Asian Transformations in Action - Api-fellowships.org

176 SPECIFICITIES OF GLOBALIZATIONa spiritual community is no longer fixed by physicalproximity, but is mediated through the impersonal massmedia so that one can come to these temples withoutknowing anyone beforehand, and when finished withthe business, one can leave them without knowinganyone, too.Figure 1: A piece of an internet news. The subtitle reads “thequiet boom”, referring to the popularity of meditation.is the opposite: to say that one has no religion is usuallytaken as strange or radical.However, even among those who participated in obviouslyreligious activities, the way they approachedspirituality was more diversified and personalized thanin previous eras. It involved more postmodern-stylemix-and-match, trial-and-error, and, in many cases,the de-stressing of a sensation-gatherer (Bauman 1997),perhaps an escape from what Hegel called ‘the unhappyconsciousness of modernity’ (Prendergast 2000) intoWalter Benjamin’s ‘the unconscious of the dreamingcollective’ (Buck-Morss 1989). Many seek spiritualityin order to elude problems in their personal life, family,workplace or relationship; a friend of mine told me thatshe started to believe in reincarnation after suffering severetrauma due to a break-up. However, she also triedmany things that have a spiritual element, especiallyNew Age health-related, healing treatments from zazen,yoga, spa massage, body-and-mind therapy and personalaura-reading, many of which combined scientificmethods and devices. Again, these trends seem to begenerated and popularized first in the West, employingancient Eastern beliefs and methods, before they spreadto the Eastern countries itself, most notably throughthe demand of the tourists to consume ‘things East,’making some Easterners proud of themselves along theway. However, as a consequence, these ‘things East,’ includingspirituality, have become a sign or a symbol tobe consumed without necessarily having a relationshipwith its traditional or original meaning; it has becomewhat Baudrillard calls ‘pure simulacrum.’ Two exampleswill suffice to illustrate this point: one is the traditionalsymbol of Zen’s sunnata or Voidness used asa substitute for a Roman alphabet “O” on the cover ofFigure 2: Advertisement on a train about a zazen retreat ata temple in Okayama. It reads: “Zazen & Vegetarian FoodTour.” The package price, 4,980 yen, includes bus fee, food andzazen session cost.At first, I was a little surprised to learn that, in Japan,it is almost politically correct for most of the peopleI met to claim that they are non-religious, althoughthey might actually practice otherwise. This might stemfrom many reasons; one might be the recent activitiesharmful to the public of some religious organizations orcults. Another might be that some people are well awareof the implanted historical and political meaning of religionand its usage during imperialism and war, anddeplore anything that has religious overtones. For example,when the writer Yukio Mishima built his house,he decorated it a style that he claimed to be ‘anti-Zen,’reflecting his post-war nihilistic attitude. In Thailand, itFigure 3: A Soto Zen booklet.Asian Transformations in ActionThe Work of the 2006/2007 API Fellows