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This chapter analyzes Ning Hao's film Incense, a heavy yet humorous film about the adventures of an impoverished Buddhist monk who tries to preserve his temple and etch out a living for himself in a modernizing secular world that has no use for religion. It examines Incense as a film text which deconstructs “earthly Buddhism,” especially its current efforts to adapt to China's economic reforms and capitalist globalization.

This chapter discusses the history of the Incense Light community and its headquarters, the Incense Light Temple (Xiangguang Si). Located in the village of Neipu in Zhuji County, Chiayi District, in central Taiwan, Incense Light Temple literally emerged from a location where the local cult of Guanyin had existed for more than a hundred years. The architectural proximity of its headquarters and the local temple represents the conjuncture of two different religious traditions and orientations. The coexistence of the local cult and the Incense Light Temple has presented the Buddhist nuns with both a welcome opportunity and a perpetual challenge. This chapter describes the physical setting of Incense Light Temple and the key figures involved in its founding, including Xinzhi, Wuyin, and Mingjia.

This chapter focuses on the establishment of the Incense Light community under Wuyin. Incense Light Temple was originally a local temple with no Buddhist history. In colonial Taiwan, nuns were derisively called zhaigu (vegetarian hall auntie) or caigu (vegetarian auntie) by the common people. Today, Buddhist nuns in Taiwan consider these names unacceptable and insist on being called biqiuni. The origin of the former appellations has to do with the situation in Taiwan prior to 1949 when the Nationalist government arrived with a large exodus of monks from the mainland. Aside from Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religion, sectarian religions were also practiced in Taiwan during the period of Japanese occupation. This chapter first looks at Wuyin's formative experiences before discussing how she was introduced to Buddhism, her years at Yuantong Academy, her brief time in Hawai'i, and how she was installed as the abbess of Incense Light Temple.

This chapter examines the venues and offerings common in acts of sacrifice. The choice of venue and of time often depend on some previous contact with a god, and serve to communicate with the god, as does the choice and handling of the offering. Vegetal as well as animal sacrifices are common, and both kinds are subject to divine requirements that are esthetic as well as moral and social.

What were perfumes and incense actually like and what did people do with them? This chapter explores the theory and practice of perfumes. Medieval South Asians did not talk of “top notes” and “base notes”, but of “allies” and “enemies” in the structure of a perfume. Perfumes ranged from simple pastes of sandalwood and saffron to complex oils containing dozens of ingredients subject to numerous processes. The chapter also analyzes a literary episode involving a perfume-addicted, love-sick prince as a case study to confirm and to complicate what we have learned so far about the uses and meanings of smells and perfumes in medieval South Asia.

This chapter presents a sampler of zar sacrificial rites and rituals using a realist narration style, of the kind that is employed in fiction, based on transcriptions of actual recordings of real life. The opening sura of the Qur'an, the Fatiha, is the fundamental Muslim prayer. In zar rituals, the Fatiha is used as the central part of a special ritual formula performed at the beginning of any zar performance, called the Openings (al-fawatih). This chapter first describes the ritual use of incense in the Openings rite and its context before discussing the rite for sacrificial blood. It also considers the sacrificial procession dedicated to the Grand Lady, one of the most important zar spirits and leader of a spirit pantheon. Finally, it examines the mayanga (a Hausa word which means “cemetery”), a place where a zar devotee may harbor her possessing spirits and thus acquire direct access to them.

Building on the wide-ranging study of smell, perfumes, and aromatics in the previous chapters, this chapter examines the question of why people offered these materials to the gods. A passage from the Mahābhārata provides a very clear answer to the question “Why do we give flowers and incense to the gods?” After a close reading of this text, the chapter presents two later sources. Here it appears that the aromatic practices and olfactory sensibilities of the gods changed over time, from simple incense made of Indian myrrh to far more complex perfumes made of exotic aromatics. Although adornment is shared between the “sacred” and “profane” worlds, nevertheless there are important differences between the olfactory tastes and sensory capacities of the gods and of humans, such that one can justifiably talk of a religious olfactory aesthetics.

This chapter examines the use of tobacco by hasidic Jews. There do not seem to be any references to tobacco in the classical hasidic works of doctrine, the hasidic Torah. Their absence from these sources may be because aids to contemplation (such as tobacco) were considered irrelevant to the ideal itself, although contemplation was clearly important in hasidic thought. Although tobacco was brought to Europe from the New World, where it had been used as part of the American Indian religious ceremonies, the hasidim did not use it in this sense. Rather, the early hasidim smoked tobacco as an aid to concentration. It was only much later that the incense motif and the idea of raising holy sparks were introduced. Some tsadikim were heavy smokers, while others either gave up smoking or had never smoked at all.

This chapter analyzes Ning Hao’s debut film Incense (2003)—which relates a curious tale about a young Buddhist monk who forsakes his religious faith for economic survival—in terms of Buddhism as a living religion in contemporary China. As the new millennium begins, Chinese Buddhist leaders and scholars have advocated so-called Earthly Buddhism with regard to modernity and globalization. They consider it impossible for traditional Buddhism to “withdraw from the world” or evade the realities of globalization. As an alternative, they claim, Earthly Buddhism must enter the world and partake in the modernization of religious institutions and social life. For them, a domain in alliance with Earthly Buddhism is Metropolitan Buddhism, which is a ready response to rapid urbanization in the country.

