Abstract
I apply the Buddhist and Chinese religious understandings of miracles as natural events to a contemporary Chinese American religious healer who employs Buddhist spells, qigong, and a range of Chinese medical arts to successfully treat conditions such as a golf-ball-sized cancerous tumor, a balance and memory disorder, and stroke-induced facial hemiparesis. In doing so, I build upon the work of anthropologists and historians to do comparative philosophy on the theoretical categories of and boundaries among miracles, the natural, the supernatural, healing, and religion. I engage with Morton Klass’ point on the ethnocentric presuppositions of such categories; Susan Sered’s attention to the political nature of strict binaries as opposed to more flexible continuums; Robert Campany’s distinction between ontological and epistemological miracles, where the latter uncovers the hidden wonders in the natural world; and Helen Tilley’s polyglot therapeutics, which are marked by oscillation between, and the simultaneous holding of, contradictory or incommensurable ontologies. I argue that the category of natural miracle allows reimagining of the above categories and their neat delineations.
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Notes
- 1.
“Daoism represents the celestial realm as different systems of ‘heavens,’ usually arranged hierarchically. In several cases, these domains are not only the residences of deities, but also correspond to degrees of priestly ordination and to inner spiritual states, and are associated with revelations of teachings and textual corpora” (Pregadio, 2020).
- 2.
Nature here is capitalized to draw attention to the Chinese term ziran 自然, which is also translated as self-so, or what-is-so-of-itself, and in the context of Daoism, spontaneity. This points to the problem of assuming a monolithic conception of both the natural and nature. See Gleason (2017) on “the politics that follow from a theory of Nature that is uniform, homogenous, and unchanging” (Gleason, 2017, p. 573).
- 3.
It is no coincidence that religious adepts, Buddhist and Daoist ones (see Halperin, 2013), are depicted in tales interacting with political leadership. This reflects historical reality in how political and religious institutions both vie for power and also support and legitimate each other.
- 4.
See Yü (2007).
- 5.
There are monastic regulations against boastful displays. I thank the editors in pointing out that the Buddha’s displays were not boastful.
- 6.
- 7.
For a variety of examples of how such academic work could take shape besides ethnography, see the Special Issue “Jewish Feminists and Our Fathers: Reflections across Gender and Generations” in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, especially Alpert and Levitt (2009). For a transcript of a formal interview I conducted with a colleague on the aspects of his healing most related to Buddhism, see Cheung and Pierce Salguero (2019).
- 8.
See Barnes and Sered (2005) for the landscape of religion and healing in America. See the 2017 special issue on Buddhism and Healing in Asian Medicine 12 (1–2) edited by C. Pierce Salguero and William McGrath. See Lucy Bregman (2019) on the complicated engagement between religion and medicine in a Christian context in an essay from the second volume of the series of publications on comparative philosophy of religion arising from The Comparison Project. See Harrison (2012) on the relationship between science, religion, and healing between Europe and China through an examination of a Catholic nun.
- 9.
These are the two sentences elided from the corresponding extract above: “Superficial criticism of this practice as greedy attempts by monastics to extract money from lay adherents ignores the rich history of Buddhist engagement with economics and business matters (Brox and Williams-Oerberg, 2016; Schopen 2004). However, ecological criticisms of this disruption to biodiversity as an act of biological invasion deserve more attention (Everard et al. 2019; Liu et al. 2012)” (Cheung, forthcoming).
- 10.
For examples of such oscillations and the continuum of natural to supernatural (as mentioned by Sered) in the South Indian religious (Hindu) context, see Dempsey and Raj (2008).
- 11.
Nevertheless, he agrees to do so for the sake of knowledge and to spread good karma (Cheung & Pierce Salguero, 2019, p. 242–243, 250).
- 12.
“See Palmer (2007) for a history of qigong, including its modern creation and how the Chinese Communist Party initially presented it as a practice backed by science, then claimed qigong’s later developments—such as Falun Gong—to be a superstitious evil cult” (Cheung, forthcoming).
- 13.
I use ethnocentric here to emphasize the genealogy of western bio-medicine’s development from Greek medicine. Greek and western bio-medical uses of the pulse in contrast to Chinese medicine is illuminating. Kuriyama (1999) argues the western, bio-medical interest in measuring beats-per-minute indicates a Greek obsession with an “objective,” quantitative number. In contrast, Chinese descriptions of the pulse, which use “subjective,” qualitative adjectives such as slippery, rough, hollow, lazy, soft, or flooding, indicate a Chinese worldview in which words and language do not fully capture reality.
- 14.
See Stein (2019) for a genealogy and history of this transnational practice. Note the Japanese ki in reiki is the same Chinese characters as qi. Rei means luminous.
- 15.
- 16.
This is not limited within the patient but extends to qi exchange between healer and patient, as acupuncturists literally sense the proper spot for insertion on the patient’s body through their fingers. Qigong employs intra- and inter-personal exchange of qi between individuals and the cosmos.
- 17.
Plural, including contradictory, narratives are readily found in Buddhist texts and in religion more generally. See Cho and Squier (2016).
- 18.
The shape and color of herbs inform how they are used to generate or control other phases to treat over-active and under-active viscera associated with the phases.
- 19.
I thank the editors for raising this question in a slightly different way and related questions.
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Cheung, K. (2022). Miracle as Natural: A Contemporary Chinese American Religious Healer. In: Zwier, K.R., Weddle, D.L., Knepper, T.D. (eds) Miracles: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion. Comparative Philosophy of Religion, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14865-1_8
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