Tag Archives: Religion

The Kitchen God and Chuang Mu

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 17
Occupation: Student
Residence: California
Performance Date: March 21, 2013
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

This story was told during the daytime at a friend’s home. Sitting in front of the shrine her family keeps to honor the ancestors and the deities of Buddhism, it was told in order to explain the reasoning behind some of the rituals done on specific Buddhist holidays. She learned about these beliefs from her parents, who are strong Buddhists, and they are part of her self-identification. To her, they are fully real and are the reasons why luck and fortune come and go out of people’s lives. They are also why she believes that honoring the dead and the deities are so important and can never be neglected without severe consequences. Having lived this way her entire life, it also means her way of living to her as well.

The Kitchen God and Chuang Mu are said to keep you safe from evil spirits and misfortune. As deities of the house and home, they take care of the inhabitants if they are respected. As his name implies, the Kitchen God’s domain is the kitchen, but kitchen is very important in meaning to a house. Chuang Mu means the Mother of Beds, and she is the spirit that sits on beds and watches over you to make sure bad dreams and misfortune stays away. Their protection, however, is only bestowed if they are pleased with you and your family. If you anger them through disrespect or neglect, then they will withdraw their protection from your household. As a result, in order to show that you are respecting them and that you have not forgotten about them, you have to burn incense and give offering to the Kitchen God and Chuang Mu every few months.

This piece of folklore shows how much religion is a part of daily life, which is remarkable. It emphasizes respect for the dead and for the gods which is definitively part of Asian culture. It also shows how real religion can be to individuals and how deeply it can be associated with someone’s identity.

 

The Burning Lake

Two students decided to go to a parson and tell him a story so outrageous that he’d pay them just to keep it quiet.

The first student went to the parson and related two strange events that he’d just heard about. The first was that God in Heaven had died, and the second was that the Sea of Galilee had caught fire and burned. The parson refused to believe him. Late, the second student went to see the parson, who asked him if he’d heard these stranger rumors: Could God in Heaven be really dead, and the Sea of Galilee burned to a crisp?

“Well,” said the second student, “I didn’t see it with my own eyes, but I’m sure it’s true. When I was in Nazareth a few days ago, the entire marketplace was filled with fried fish, and the angels were buying up all the black cloth in town for mourning clothes.”

The parson gave them both a large sum of money so that they wouldn’t pass on this news on; otherwise, he’d never be able to preach again.

Analysis:

This Swedish folktale employs humor to criticize the Church in multiple ways. The characters in the story have no qualms with conning the Church and more importantly, they know exactly how to do so, thus insisting that authorities in religion are dimwitted, corrupted, and unfaithful themselves. The parson believes quite easily that God is dead and the Sea of Galilee, the largest freshwater lake in Israel, has burned, and then bribes the students not to say a word so he can keep his position. In other words, even the parson here admits here that Christianity is more of a scam, only functioning as a power when there are enough people faithful, or stupid in this case, to believe in it.

The tale celebrates the cleverness of the students, a major theme in many Swedish folktales, and openly points out the flaws of the Church. After all,Swedenwas converted relatively late to Christianity, around 1000 AD. It stands to reason that the people would be aware of the corruptible sides of the Church after having such a long history with Pagan religion and culture.

Though “The Burning Lake” is a märchen, this one does not seem to be particularly aimed at children. The humor in this story would be more understood by adults; however, young people who read or heard the tale would pick up on the value of cleverness and perhaps some of the flaws of blindly believing in religion.

 

Collected from: 

 Blecher, Lone Thygesen and Blecher, George. Swedish Folktales and Legends. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993. Print.

Starting Ramadan

Nationality: Syrian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/13
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Arabic

My informant describes how he learned to begin the religious fast of Ramadan, according to his Islamic faith:

    “So, every day, before you begin your fast at Ramadan, you have to start, um, traditionally with a sugar date and then a glass of milk, because that’s supposedly what the prophet Mohammed ate, because it gives you enough filling  and enough strength, for the smallest amount of food. And so you begin with that and no other, so to sum up, then you fast the day.”

My informant observes the Islamic fast of Ramadan, which is observed in accordance with the teachings of Mohammed. He described how he and his family have always observed it in this way, and how it carries a special religious significance for him.

Burn yourself to go to paradise

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Francisco, California
Performance Date: 4/12/13
Primary Language: English

Informant: “My parents told me that a man once told a girl that if she burned herself, she would go to heaven. And that’s what she did. She burned herself. She was saved, but she’s was like deformed. And then she died. It was all because of that religion and the cult. That’s why my parents don’t want me to believe in religion.”

Me: “Have you heard this story from anyone else?”

Informant: “Yes. My friends’ moms know about it too!”

Me: “Do you know what religion it was that caused people to burn themselves?”

Informant: “It was that exercise cult thingy.”

Me: “How does that make you feel? Do you believe in religion?”

Informant: “Any religion that makes you burn yourself is bad. It is not real. It’s… bad. Just bad. I don’t believe in religion because my mom and dad told me that it’s bad.”

Analysis: Through research discovered that the informant was talking about the Falun Gong practictioners and the incident in TianAnMen Square in 2001. Falun Gong is a spiritual exercise, similar to Taichi. In 2001, a group of five people (including one twelve year old girl) set themselves on fire in the middle of TianAnMen square. The incident caused major controversy in China.

