Between the Tibetan Plateau and Eastern China—Religious Tourism, Lay Practice and Ritual Economy during the Pandemic

Abstract

This article presents various institutional responses of Buddhist groups and leaders to COVID-19, adding a focus on how Tibetan Buddhist practitioners in China have responded to the pandemic. In particular, it examines the predicament of practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. The article focuses on the material characteristics of Tibetan Buddhism and how they were manifested among Han Chinese urbanites during the pandemic through (1) a teleological inquiry, which looks into the concept of merit (sk: puñña, ch: gongde) 功德, and (2) an organizational inquiry, which explores the modalities in which Han Chinese groups practice Tibetan Buddhism in the socio-political sphere of the Chinese state. Within this inquiry, the article deals with a Buddhist community based in Shanghai and an individual account of pilgrimage in Tibet. Based on these two case studies and their contextualization, the article aims to assess how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the practices, modalities and religious technologies of Tibetan Buddhism practiced by Han Chinese. The article argues for a degree of resilience of lay practice in Tibetan Buddhism; it stresses that while some aspects of the practice called for accommodations and change, the particularities of the practice have pre-existing conditions (such as state regulation on religion and the physical distance of their religious authority) which could accommodate the practical, sociological and psychological implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Introduction

In December 2019, the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China (hereafter P.R.C.). This outbreak was later officially named COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO) and was declared a global pandemic on 11 March 2020. This ongoing event affected human societies tremendously in terms of physical health and well-being. Aside from the obvious health risks and consequences, the effects of the virus’s spread in different societies worldwide were being explored from different approaches and disciplines at the time of writing. Religion, which was a significant source of meaning and living experiences in different societies, the pandemic affected was affected in various ways. Generally, the spread of the pandemic changed how religious institutions and individuals maintain their everyday practices and their spiritual and religious-based interactions and communications. Various journalistic accounts and academic research into this trajectory are beginning to surface. Reports and studies have been published regarding Buddhism in different societies, describing Buddhist responses to the pandemic, as articulated by individuals and institutions. These studies portray various calls and initiatives of meditation, charity, and ritual protection in the Chinese Buddhist context (Mungmunpuntipantip and Wiwanitkit 2021; Park and Kim 2021; Shmushko 2021; Ashiwa and Wank 2020).

Various Buddhist organizations around the world began engaging in actions during the pandemic. These actions varied, showing variation in sects, culture, and linguistic context. However, they shared some specific themes relating to deep historical precedents. Buddhist groups, monasteries, and temples from all Buddhist traditions, Theravada, Mahayana, or Vajrayana, allocated resources and efforts to support members of their communities and also endeavored to help beyond the local needs, beyond their immediate communities. For example, talismans, prayers and rituals appeared throughout Buddhist circles to deal with the disaster.

In this context, reactions from Tibetan institutions and religious leaders appeared as well. Tibetan teachers, particularly High Lamas, outside Tibet are often the heads of complex, modern and resourceful organizations that include traditional monasteries and schools, along with retreat and Dharma centers in both South Asia and Western countries (Alvarez Ortega 2021, p. 189), and therefore in a crisis such as this, millions of people across the globe were waiting and following their responses. The Dalai Lama, an influential figure for Tibetan Buddhists (Vajrayana), urged practitioners to chant mantras of the Bodhisattva Tara, a female goddess associated with compassion and well-being, encouraging her to bestow her protection to humanity (Salguero 2020). As well as such official declarations, several mainstream English-speaking media asked the Dalai Lama for his view and advice. In an article in Time Magazine, expressively entitled “Prayer is not Enough”, he declared possessing no “magical powers” that could alleviate the crisis, having to face, like all human beings, “the suffering and the truths of sickness, old age, and death”. He pointed to the pandemic as an example of the Buddhist understanding of the world in terms of interdependence. He appealed to a “universal responsibility” which, beyond prayer, required truly global efforts alongside doctors and science (Tenzin Gyatso 2020).

