Mini Blog: Discussion about "The Oriental Monk in American Popular Culture"

Summary

In the chapter “The Oriental Monk In American Popular Culture,” Jane Naomi Iwamura discussed that the Oriental Monk is not only a spiritual figure in Eastern religions, but also an icon in American popular culture. Iwamura talked about the “initiation” of Oriental Monk in American culture through D. W. Griffth’s film, Broken Blossoms, which Eastern spirituality engaged with Western religion. Later, by the Civil Right Movement and 1965 Immigration Act, Eastern religions and culture gradually “arrive” on the American coasts. Meanwhile the Oriental Monk narrative has become increasingly popular in American culture. At the end of this chapter, Iwamura stated that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is transformed to an American popular cultural figure. He represents a figure with the spiritual mission of Buddhism. In addition, his religious practices and beliefs became a political mission which fights for Tibetans’ “the physical, cultural, and spiritual existence.”

Extra Links:

Oriental Monk as Popular Icon: On the Power of U.S. Orrientalism

http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/content/79/3/735.full

Dalai Lama: No More ‘Wolf in Monk’s Robes’?

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/dalai-lama-no-more-wolf-in-monks-robes/?_r=0

Questions:

1.      In the article, author used D. W. Grifth’s film to manifest the “initiation” of Oriental Monk in Western culture. The film’s moral lesson rests on a threat: “If the Christianized West is unable to care for its children, the noble Buddhist East will.” What do you think about this sentence or the meaning of the film that screenwriter wanted to indicate?

2.      Iwamura pointed out the Oriental Monk has become the icon in a variety of American popular cultural representations. How does it connected to American culture? Or are there any other non-Western religious figures which become the icon in American popular culture?

Blog #2 Particular Tradition

            My family used to go to a small church in China-a Presbyterian church. The church itself does not look very old, but my father has been attending this church for most of his lifetime. Distinct from father, I visited many other churches in China, and it confuses me sometimes. The name for each branch of Christianity may be different, but I did not observe any obvious differences. When I came to United States during college, I realize most Christian churches are quite identical, and the traditions or teachings are not so different either.

            When it comes to Presbyterian Christian traditions, I found that by far every church I attended shares the exact same tradition. The root of Presbyterianism comes from theological and evangelical tradition, such as gender, status and regional variations. [1] First, baptism is one of most important ceremony for a Christian to declare his or her faith in becoming a Christian. Although sometimes Christian family gives new born baptism-infant baptism, but this is merely a symbolic baptism. A person may apply for another baptism at roughly 14 years old, depending on the rules for each church. The traditions for baptism has been in Christian society for more than two thousand years, and the procedures are the same in churches of United States and China. Even though the procedure for baptism is the same, there are minor differences in the “measures” for baptism in United States and China. My father told me the pastor dipped his hand into a golden plate of water and proceeded to lay hand on my father’s head as part of the baptism ceremony. However, it is more common to submerge the entire human body into a Jacuzzi, swimming pool, or a river in United States. According to Bible, Jesus was baptized in Jordan River, so I believed that the way baptism is performed must have been modified more or less along the course of the entire Christianity history. According to Holmes, Presbyterian tradition manifests “how those beliefs and practices [that have been held by laity] combine theological tenets with customary belief and socio-political objectives.” [2]

            The second very important ritual that Presbyterian Christians do is the communion, which is usually scheduled monthly. The history of communion can be traced back to the time when Jesus was killed approximately two thousand years ago. Before Jesus was to be pinged on the cross by Romans, he broke the bread and shared the pieces to his disciples, and then he toasted with his wine, passing his cup to his disciples during The Last Supper. [3] Jesus did this because he knew he was going to die, so communion is to remember the death of Jesus Christ. Because the first communion was done thousands years ago, communion now sometimes performs differently than that of in the history. For one thing, the communion bread that my father’s church has is made out of Chinese dumpling skins, while many churches in United States simply cuts out a loaf of bread and shed it into pieces.  The tradition of wine drinking in communion has also been reformed worldwide. In ancient time, people drank the real wine during a communion, but it is not feasible to serve alcohol in church especially because many baptized Christians are underage. Therefore, grape juice has been replaced for the actual wine very long ago both in United States and China as my father confirmed. Although the tradition for communion changed slightly, the core reason to perform communion remains the same. Christians believe that communion is the way to come both in faith and in love towards Christ, and in love one toward another. [4]

            In summary, the various traditions and rituals for Christianity do not differ very much in my father’s experience and in United States. Although there are differences in the practices of Christian traditions, the main concept remains unchanged. In fact, these actual practices of various Christian traditions are often not stated very clearly in the Bible too, so the ambiguities occurred. Fortunately, these ambiguities do not incur problems, given that the teachings in United States are similar to that of in China.

