stronger final product without any hesitation. Without the shield of Michael and Amanda’s intellectual excellence, this dissertation could have been merely a personal fantasy. I also have gratefully accepted intellectual support from Matthew King on topics of Asian Buddhism and Pashaura Singh on the methodology of textual analysis. In addition, I benefited immensely from discussions with Jonathan H. X. Lee of the Department of Asian-American Studies at San Francisco State University to assist me in developing the thoughts on contemporary Chinese American religious experience. In the end, I thank the excellent staffing support provided by Iselda Salgado, Trina B. Elerts and Diana Marroquin, whose timely efforts moved my research to meet UCR’s institutional requirements without any miscellaneous error. I want to express my great appreciation to Ashley Beene, who saw both potential and many weaknesses in my writing, and whose editing effort to push me have resulted in a readable and understandable product. Finally, I thank my family who accompanied me during many phases of this work. My mother weakly said “it’s great” when learning of my admission to UCR one month before she passed away. My father used to walk to my messy work zone at home v to glimpse what I was doing, until an Alzheimer-related disease took his life as I was concluding my field work and starting to write the first draft of my dissertation. Over the long duration of writing process my brother David constantly told me how wonderful I was to be the first Ph.D. within our extended Kuo family in China and Taiwan. Above all, I am mostly indebted to my wife Ling Ling, who has had to sacrifice in many aspects of work and family life in order for her husband to pursue his “absurd” dream of being a religious studies scholar in midlife. I cannot fully express how much I have received from her compassionate support. vi In memory of 郭家駿 Chia Chun Kuo (1928 – 2017) 劉建慧 Chine Hui Kuo (1925 – 2011) vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Situating Themselves in the Pure Land of Humanistic Buddhism on Earth: A Study of Chinese American Religiosity at Hsi Lai Temple in Southern California by Shou-Jen Kuo Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Religious Studies University of California, Riverside, September 2018 Dr. Michael Alexander, Co-Chairperson Dr. Amanda Lucia, Co-Chairperson This dissertation aims to isolate some of the basic study frameworks of describing and understanding how ‘religion’ is currently practiced by many Chinese Americans in the United States. I rely on insights into Chinese American religiosity gained through ethnographic field research and participant observation at Hsi Lai Temple (HLT) in Southern California, a Chinese Buddhist monastery established in late 1980s by the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist Order headquartered in Taiwan. The resulting work provides a variety of practical frameworks for scholars to examine how religion is woven into the fabric of the Chinese American community at large, and how Humanistic Buddhism, which has been highlighted as a modern formation of Chinese Buddhism to serve and benefit the living in this world here and now, shapes and structures individuals’ daily lives. This dissertation concludes that HLT offers a themed “hyperreality” environment for raising followers of Humanistic Buddhism among the Chinese American community viii in Southern California. In the process of making people believe in Humanistic Buddhism, HLT fabricates its own world of credibility by utilizing a broad and deep reservoir of Chinese religio-cultural matters as the source to facilitate the construction of a ritualized mechanism deployed on HLT ground with the blueprint of the Pure Land of Humanistic Buddhism in the present. By bodily situating themselves in the HLT world, Chinese American visitors become religious in the traditional sense of Chinese Buddhism. The evidence from studying traditional Chinese religio-cultural frameworks of the HLT spatial organization and ritualized activity programs and the psychological state of lay visitors at HLT in this research demonstrates that the Chinese spiritual elements of their inherited religious traditions in symbolic forms and meanings are explicitly displayed to, rather than purposefully withheld from, the general public in reinventing people’s religiousness in American society. Studying these religious experiences and mentalities provides an insightful opportunity for understanding how Chinese Americans in the twentieth-first century are developing identities and moral guidance in their daily lives in the United States. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements iv Abstract vii List of Tables xii List of Figures xiii Chapter One: Introduction 1 Scope of research Chinese American religiosity Chinese religio-cultural framework Death and post-death salvation in Chinese American religious experience Ritual practice and Chinese religion Action and response HLT and Fo Guang Shan Chinese immigrant and Chinese American Reflexivity and position shifting Organization of the chapters Chapter Two: Chinese Religio-cultural Framework of Humanistic Buddhism 35 Vernacularized worldview Anti-superstition movement in twentieth-century-China Revival and refinement of Humanistic Buddhism Conclusion Chapter Three: Spatial Organization of Hsi Lai Temple 75 Inventing new things out of the integration of the tradition A popular ethno-cultural landscape in Southern California HLT – a Buddhist landscape in a humanistic perspective x Chapter Four: Ritualized Activity Program of Hsi Lai Temple 109 Ritual calendar in HLT Ritual package for serving the living and the deceased Specific purpose and structure of HLT ritual program The Ullambana Dharma Function – a showcase of HLT ritual program Buddhist etiquette embedded with the HLT ritual program Conclusion Chapter Five: “Moral Luck”: The Psychological Satisfaction from Coming to Hsi Lai Temple 161 Chinese American religiosity Typology of lay visitors at HLT Personal narratives at HLT Good omen – practical indicator of incoming this-worldly benefit Conclusion Chapter Six: Conclusion 211 Ritualized mechanism – theme place for making followers of Humanist Buddhism Making Chinese America believe in Humanistic Buddhism From Chinese immigrant religion to Chinese America religion Sense of Buddhist modernity Epilogue 246 Bibliography 248 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Contents of the Repentance Ritual of the Emperor of Liang 135 Table 2: Fahui schedule of the Ullambana Dharma Function in 2017 146 xii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Hsi Lai Temple 75 Figure

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