One can trace these actions and relate them to doctrinal and historical aspects of Buddhism. For the past millennia, many Buddhist teachers taught and targeted concrete responses for dealing with disasters and diseases. Buddhist sutras often engage explicitly with means to solve epidemics, which can be seen across the various Buddhist traditions. Buddhist institutions in pre-modern east Asia have greatly influenced society and culture and often played a role in the population’s public health and well-being (Salguero 2020).

In the People’s Republic of China (hereafter P.R.C.), Buddhist leaders, organizations and associations conducted major undertakings concerning the pandemic. The Buddhist Association of China (hereafter B.A.C.) released an official report covering the response to the pandemic in 2020. The report published in The Voice of Dharma (Fayin 法音) stated that the Buddhist community nationwide had implemented the view of Xi Jinping, which sees life as a paramount value above all. According to the voice of Dharma report, the Buddhist community followed his request to unite and work together to fight the virus along the lines dictated by president Xi. The report states that the results of the anti-pandemic work were very effective (The Voice of Dharma 2020, p. 33).

The report further elaborated on how this “anti-pandemic work” was conducted, summarizing data regarding the approach, action and prevention rhetoric used in the various provinces throughout the P.R.C. It covers how these local Buddhist bodies related to the requirement of Xi Jinping’s pandemic approach, what their prominent Buddhist leaders advised, and how Buddhist organizations took philanthropic and privational actions in each area.

In Shanghai, for example (where some of the community I include in this article is also based), the Buddhist Association of Shanghai (B.A.C. Shanghai) took prevention actions by, for example, limiting access to temples and canceling Buddhist events if necessary. Furthermore, the B.A.C. Shanghai strove to fulfill the call to “love the country, love the Buddhist teachings, two responsibilities” (aiguo aijiao, liangge Zeren 爱国爱教, 两个责任). Therefore, the B.A.C. provided care and assistance to small Buddhist places in difficulty and to 38 schools in the city.

Financial donations from the Buddhist community in Shanghai were also made; for example, the Jade Buddha Temple donated 2 million yuan to the Shanghai Charity Foundation. The Shanghai Buddhist Association donated through the Municipal Charity Foundation an extra 5 million yuan. Jing’an Temple donated 7.5 million yuan through the Shanghai Hundred Temples Charity Foundation (The Voice of Dharma 2020, p. 33). The Shanghai Buddhist community donated more than 30 million yuan in materials, including medical supplies worth 10 million yuan (The Voice of Dharma 2020, p. 33).

These reports from around the world show only a tiny fragment of Buddhism’s diversity of interactions and entanglement with the coronavirus pandemic. The responses varied on the extent to which an individual, a group or an organization needs to modify itself considering the events. Therefore, an essential question to explore is whether Buddhist agents (both leaders and practitioners) needed to re-invent themselves or search their existing repertoire of values and practices. This article aims to contribute to this inquiry by looking at practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism in the People’s Republic of China.

2. Research Methodology and Approach

This research is based on an analysis of field research conducted in the P.R.C. on lay Buddhist practitioners in 2017 and 2018 and continued digitally throughout 2020–2021. The fieldwork included mainly participant observation, interviews and casual conversations with my interlocuters of one community in Shanghai and an individual practitioner from Shenzhen. These two case studies do not represent the whole Tibetan Buddhist community. Still, they reflect some of the Buddhist communities’ concerns during the pandemic. The article also includes information from conversations with the community conducted through WeChat video calls. A significant source used is ongoing digital research on the group’s social media accounts (WeChat, Weibo) from 2017 until 2021.

The methodology applied in this research emphasizes the observance of the activity of communities and individuals with particular attention to materiality. It therefore relies on looking into aspects of material religion as an approach to the ethnographic study of religion. Taking “the material” as a relevant perspective in the humanities and social sciences began primarily in the 1980s when a more significant voice called for more consideration of the cultural dynamics surrounding material objects. The broad field of religious studies has also experienced this “material turn” (Pintchman 2016). Material religion is, therefore, a movement that tends to embodiment, visuality, and materiality, treating these as major categories for studying religion. This focus takes the world of objects seriously and lived experiences of religious players (Houtman and Meyer 2012, p. 4), and suggested framework for research on religion examines in detail the interaction of religion and material culture. This means looking into what the participants do and the material objects they use. When possible, the article will examine materiality and how the participants explain it according to their worldview.

