Along The Jialingjiang In Chongqing Of China By

Along the Jialingjiang嘉陵江 in chongqing of china by 山越记

when she says she doesn’t send nudes

Electron microscope video of a needle on a vinyl record.

fenglinbuyi峰林布依, southwest of guizhou province in china by 秋山君

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Is JTTW Buddhist Propaganda?

(Hmmm...I could swear I wrote something about this one before. Consider this post an expansion, then.)

But first, let's analyze what this question means, and gives it some context.

When people say "JTTW is basically Buddhist propaganda", they often point to the caricature of the Celestial Realm, the mocking of Daoists, and how Buddhists are not subjected to the same degree and intensity of satire.

Which is true, and I'll agree that JTTW likes Buddhism better, but I still disagree with the statement as a whole.

See, the "JTTW as Buddhist propaganda" takes imply that 1) JTTW is promoting Buddhist doctrines and only Buddhist doctrines, and 2) Buddhism and Daoism can actually be divided into two distinct, totally dissimilar camps in this period, and you cannot believe in both at the same time.

I'll use this Reddit post as an example, which is what sparked the discussion that inspired in the first place.

Here, the OP summarizes Subodhi and SWK's exchange in Chapter 2 as "Subodhi listing a bunch of Daoist immortality methods that Don't Work, which SWK rejects, before he teaches monkey how to actually be immortal via proper Buddhist ways."

Except...well...Subodhi doesn't actually teach him immortality via proper Buddhist ways. Here is the mantra he recites to SWK after the monkey solved his riddle:

This bold, secret saying that's wondrous and true: Spare, nurse nature and life—there's nothing else. All power resides in the semen, breath, and spirit; Store these securely lest there be a leak. Lest there be a leak! Keep within the body! Heed my teaching and the Way itself will thrive. Hold fast oral formulas so useful and keen To purge concupiscence, to reach pure cool; To pure cool Where the light is bright. You'll face the elixir platform, enjoying the moon. The moon holds the jade rabbit, the sun, the crow; The tortoise and snake are now tightly entwined. Tightly entwined, Nature and life are strong. You can plant gold lotus e'en in the midst of flames. Squeeze the Five Phases jointly, use them back and forth— When that's done, be a Buddha or immortal at will!

It's full of Daoist metaphors, like the reference to 精气神 in line 3, the triad of fundamental forces in internal alchemy. The talk about Jade Rabbit/Moon and Crow/Sun, as well as the Turtle and Snake, are alluding to Water and Fire, the Kan and Li trigram——again, very important in internal alchemy.

And it's not an isolated case. There are enough internal alchemy stuff in JTTW that multiple Qing commentaries are dedicated to reading JTTW through a Daoist cultivation lens, to the extreme of finding internal alchemy metaphors in every line and paragraph.

Nor does JTTW only poke fun at Daoists while portraying monks as paragons of morality: Elder Jinchi, the start of the Wuji Kingdom arc where the local temple head acted like an asshole to Sanzang and was threatened by SWK into providing him lodging, the acolytes of Zhenhai Temple who were seduced and eaten by Lady Earth Flow...

So is JTTW a secretly Daoist work in a thick Buddhist trenchcoat, then? The Chan Buddhist allusions and the dissing of Daoists would beg to disagree.

But more importantly, the idea that JTTW has to be either Daoist or Buddhist propaganda implies an "exclusivity", that if you are promoting one thing, you have to be a doctrinal purist for that thing while thoroughly rejecting the other things, which just isn't how religions work in imperial China.

Though the "Three Teachings as One" tradition does not mean there weren't back-and-forth dissing between Buddhists and Daoists, they usually don't do it by proclaiming that the other is Wrong and False and Needs to Go Away, but "Sure, they have something to offer, but it's actually the same thing as our teachings, and we can do it better anyways".

Thus a Neo-Confucian following Wang Yangming's school of thought could incorporate Buddhist ideas into their philosophical writings, a Daoist could believe in karma and reincarnation, and a novel about attaining Buddha-hood could be laden with internal alchemy jargons and symbolism.

Constant borrowing from each other aside, Daoism isn't a monolith either. JTTW did not portray external alchemy——making elixirs of immortality with actual chemicals——in a favorable light, but it has no problem with internal alchemy.

Like, pay attention to the Daoists who were made buffons of (and usually turned out to be yaoguais in disguise). They got where they were by promising the kings of the local kingdom immortality elixirs.

The White Deer Demon is the most notable example, but the Three Immortals of Chechi Kingdom were also promising the king immortality elixirs, after they cemented their superiority through their rain-calling rituals.

Such cases are pretty remiscient of certain Daoism-obsessed Ming emperors, like Jiajing/Ming Shizong (the novel might have been written during his reign, but even if it wasn't, the author would be quite close to, and aware of what came before).

What I'm getting at here is, JTTW is perfectly capable of criticizing the sort of Daoism and Daoists it doesn't like, while also believing that internal alchemy is a valid and worthwhile framework, compatiable with the Buddhist pursuit of enlightenment.

Conversely, just because the novel poked fun at all three religions and made their deities very human, doesn't mean it is somehow a purely secular/atheist work.

It still believes in what it thought as the common "core" of the three religions: the inner cultivation process that underlies Daoist internal alchemy, Buddhist pursuit of enlightenment, as well as certain Neo-Confucian schools.

This coexistence and syncreticism, even if individuals or groups may lean more towards one school or teaching, is pretty hard for modern people to grasp.

I guess my best analogy is: if you visit a Buddhist temple in modern China, you can often see Guan Yu being venerated as a guardian deity in one of the side halls, as well as the occasional Wealth God.

The presence of those Daoist deities doesn't make it stop being a Buddhist temple, anymore than a Guanyin statue in a Daoist temple does.

JTTW is kinda like this temple. Technically, it is still a Buddhist one because it has a Buddha in the main hall, and is occupied by monks.

But it also has numerous Daoist deities in the side halls, and there's a souvenir store at the entrance selling Taisui-warding talismans and zodiac animal charms, like most popular temples.

It will be inaccurate to classify the whole thing as exclusively Buddhist, in the same way a Protestant church is exclusively Christian. However, the mix-and-match of deities and the souvenir shop don't make it a shopping mall (entirely secular) either.