Postgraduate students

Tenzin Mullin BA Philosophy DipGrad Chinese PGDip Rels, MA candidate

Pilgrimage and Ritual at Emei Shan

China has an ancient tradition of sacred mountain pilgrimage. One of these sacred mountains is Emei Shan 峨嵋山 in Sichuan province. For the past 1500 years Emei Shan has been associated with the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra 普賢菩薩, and many monasteries have been built along the pilgrimage route to the top of the mountain.

My research focuses on Baoguo Monastery 报国寺, an ancient and prestigious monastery located at the foot of the Mt Emei Shan. Like all Buddhist monasteries in China, Baoguo Si was "closed" during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), its monks returned to lay life and many traditions fell into disuse. After 1982, official policy towards religion changed, and Baoguo Si returned to life. There has been an upsurge of lay interest in this important monastery at the gateway to Mount Emei Shan and its ancient pilgrimage route.

Ritual activity is particularly intense during Chinese New Year 新年 (also referred to as Spring Festival 春节). Chinese New Year is a time when families strive to be together, usually in their hometowns, for at least a couple of days. Increasingly local people and tourists have started to come to Baoguo Si in large numbers after their New Years Eve family communal meal. The monastery has encouraged this innovation by developing a series of ritual activities to be performed on New Year's Eve. Most of these are standard rituals that are performed at almost any Buddhist monastery (offering incense, lighting candles and prostrating to the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas). Particularly interesting is a circumambulatory procession (often led by the Abbot) that takes place in the main assembly hall. During this procession people are invited to chant the Amitabha mantra and to wish for positive changes for the New Year. People generally complete three cycles of the procession, which can take as long as two hours, before leaving the monastic complex in their family groupings.

I plan to study the meaning and development of these rituals for my MA thesis. Are these rituals "traditional" or are they "new"? Are they related to the commercialisation of Emei Shan as a tourist site? I will spend around two months at Emei Shan in June-July 2011 in order to locate textual materials about Baoguo Si and its ritual life, to conduct interviews with local religious specialists and academics. Upon returning to New Zealand, I plan to analyse and present my full thesis by early 2012.

Supervisors: Dr Erica Baffelli and Dr Elizabeth Guthrie