3. The Pure Light Valley Retreat

In recent decades, lay Han Chinese Buddhists have yet to be satisfied with temple-based activities as sufficient for their Buddhist practice of cultivation. Moreover, temple-based practice often needs to be more flexible for urban daily life’s fast, versatile nature. We witness various activities, networks and associations in which laypersons participate, some related to temple spaces and some independent. One example of this is the appearance of Buddhist study groups taking place outside temples or monasteries in private spaces. These various modalities of lay Buddhism need to be more unified in their frameworks and are diverse in the amount of engagement they demand from Buddhist practitioners. This described reality leaves much room for creativity, flexibility and entrepreneurship (Ji and Zhang 2018; Shmushko 2022a, 2022b).

One of the alternative modalities harnessed by Chinese Buddhists today is reflected in the case study I will discuss throughout this article. “The Pure Light Valley Retreat” is one example of this phenomenon. The practitioners (a group of roughly fifty people) are all followers of a Tibetan master (a monastic) by the name they refer to as Wujin (born 1957). Though the community is based in Shanghai, their teacher is based in Serthar (Tib. Gser Rda; Ch. Seda 色达) county, Garzê (Tib. Kardzé; Ch. Ganzi 甘孜) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.1

“The Pure Light Valley Retreat” is, in fact, a community and a religious group, but this is also the name for a registered legal business that they operate alongside their religious practice. The community produces fire-burned tea ware, which they sell next to tea, and a line of their self-designed linen clothing. Their business operating spaces and practicing halls are located in several locations in Shanghai and are used in a hybrid fashion for worship, spiritual practice and business transactions. These commodities, including their packaging designs, are inspired by Buddhist philosophy and soteriology, particularly Tibetan Buddhist symbols (Shmushko 2021, 2022a). The business activities and the size of the community are gradually expanding. They began from one humble studio in the Jinshan neighborhood, Shanghai, in 2011. Since my last visit in 2018, they have bought several properties around the city and its outskirts.

4. Situating the Study: Tibetan Buddhism in Contemporary China

In the early twentieth century, many monasteries, research centers and Tibetan language schools were founded, and many Tibetan works were translated into Chinese. According to Bianchi, this was the beginning of a Tantric rebirth of Tibetan Buddhism in China (Bianchi 2004, p. 39). After the establishment of the P.R.C., the new regime endeavored to establish its sovereignty over central and western Tibet. The Communist state perceived Tibetan Buddhism as inseparable from the oppressive feudal society they aimed to destroy. Measures taken against the Tibetan religion and leadership led to armed confrontations between Tibetans and P.L.A. (People’s Liberation Army) troops. The Dalai Lama, his entourage, and other Tibetan elites fled to Dharamshala, India, establishing a government-in-exile in 1959. Through these developments, the Tibetan people became citizens of the P.R.C. state, and cultural economic, and religious exchanges between them and other ethnic groups were formed over the rest of the 20th century.

Roughly from the beginning of the 2000s, a growing number of the Han Chinese people have expressed an interest in Tibetan Buddhism. Many Chinese people seek Tibetan masters to receive spiritual guidance and practice advice. Many travel to the Tibetan plateau, visiting Buddhist institutions or communities of monastics. This phenomenon has become one of the forms for Chinese practitioners to engage in Tibetan Buddhism. Han Chinese participate in Buddhist festivals and spiritual initiations and donate (Esposito 2008; Bianchi 2014, 2018). Mao Zedong’s Communist regime, which strove to eradicate religion from society, had immensely damaged Buddhist institutions, lineages, and traditions (Goossaert and Palmer 2012, p. 162). Interestingly, Han Chinese today turn to esoteric practices because they see Tibetan Buddhism as an authentic and unbroken tradition, not affected by the destruction of the cultural revolution. Tibetan Buddhism is widely conceived of as a branch of Buddhism that suffered shorter and less severe disruptions to tradition in the 20th century from Maoism and the P.R.C.’s political campaigns (Jones 2011).