Imperial expansion was rather exceptional in pharaonic Egypt, mostly limited to the second half of the second millennium BCE. The reasons behind the conquest of the southern Levant and northern Sudan are related to several factors: the emergence of nearby states whose interests might collide with those of Egypt; the development of a dense network of international exchanges encompassing the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, in which Egypt was ideally located to control much of the supply of African gold, ivory, and precious items; and control over the circuits through which these goods circulated, both at their origin and at their arrival points. However, imperial expansion was hardly an Egyptian unilateral affair, as it should cope with the interests of the elites of the conquered areas as well as with those of emerging actors in Egyptian society (army, traders) in order to ensure a durable domination.

This book examines the spiritual lives of Buddhist nuns at the Incense Light community in contemporary Taiwan. Taiwanese nuns today are highly educated and greatly outnumber monks, characteristics unprecedented in the history of Chinese Buddhism. This book explores how and why a young woman becomes attracted to Buddhism and decides to become a nun; what kind of training she receives at a seminary once she joins the sangha; what kind of work she does upon graduation; and what sorts of problems and setbacks she experiences. By answering these questions, we can get a sense of the bigger picture of Buddhism in Taiwanese society. This introduction discusses the history of Buddhist nuns in China; the text The Lives of Nuns (Biqiuni zhuan), written by the monk Baochang, and its profiles of nuns; updates to The Lives of Nuns; and accounts of nuns in literature.

This chapter examines the role played by Buddhist studies societies found in universities in the growth of the Incense Light community. Buddhist studies societies introduced Buddhist teachings and practices to college students who had no other way to learn about Buddhism in the period prior to 1987 when the national security law was lifted. They were instrumental in convincing large numbers of college students to enter the monastic order from the 1970s to the 1980s. Two lay Buddhists, Li Bingnan and Zhou Xuande, were largely responsible for promoting the study of Buddhism among college students and helped to create many Buddhist studies societies on college campuses. This chapter considers the activities and teachings of Li Bingnan and Zhou Xuande as well as the contribution of Chanyun, a monk noted for his strict observance of the Vinaya and Pure Land devotions, to the movement of college students' study of Buddhism. The retreats organized by Chanyun introduced students to consciously living as a Buddhist lay believer.

This chapter focuses on the entrance exam and curriculum of the Incense Light Buddhist Seminary. In less than two months after Wuyin was installed as the abbess of Incense Light Temple on January 5, 1980, the Incense Light Buddhist Seminary admitted its first class. All nuns must attend five years of seminary, whether they have prior knowledge of Buddhism or not. Although the Buddhist nuns engage in various activities, their chief mission is education. This chapter first considers the challenges facing the monastic order in the Republican period before discussing the early history of modern Buddhist seminaries in Taiwan. It also assesses the challenges to success at the seminary by focusing on the experieces of two contemporary monks, Shengyan and Zhenhua. Finally, it compares the curriculum of Incense Light with that of other seminaries and offers a more detailed description of its courses under four categories: understanding, practice, daily living, and Dharma propagation.

This chapter examines the content of the textbooks compiled by the nuns at the Incense Light Buddhist Seminary for the three levels of adult classes and the teaching methods they use. It was Wuyin who realized that the only way to help the faithful to understand Buddhism and practice Buddhist teachings in daily life was to create an adult education program that would introduce Buddhism systematically. Using her experience attending the adult English classes in Honolulu seven years earlier, she decided to design a Buddhism curriculum for adults. This way of teaching Buddhism was quite innovative at that time, and the very setup of the classes was unusual in Taiwan. This chapter describes the design of the class materials and assignments at the Incense Light Buddhist Seminary and analyzes enrollment data from the classes to provide a profile of the student body. It also considers some hypotheses concerning the effectiveness of the classes by studying samples of homework assignments and exam essays written by the students.

This chapter provides profiles of several Buddhist nuns of the Incense Light community, focusing on their family backgrounds, their motives for joining the sangha, their accomplishments and setbacks, hopes and frustrations. They include Xinzhi, Wuyin, and Mingjia as well as nuns who contributed to the formation and development of Incense Light as a distinctive female monastic community. One of the nuns did not have any specific religious upbringing and did not know the difference between popular religion and Buddhism. Looking back on the changes the community had undergone since 1985, she felt the introduction of the Institute of Cultural Affairs teaching method, termed “conscious conversation,” was probably the most important. This was because it was used in both the seminary and the Buddhist adult classes.

This concluding chapter assesses the Incense Light community's present situation and offers projections about its future direction. Incense Light, like Taiwanese Buddhism in general, is undergoing constant changes. The community's rapid growth in the 1980s and early 1990s has slowed considerably in recent decades, as many more activities and clubs now compete for the attention of today's college students. Buddhist studies societies, which played such an important role in introducing college students to Buddhism, are having a much harder time attracting members. Incense Light's Buddhist nuns have not particularly focused on either the history or the unique characteristics of Chinese Buddhism, but have become open to learning from other Buddhist traditions, as evidenced by their interest in non-Chinese forms of meditation.