A case study of the decline of the Buddhist funeral ritual, the Title Guangdong Yuqie Yankou Author(s) Sik, HH; Sik, FR Citation Contemporary Buddhism, 2016, v. 17 n. 1, p. 116-137 Issued Date 2016 URL http://hdl.handle.net/10722/226459 This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Contemporary Buddhism on 04 Apr 2016, available online at: Rights http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14639947.2016.1162 424; This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. DECLINE OF THE BUDDHIST FUNERAL RITUAL A case study of the decline of the Buddhist funeral ritual, The Guangdong Yuqie Yankou Sik Hin Hung and Sik Fa Ren Centre of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong Corresponding Author: Sik Hin Hung Centre of Buddhist Studies , The University of Hong Kong Rm 4.14, 4/F, The Jockey Club Tower, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong Tel: 3917 5061; Email: [email protected] Author Biographies: VEN. SIK Hin Hung International Business and Computer Science - B.S.C. (Oregon, US); Religious Studies - M.A. (SOAS, UK) Venerable Sik Hin Hung specializes in Buddhist meditation and education. His research interests include studies of Buddhist teachings based on psychotherapy, traditional Chinese ethics and religion, Buddhism in Hong Kong, and contemporary Buddhism. Currently, he is the director and assistant professor of the Centre of Buddhist Studies of the University of Hong Kong. Affiliation: Centre of Buddhist Studies, The University of Hong Kong 1 Postal Address: Rm 4.14, 4/F, The Jockey Club Tower, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. Tel: 3917 5061; Email: [email protected] DR. SIK Fa Ren Religious Studies - B.A. (Hons) (CUHK); M.A. (CUHK), Ph.D. (LANCASTER, UK). Dr. Sik Fa Ren is a specialist in the field of Buddhist studies, including Chinese Buddhist doctrines and rituals. Her studies mainly concern the relationship between Chinese culture and religion. She is now a visiting assistant professor at the Centre of Buddhist Studies of the University of Hong Kong. Affiliation: Centre of Buddhist Studies, the University of Hong Kong Postal Address: Rm 4.12, 4/F, The Jockey Club Tower, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong. Tel: 3917 5059; Email: [email protected] Funding Information and Acknowledgement This work was fully supported by The Research Grants Council of the Government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, under the General Research Fund (HKU753411). We are grateful for the funding support. DECLINE OF THE BUDDHIST FUNERAL RITUAL Abstract This article contextualizes the decline of the Buddhist death ritual, the Guangdong Yuqie Yankou (廣東瑜伽焰口)1 through an examination of external and internal factors that might have affected its development in contemporary Hong Kong. During the last two decades, its popularity has dramatically declined, so much so that it now occupies an insignificant place among the pool of local funeral rituals. Its waning is not only a result of changing socio-economic factors, such as contemporary lifestyles, commercialization of the funeral industry, ‘fast-food’ mortuary practices, and diminished religiosity of the Hong Kong laity, but is also caused by the scarcity of presiding Buddhist masters and competition from Buddhist rituals imported from other provinces of China. These intertwining factors have worked together to foster the decline of the ritual. The data for this ethnographic study were mainly collected in interviews and through the observation of participants. Keywords: Hong Kong Buddhism, Yankou, Guangdong Yuqie Yankou, death ritual, funeral, religiosity/cosmology 3 紹根 A respected Buddhist monk, Shao Gen ( , 1932–), has said, ‘No, Guangdong (Yankou) is not going to be around, [it will not be] passed down to future generations . and young monks are reluctant to learn it’. At age 83, this Venerable lives in Hong Kong and is one of the few surviving specialists in the Buddhist death ritual,2 the Guangdong Yuqie Yankou. The master has witnessed its decline and believes that it will not long survive. Introduction Guangdong Yuqie Yankou (廣東瑜伽焰口, henceforth Guangdong Yankou), the Guangdong style ‘yoga ritual’ for feeding and saving flaming-mouth hungry ghosts, is an indigenized version of the popular Buddhist ritual, the Yuqie Yankou (瑜伽焰口) that has been preserved and practiced in the Hong Kong and Guangdong areas. During the era of the British governance of Hong Kong, this Buddhist deliverance ritual of food-bestowal flourished and became part of the lives of many Hong Kong residents. It was popular for both funeral services and auspicious ceremonies until the 1990s. However, since that time, the popularity of Guangdong Yankou has declined year after year. Nowadays, it