Religion loss

From @edwardW2

Factors in loss

Evidently there has been a break in the transmission of the rituals. One of the main reasons as to why this break in transmission has occurred is probably

  • 1- a desire to moderinse things
  • 2- language

There was a prejudice against the popular religion as being superstitious. As such, parents may not wish to transmit the meanings of the various rituals to their children— or abandon them entirely. In turn the children may be disinclined to believe or listen to what are in effect old wives tales; which, do recall, their parents may have never properly.

Then there is the language barrier. As much as you may know, most of the good quality material on Chinese polytheism is written in Chinese. This is true also in Singapore. at the present day, almost all singaporeans speak English; a trend that has been going on for some decades. Even amongst those of Chinese descent, not all have a fluent command of Chinese; Thus If there were texts that preserved the meanings of these rituals, they would be written in a language that is nigh inaccessible to many; even if they had the ability to read such texts, they are only found at highly specialized bookseller —again, the chain of transmission is broken.

Public ritual

So much for the private practices of religion, but the public practice is subject to the same pressures. Even on the level of organised religion—eg large temples— interaction with the written texts of religion are mostly restricted to relatively few people —mostly the priests, or a small proportion of highly interested devotees. For the the vast amount of devotees, there is no need; they actually participate through action, rather than word—eg offering incense, lamp oil, money, etc—or privately praying to the gods for fortune; as such, the meaning of these actions must be transmitted; as mentioned above, the main links of transmission are broken; the rituals lose meaning all the same.

You may then ask about accessing the rituals directly– eg surely when the priest says something, you could catch it and hence the meaning of the ceremony? again, this is unlikely. Recall that these liturgies are typically written in classical Chinese, a language that is hardly comprehensible to people that are fluent in modern standard mandarin, to say nothing about those with a lower level of fluencey.

The fact that the priests-both daoist and buddhists- tend to mumble the liturgy does not help ; thus the ritual remains inaccessible.

Ancestor worship

Land

Then there is ancenstral worship. one factor that looms large in singapore is the fact that it is very short of land; as such, most people are cremated; and even those who are buried have to be exhumed after some decades. this obviously has the effect of removing almost any possibility of the practise of burial fengshui (i.e. siting a tomb in a good place to ensure the prosperity of its occupant’s descendants).

This also radically changes the structure of the famous qingming festival. Rather than being dedicated to the repair of tombs, it simply is dedicated to sending offerings to the dead, in the form of ritual paper. Now, on the qingming festival itself, the temples are positively packed with people.

I can speak from experience that it is fairly stressful– the queues are long one ; must find space to set out offerings before one’s ancestors (bear in mind the ancestors’ souls are enshrined in an “ancestral tablet”, which are kept on a massive shelf in a hall in the temple.

Cons

Now, you would want to go through all this trouble if you do have some kind of meaningful connection with your ancestors, but this connection is lost (and mind you, some of these tablets are quite old– you may never have met the deceased) you would see all this as a hassle.

Then, of course, there is the festival of burning paper for the: hó-hiaⁿ-tī 好兄弟 “Good Brethern” or wandering ghosts during the chinese 7th month. the main practise of doing so- burning joss paper in the open- is increasingly seen as an annoyance.

There are likewise attempts to make the 7th lunar month a more “filial piety” centric festival, as opposed to the tradtional focus of giving offeirngs to the wandering and lost dead (which results in burning the offerings on the street above).

Common worship procedure

Here’s my own family’s procedure for worshipping at the Waterloo Street. Guanyin temple (Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple)

    1. Buy incense/ get it from tray outside temple
    1. burn incense…
    1. Prayers
    • 3- pray to 天公, the god of heaven for thanks in foyer of temple
    • 3- pray to Guanyin; addressing one’s petitions (eg. recovery for illness, success in exams, &c or else thanks for having succeeded in these things)
  • 4- place incense in large censer, enter temple itself.
  • 5- address prayers again before the statue of guanyin
  • 6- give donation to temple (there are several large donation boxes to put money in)
  • 7- (optional) consult lot oracle
  • 8- leave temple

As you can see, this is a very extensive interaction with Guanyin, but one that does not involve any text at all. The only text that is involved is the optional lot-oracle stage, and that is probably not a text many Buddhologists would consider Buddhist at all. As such, one can be very much devoted to a deity– be “Daoist” or a “Buddhist”–, without actually having to interact with a religious text at all. Actions in this case entirely supplant words.

There is also largely no set time for praying. True, there are big festivals where thousands throng the temple, but the temple was open all days of the week; one could just casually drop in.

Christian advantage

  • More generally, i would say one reason why evangelical Christianity is so successful in Singapore, is because it steps into a vacuum: For a large portion of the population, the rituals of worshipping the Gods or Ancestors have but a tenuous meaning, if any at all. As such, Christianity- which does have a verywell-developed means of transmission, simply provides a more meaningful religious experience.

The future trend seems to be that religion would be some kind of ‘heritage’ thing, rather than a lived experience. Alternately, the folk religion may start to align itself with more mainstream daoism, (after all, both are referred to by the same label of ’taoism’ ) thereby making it shed most of these chthonic, folklore elements.