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DESIRE and SELFHOOD GLOBAL CHINESE RELIGIOUS HEALING in PENANG, MALAYSIA a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Gradua

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DESIRE and SELFHOOD GLOBAL CHINESE RELIGIOUS HEALING in PENANG, MALAYSIA a Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Gradua DESIRE AND SELFHOOD GLOBAL CHINESE RELIGIOUS HEALING IN PENANG, MALAYSIA A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by I-Fan Wu December 2018 © 2018 I-Fan Wu DESIRE AND SELFHOOD GLOBAL CHINESE RELIGIOUS HEALING IN PENANG, MALAYSIA I-Fan Wu, Ph. D. Cornell University 2018 This dissertation is an ethnographic examination of Chinese meditators who, propelled by their suffering, pursue alternative religious healing education to harmonize their conflicts with social others and to answer their existential questions. Using Lacan’s analysis of desire as an analytic with which to understand two religious healing schools—Bodhi Heart Sanctuary in Penang with global lecturers, and Wise Qigong centers in Penang, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen—this dissertation delineates and explains how, in the Chinese diaspora, unconscious desires are expressed through alternative religious healing systems. The doctrines of Bodhi Heart Sanctuary and Wise Qigong follow a similar internal logic: they teach their disciples to submit themselves to a new alterity that resembles Confucianism, requiring self-submission if not asceticism. In so doing, practitioners, misrecognizing the source of their self-making, claim to transcend their suffering by overcoming their desires with the guidance of the new alterity, which represents a new form of ego-ideal. By attaching themselves to the best object—Buddha’s Right View, or hunyuan qi, the “primordial energy”—practitioners believe that they revitalize themselves as they address and work through the existential dilemmas involved in everyday interactions. This dissertation explicates the process through which Chinese forms of “self-help” therapy make sense to people as a manifestation of cross-cultural human existential concerns while these concerns take distinctively Chinese forms. This dissertation contributes to a more psychologically informed understanding of Chinese middle-class women’s and men’s desires by delineating how religious aesthetics seen as an ideal alterity generates transcendence in suffering through experiencing healing aesthetics and observing the play of desires. In the cases of Bodhi Heart Sanctuary and Wise Qigong, Chinese practitioners’ dissatisfaction is transformed by adopting a meta- perspective to negate their desires through asceticism, thereby fulfilling their ultimate desire—reaching nirvana, or the state of eternal happiness and abundance, attaining ideal selfhood. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH I-Fan Wu was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She was enrolled in The International School of Penang (Uplands) in a primary school in Penang, Malaysia. Her Ph.D. research at Cornell University took her back to Penang. As a psychological anthropologist, I-Fan will continue to use ethnographic methods to document and navigate life to understand people and their culture. v Dedicated to my parents and mentors vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I am indebted to the practitioners of Bodhi Heart Sanctuary and Wise Qigong Association, who patiently answered my questions and generously let me participate in their lives, often for frequent and prolonged periods of time. Because this dissertation is written mostly from an academic perspective, many of those who influenced me in the field may disagree with my analysis. Despite those differences, I thank them sincerely for their support. I am extremely grateful to many people who helped me in Malaysia and Hong Kong. Most of the names mentioned below are pseudonyms to protect my interlocutors’ identities. I thank all members of the Spiritual Healing Qigong Association for your friendship throughout the years, especially Mr. Teh, Julliana, Alvina, Jolene, Ju Lee, and See Leng Yeoh. I thank all Guo Lin Qigong members, especially Mrs. Fong, for being generous enough to allow me to see your inner and social worlds. I cannot thank practitioners from Wise Qigong enough: Masters Hong, Kun, Lee Wooi Bok, Sung, Ti Da, Wei, Wen, Yi, Yuan, Zhen, Zhou; Fan, Mr. and Mrs. Kee Thang, Mrs. Chua, Muichuee, Peng Chew, Wai Seng Kei, Yat Yuet, Ying, and Jing for your teachings. Special thanks to Mrs. Kuo, Mrs. Loh, Mrs. Then, Mrs. Yang, and Linda at the Butterworth Center for your warmth. For practitioners at Bodhi Heart Sanctuary, I express special gratitude to brother Hor Kwei Loon, brother Leonard Luar, sister Wei Teng, brother Hor Tuck Loon, Mrs. Chan, Mrs. Hein, and Mrs. Hwat, brother Chan, brother Hein, brother Hwat, sister Ai, sister Chu, sister YT for sharing your experiences. vii I am indebted to Chiung-Fang Kuo, Eunice Teoh, Ho Chin Chin,Ooi Bok Kim, Shoo Chen Kwoh, Tan Chee Seng, Tan Yeoi Wooi, and Goh Mai Loon for