is even marginalized within the local Buddhist communities. Furthermore, the younger generations of local Buddhist adepts, both monastic and lay, have been less willing to adopt and officiate at the ritual. Witnessing the dramatic decline of the ritual over the past 20 years, most of its monastic experts share Venerable Shao Gen’s pessimistic view of its future. Why has the popularity of the Guangdong Yankou declined significantly in recent years? What are the factors that have driven it to wane? To these questions, the DECLINE OF THE BUDDHIST FUNERAL RITUAL common answer, given by both Buddhist monks and professionals in the funerary industry, is the shortage of sangha members willing to become specialists in the ritual. Nevertheless, this ethnographic investigation reveals that the lack of new ritual specialists from the local sangha does not adequately explain the overall problem. Rather than a mono-causal factor, the decline of the ritual is embedded in a changing socio-economic situation, characterized by contemporary lifestyles, developing trends in the funeral industry and mortuary practices, and the declining religiosity of Hong Kong’s population. Moreover, the rise in the popularity of another Buddhist death ritual, the ‘Three Periods of Mindfulness’ ceremony (sanshi xinian, 三時繫念), has diminished the religious function of Guangdong Yankou for lay Buddhists. While examining these factors, this paper does not focus on the doctrinal and textual aspects of the Buddhist ritual; instead, it illuminates the context of the dramatic decline of Guangdong Yankou in contemporary Hong Kong through an examination of the external and internal socio-economic factors responsible for it. A portrayal of Guangdong Yankou What is Yuqie Yankou? Yuqie Yankou is a Buddhist food-bestowal ritual, performed to liberate hungry ghosts or ‘flaming mouths’ (焰口) from their thirst, hunger, and suffering in the lower realm by providing them with food and Buddhist teachings through visualizations, mantras, and mudrās. The merits from these offerings are often redirected toward the fulfilment of the wishes of the sponsor(s) of the ritual. Yuqie (瑜伽) is the Chinese phonetic translation of the term yoga, where the ritual’s adept synchronizes his physical, verbal, and mental actions to promote 5 spiritual growth and power. It is a type of esoteric Buddhist practice that simultaneously uses hand gestures (mudrās), chanting of spells (mantras), and visualizations (samadhi) to generate the transformative power that enables the officiating adepts to achieve instantly the state of a Bodhisattva or Buddhahood and to acquire supernatural power to bless and transform the salvific food and sweet dew so that they can be consumed by the hungry ghosts, who are also instructed in Dharma teachings (Orzech 2002, 222–3). This esoteric Buddhist practice of feeding hungry ghosts can be traced back to ‘The Discourse of the Buddha on the Dhāraṇī for Saving 佛 救 the Burning-Mouth Hungry Ghosts’ (Foshuo jiuba yankou egui tuoluoni jing, 說 拔焰口餓鬼陀羅尼經)3 of Amoghvajra (705–774) in the Tang Dynasty, which states that much merit can be gained from offering food to yankou, the flaming-mouths, as these suffering beings spurt flames from their mouths because of thirst and hunger. Yuqie Yankou may be the only remnant of Tang esoteric Buddhism in China today (Hun 2011, 561). The ritual was transmitted to different regions of China. Its chants, background music, ritual scriptures, and operatic sequences were indigenized and eventually developed into different regional versions of the ritual. The Distinctive Guangdong Style Yuqie Yankou The Guangdong style of Yuqie Yankou has distinct cultural attributes, which differ from those of provincial counterparts in Mainland China and Taiwan. One of the salient features of the Guangdong style is its operatic recitation and hymn chanting, both of which are conducted in Cantonese by specialists from the Guangdong Buddhist lineages. Other unique features encompass the ritual’s performance sequence, its symbolic paraphernalia, and the training and initiation ceremony of new DECLINE OF THE BUDDHIST FUNERAL RITUAL presiding masters (jiachi, 加持).4 These elements are mostly absent in its provincial counterparts. For instance, in the Guangdong style, prior to ascending onto the lotus throne, presiding masters must unfold and hold up their kāṣāya robes as a gesture of receiving Avalokiteśvara’s Bodhisattva prostration (ding li, 頂禮). Ritual specialists of the Guangdong style are told by their masters that Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, intending to benefit all sentient beings, once promised to prostrate to anyone who mastered Yuqie Yankou. Since nobody, including ritual specialists, is praiseworthy enough to receive the