 

1.      Andrew R Holmes, The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Relief and Practice 1770-1840 (Oxford University Press, 2008), 374.

2.      Andrew R Holmes, The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Relief and Practice 1770-1840 (Oxford University Press, 2008), 374.

3.      Bob Deffinbaugh, “The Last Supper,” Bible Organization, https://bible.org/seriespage/last-supper-luke-227-23 (accessed August  2013).

4.      John Aikman Wallace, Communion Services, according to the Presbyterian form, (General Books, 2012), 15.

Blog#1 Introduction

Unlike many Asian families, I grow up in a family who believes Christianity, and naturally I also became a Christian. Both my parents are very into Christianity, and they also “pray” to God every day. For a Christian, the “practice” is quite simple, we close our hands together and “talk to god.” This is one of many rituals that Christians do very frequently- pray. Christians pray in many occasions: before going to work; before each meal; during sick time, etc. In general, praying is what Christians do to communicate with God, and we are taught to see God as a father, who cares and loves everyone on earth even the non-believer. Ever since I was a child, I remembered my father kneed by the bed with my mom and pray every morning. I did not understand why they would pray in the morning before they go to work every day. My father would also be enraged if I proposed to ditch the church on Sunday. My understanding to the word “religion” is a kind of notion that gives the believers the hope in passion, strong enough to conduct certain rituals in order to justify what the believers think the greater entity would be pleased about. I was almost never truly passionate about something. Religion used to be something that I took for granted, but I had never been consistently passionate about it. My father, however, is the opposite.

            My father helps out in the church and participates various activities of the church. Sometime, he is the usher whose duty is to hand out bulletins to people. Usher is an important role in the church because an usher is the first person to be seen from afar and is also the one who greets the new comer. My father believes that usher, just as every other position in a church structure, is an invaluable position. He believes that God evaluate each individual by the individual’s passion in serving God, so even as little as an usher can be remembered by God as long as he or she has the passion in being an usher. At some other times, he would attend the prayer request meeting, where church members pray together for the people in need. Usually, people who go to the prayer request meeting would pray at one thing at a time in a circle, and the process for praying can take a long time, depending on the number of prayer requests the church received weekly.

            When I asked my father how he became so spiritual, he replied that he had gone through various testimonies that he determined impossible to be coincidental. He shared one testimony with me one day when I confronted him with the tightened financial pressure in our family. Although this testimony is not the very first few reasons that he became actively participated in the church, it is one of many reasons that strengthens his belief in God’s existence. As depression has been going on for quite a while, my parent’s financial burdens grow more heavily each day, leaving them with the only choice to loan from the bank. In the end, my parents loaned ten of thousand dollars, which they considered not possible to be paid back. My mother cried desperately every day back then as I later discovered, but the scenario only seemed to go worse. My father, who bible study each day before bed, had a dream one day: a rock climber was climbing on a cliff up high alone when the night is approaching. The climber’s safety rope breaks, so the climber can only hang on the cliff with his hands. However, it is freezing and dark on the cliff. The climber cannot see anything on the cliff, believing he will soon die of low temperature or the fall from the cliff. Helplessly, the climber prayed to God, and God miraculously instructs the climber to let go of his hands to fall in to the darkness cliff. The climber, in fear, eventually did not let go of his hands and are frozen to death as the result. Later when his body is discovered, the police found a rock that is just right below him, which if he fell, would not have killed him. Soon after the dream, my father was told that a friend of his may offer him a job to pay off the debt in Taiwan, a place where my father does not intend to go. He recalled what happened to the climber and finally decided to let go of his linger in China and work in Taiwan. It turned out he not only was able to start paying the debt, but he also just needed to go to Taiwan once every two weeks, which is not a bad thing at all.

            As a Christian, I believe the existence of God, but I also understand the logic for those who do not have religions. I conclude that religion is really a subjective matter after all, since every incident can be translated in terms of probability. Nevertheless, we, as human beings, can also never rule out that a greater entity is in control. More often than not, it is the uncertainty that makes human beings to fear or imagine that such entity exists, and that to believe or not is simply a subjective matter.