your continuous support in Penang. I thank Mr. Gong, Mr. Teng, Mr. Ying, Mrs. Gong, and Miss Ju in Shenzhen, for your hospitality. I appreciate Wise Qigong practitioners in Hong Kong for sharing your sophisticated thoughts, especially Master Teng Tian, Mr. Cheuk Siu-Kei, Mr. Zhang, Mrs. Hui, and Miss Dai. In addition, without the support given to me by the departments of sociology and anthropology at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, especially Dr. Francis Loh, Dr. Lye Tuck-Po, and Dr. Chuan Yean Soon, my fieldwork in Malaysia would not have been possible. A list of grants has supported this research at various stages. My gratitude goes to the Wenner-Gren Foundation in New York; the Chiang Ching-Guo Foundation in Taiwan; Academia Sinica in Taiwan; the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, the Southeast Asian Program, the East Asian Program, and the Department of Anthropology at Cornell University; and the Southeast Asian Studies Summer Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have been deeply fortunate to have two committee members with extensive Southeast Asian expertise. Eric Tagliacozzo posed historical and practical questions that continue to help me position my research. Andrew C. Willford’s work and generous comments at various stages of this project have been crucial to shaping my thinking on religion, aesthetics, and the formation of the self. As my advisor throughout, P. Steve Sangren has been a brilliant and honest critic, encouraging me to develop a lifelong research habit that works for me, giving me room and time to grow. My analysis in several chapters has also been shaped by Marina Welker, Hiro Miyazaki, David viii Holmberg, Kath March, Lucinda Ramberg, Tamara Loos, Erik Mueggler, TJ Hinrichs, Magnus Fiskesjo, Bien Chiang, Julia C. Huang, and Shu-Jung Lin. I especially thank James Wilkerson, T’sui P’ing Ho, Chung-Min Chen, Shuenn-Der Yu, Kerim Friedman, and Hsiang-Shui Chen for your unflagging support. Furthermore, I am extremely grateful to Nathan Lindberg, Michelle Cox, and Melissa Myers in the English Language Support Office at Cornell University for your encouragement. I also thank Gaeun Seo, Rebecca Schwartz-Bishir, and William Barnett for your thought-provoking suggestions at various stages of the project. Donna Duncan helped me with the logistics of writing while away from my home institute at Cornell University. I thank my students in the classes I taught and my classmates from Empathy, Assistance, and Referral Service, a peer-group counselor training program at Cornell University; and my colleagues at the Cornell Graduate Consulting Club for your company; it kept me going. My colleagues who influenced me by helping me to communicate more effectively include Ai Baba, Aimée Douglas Caffrey, Ashley Smith, Charis Boke, Charles Shih-Hsiang Sung, Chairat Polmuk, Cheow Thia Chan, Ching-Fang Chang, Courtney Work, Dambar Chemjong, Emily Levitt, Eno Pei-Jean Chen, Erick D. White, Eveline Bingaman, Faizah Zakaria, Hong Bui, Hongnan Ma, Hui-Wen Chang, Inga Gruß, Ivan Small, Jean Cheng, Keven Carrico, Lesley R. Turnbull, Marcie Middlebrooks, Mariana Saavedra, Matt Reeder, Michael Bobick, miishen Carpentier, Mirabelle Yang, Namgyal Tsepak, Nari Yoon, Scott Sorrell, Setefanus Suprajitno, Taomo Zhou, Vinny Ialenti, Yi-Chang Guo, Ying-Qing Wu, and Zach M. Howlett. I thank Anita Chen, Annie Sheng, Anya Golovkova, Benyah Shaparenko, Emiko Stock, ix Eric Siu-Kei Cheng, Hao-Li Lin, Jack Meng-Tat Chia, Jerry Liu, Jingling Piao, Jonathan T. Shaw, Shiau-Yun Chen, Shu-Li Huang, Tim McLellan, Wah Guan Lim, and Jeff Peterson for your cheer. Uncle Hui-Ping Huang, aunt Mei-Chen Chen, my parents and my sister have supported me tenaciously. My eyes are full of appreciative tears as I write this acknowledgment. Without the aforementioned people, I could not have made it to the end of this long, difficult journey. The credit is yours, and all errors are mine. I will pay forward to those in need along the way, reflecting how you patiently contributed so generously to my growth. x TABLE OF CONTENTS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH v DEDICATION vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii TABLE OF CONTENTS xi NOTES ON TRANSLATION xii GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS xiii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER II. MALAYSIA CONTEXT 31 CHAPTER III. WISE QIGONG ASSOCIATION 73 CHAPTER IV. ALTERITY AND TRANSCENDENCE: QI, THE 146 GOOD OBJECT, AND THE IDEAL GIANT SELF CHAPTER V. BODHI HEART SANTUARY, BUDDHISM, AND 2 29 YT’S EXPERIENTIAL SELF CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSION 293 EPILOGUE 300 GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH TO CHINESE TRANSLATION 302 BIBLIOGRAPHY 312 xi NOTES ON TRANSLATION Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese Chinese, and Hokkien Chinese are my own. I have sought to use the Pingyin system for Romanization followed by Chinese characters in translating Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese
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