This retelling of the story of the self-immolation incident in Tiananmen square is an example of an event improperly portrayed by the media, and through word of mouth became a warning against all religion. In reality, there is no evidence that the people who participated in that incident practiced Fa Lun Gong, according to the article.

China has always been a relatively atheist country. During Mao Ze Dong’s reign, he did an attack on the Four Olds, including old culture, which included religion. At the time, the primary religion of choice in China was Buddhism, but with the drive for “New Thought”, many young revolutionists abandoned religion. This may have contributed to the informant’s parents’ thoughts on religion being bad, as they would’ve been teenagers at the time of the Cultural Revolution in 1976.

Annotation: http://en.minghui.org/cc/88/

Fa Lun Gong Burning

Chinese/Taiwanese Custom of Praying at a Temple for Success in Exams

Nationality: Taiwanese
Age: 19
Occupation: USC student, majoring in electrical engineering, minoring in computer science
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 7, 2012
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, French

“China does not have one unified religion. The closest things we have are Buddhism and Daoism, but they tend to stick in their own temples and mountains. So unless you’re a very firm believer in it–it doesn’t trickle down to the normal population. What does happen is that Chinese gods are very practical. The general philosophy is that it doesn’t matter who you believe in, it doesn’t matter what kind of person you are, if you step in a temple, you offer your money, you pray, the gods will answer. So, the gods aren’t creators or great beings to be worshipped, they are beings with super powers that you trade with. Basically, we have what is called ‘paper money.’ You buy the paper money from the temple, and then you burn the paper, and you offer fruit, food, or whatever, to the gods, and the gods give you the good fortune that you want. So, we don’t pray at nights before we eat or before we sleep, we don’t call to God for help, but if we’re, for example, going to an exam, it’s very typical in Asia to take your sons or your daughters to a temple and pray to the gods before the exam starts to pray to the gods for a successful exam.”

Q. Have you ever done that?

A. My parents have taken me to temples when I was little.

Q. Was that a meaningful experience for you?

A. I never really believed that that would help, but since my parents took me there, I prayed. I’d say, “God, give me a good exam result.”

Q. Is the practice of taking kids to temples before exams very common?

A. Well, the temples get a burst of popularity every time final exams come around.

Q. On what other occasions do people go to the temples?

A. People also go on New Year, to have a good year, before you start a job, after you buy a new house. Also on the Day of the Dead, the day we honor our dead, a lot of people go to the temples. And some people come more than others; my family goes very rarely because we’re not very religious, so we go once every month or two.

Q. You said that you don’t believe that going to the temples actually helps. Do your parents believe in it?

A. They are agnostics. They take the Pascal’s gamble approach. If it works, it works, and we pay the money, it’s good. If it doesn’t work, well, we paid a little money, it’s not actually that much, and it’s an experience for our children, so that’s fine. They’re very busy people, and visiting the temple takes time, so we don’t do it very often.

Q. Can you talk more about what the experience of going there is like?

A. Temples are usually very noisy, very loud and crowded. Unlike Western cathedrals—I’m not very much into religion, but I love cathedrals because of the architecture—which are serene, and you walk into them and feel awed by God, in Chinese temples, it’s loud, they’re sort of a social gathering. Also, temples are markets—they’re markets with great food. Temple food is good. You know how in the New Testament, they describe Jesus as being very angry at the peddlers who were in the Temple, and he flipped their stalls? There’s a section in the New Testament where Jesus goes to the Temple and he gets very angry at the peddlers for defiling a sacred place. But this is the opposite. In the temples, you’re supposed to have that kind of people. If a temple doesn’t have peddlers, it means that it’s not very popular, and if it’s not very popular, then its gods aren’t very good. So a temple that is empty and sort of quiet and serene is a bad thing. Temples are supposed to be very loud, and there’s supposed to be smoke everywhere from the incense. That’s the Chinese temple.

There are these things, I’m not sure what they’re called, but they’re two crescent-shaped pieces of wood that are painted red. They look like slices of oranges. And you’re supposed to throw them on the ground. You’re supposed to throw a pair of them on the ground. And how they land will tell you how’s your luck. And you’ll hear those things clattering against the ground the whole time. Sometimes you’ll buy a little bag full of rice that’s supposed to be blessed, and you keep them as a sort of talisman or amulet for good luck. You can buy one for the kind of thing you wanted good luck from. So, if you want success in exams, you can buy a success in exam one, if you want success in love, you can buy a success in love one. It’s a very business-oriented thing. There are certain temples, even until now, which are very sacred and which treat money as less of an issue, like the Shaolin Temple and the Daoist temples. But your average temple—they all worship multiple gods, and it’s just whatever god’s most popular in the area. Actually, speaking of the Shaolin Temple, which is very famous for its martial artists—they are said to be the most business-oriented temple now. Shaolin martial arts have spread all over the world by virtue of them being very business-oriented. The head monk of Shaolin no longer sits in his room praying, he goes all over the world on private jets for business purposes.

Q. Does that mean converting people?

A. No, they’re not converting people to the religion. They are not encouraged, nor are they motivated to convert people to their religion. But they welcome people to come and practice Shaolin martial arts, and they get paid quite a bit of money for it.

Analysis: This tradition of praying at temples for success in exams displays a way that religion has adapted to fit people’s present-day concerns, pressures, and needs.