PDF《Jimmy Y. Yu》

Bodies of Sanctity: Ascetic Practices in Late Imperial China Jimmy Y.

Yu A Dissertation Prospectus Program in East Asian Studies, Department of Religion, Princeton University Under the Supervision of Stephen F. Teiser, Professor of Religion Jacqueline I. Stone, Professor of Religion Susan Naquin, Professor of History and East Asian Studies Defense Date: January 10th ,

2006 Not for Citation or Quotation

1 Those disciples of crazy wisdom (kuanghui 狂慧) belittle it [blood-writing] as [involving] corporeality (youxiang 有相). But among the root causes of beginningless birth and death, none is deeper than the very perception of the body (shenjian 身见). Among [the practices of] wondrous world-transcending Dharma, none precedes destroying the spurious mountain of satkāya (sajiaye 萨迦耶).1 When this perverse perception of satkāya is destroyed, the wheel of birth and death is forever stilled. This [practice of blood-writing] is called paying reverence to the Correct Dharma;

it is also called using the Dharma to make offering to Buddha. The Lotus and ?ura gama [sūtras] have profound praise for incinerating one'

s limbs and fingers, as well as the merits from burning incense [into one'

s body]. The practices of severing the limb of afflictions and burning the body of ignorance are situated precisely in this very flesh and blood. - Preface written for a layman'

s blood scripture, Ouyi Zhixu q益智旭 (1599-1655) In every case… the ideas of a human subject exist in his actions… his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derives the ideas of that subject. - Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1971 [rep. 2001], p. 114) I. Situating the Project My proposed dissertation is a cultural history of ascetic body practices in late Ming (16th -17th century) China.2 It will examine the body as it has been variously perceived, experienced, and represented, publicly and privately, within the religious system of that period. Specifically, it will detail the ways in which the performance of self-inflicted violence on the body can create subjectivity, new social relations, and religious sanctity.3 The range of body practices I intend to study includes burning parts of the body, such as incinerating fingers (ranzhi 燃指) and burning the arms (ranbi 燃臂), writing verses and copying scriptures with

1 The word sajiaye (萨迦耶) is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word, satkāya, which means the body and has the connotation of body as self. In the Chinese Buddhist context, it is usually coupled with the word, dar?ana , which translates as perception or views. Since the text is speaking of shenjian (身见), I understand sajiaye as a reiteration of the perception or view that identifies the body as an object of one'

s self-grasping.

2 On my usage of the term asceticism and the body, see below.

3 I will discuss this in greater detail below.

2 one'

s blood (xieshu 血书), slicing off pieces of one'

s flesh as expressions of filial piety to cook as medicine for one'

s ailing parents (gegu 割股), and extended fasting and inedia (bigu 辟谷;

jueli 绝粒;

duanshi 断食). These interconnected practices are attested in numerous accounts in an unusually wide range of genres, demonstrating the centrality of the body and the widespread performance of self-mortification in Chinese culture. They were performed by clerics and lay practitioners, men and women, alike. By the late Ming, they reached a culmination of development and popularity. A few of these practices have been studied in earlier periods of Chinese history, but scholars have typically framed them within the boundary of one academic discipline, religious tradition, or genre of texts. Yet these practices, such as extended inedia and body mutilation, are extremely complex and demand an interdisciplinary approach in order to appreciate their cultural significance. It is also necessary to build on the foundations of earlier scholarship to fully examine and understand ascetic body practices, which I see as an elemental dimension in Chinese religiosity. To date, this approach has never been followed systematically. Scholars working in Western medieval Christianity have made great strides to bring nuance to our understanding of asceticism. They have already rejected an earlier view of sexual restraint and austere fasting as dualistic, masochistic, or irrational and sought instead to interpret them as an integral aspect of piety and religious expression. Peter Brown, for example, argues that ascetic practices are not necessarily world-renouncing, self-hating, decadent responses of a society wracked by plague, famine, heresy, war, and ecclesiastical corruption.4 Caroline Bynum claims that late medieval asceticism for women was an effort