The Chinese economic reforms, or “reform and opening” (Gaige kaifang 改革开放) programs, expedited the revival of Tibetan Buddhism (Zang chuan Fojiao fuxing 藏传佛教复兴) among Han Chinese. In Tibetan-influenced areas of Qinghai and Sichuan provinces (Western provinces of the P.R.C.), practicing Buddhism had become more prevalent by the 1990s (Terrone 2012, p. 107). Buddhist monasteries in Tibetan areas have renewed their activity in monastic enrolment and in the availability of lay public worship, the offering of religious teachings, and the holding of public ceremonies.

In tandem with these events, the Chinese regime has taken a harsh stance against the footprint of Buddhism on social life in Tibetan areas (especially among monastics). The regime acted and continues to do so to suppress Buddhism’s social and political strength (Cabezón 2008; Powers 2016). However, the actions taken by the Chinese state apparatus in Tibet delayed this revival and disrupted it but did not stop it. In the 21 century, Tibetan Buddhism reclaimed its status standing in the center of Tibet’s cultural identity in Tibetan areas of the P.R.C. Moreover, Tibetan Buddhist traditions have become well-known globally, attracting practitioners worldwide (Shen 2020, pp. 86–87). In the P.R.C, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the religion also began to attract the attention of the Han Chinese (Chen 2008; Sodargye and Smyer Yü 2017). In this article, I will focus on one set of players within this revitalization, namely, lay Han devotees (jushifojiao 居士佛教).

I hold that there are two primary components in revitalizing Tibetan Buddhism among the P.R.C.’s Han Chinese population which are potentially volatile during a pandemic. The first is the undefined framework in which Han Chinese gather for worship and practice of their religious tradition, and the second is the geographic distance between devotees and their masters who reside in the deep inland areas of the Tibetan plateau. With regard to these components, the first section of this article will discuss a Buddhist community of practitioners based in Shanghai and how their modality of practice resonates with aspects of the pandemic. The second section discusses some of the elements of Tibetan Buddhism concerning economic issues, and the third part of the article will discuss the aspect of pilgrimage among practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. This part will relate to records of travel restrictions, lockdowns, and the pre-pandemic communication used by lay devotees to uphold relationships and practices related to their religion.

Overall, the article examines how these two components—undefined but a community-based framework and a geographical distance from the religious authority—had been central in the religious lives of the practitioners during the COVID-19 crisis. Focusing on this precarious period, the article reflects a broader picture of the social, political and historical trajectory of Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese in the P.R.C. The multiple aspects of instability of this period can thus shed light on some of the issues concerning the pandemic.

5. Practice and Community during the Pandemic

Several influential factors influence the trajectory of these grassroots lay Buddhist communities appearing in the P.R.C.’s religious sphere. To begin with, only a few Tibetan Buddhist temples offer teachings for lay people around Shanghai and other eastern cities in the P.R.C. Therefore, many Han devotees of Tibetan traditions practice primarily in their homes. This case study shows that the business halls serve as further practice halls for individuals to gather for collaborative practice. However, the connection with their lineage is articulated by trips to Tibetan communities to visit their teacher. They organize a yearly pilgrimage trip to visit their master and the monastery Larung gar compound in Sêrtar, often around Buddhist festivities in Larung gar. However, throughout the year, the practitioners practice in the private spaces described above and in their private homes.

Another influential factor leading to the individual nature of such groups is the difficulties the Chinese regime creates for religious and spiritual practices, especially ones configured independently. For example, a regulation restricts religious activity to officially registered religious sites. Aside from these policies, the Chinese state is sensitive to Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan teachers are not outsiders to China, as Tibet is a part of the P.R.C., yet the state is concerned about Tibetan teachers’ attempts to accumulate disciples and devotees among Han Chinese (Jones 2011). This is related to another element of the restrictive policies, namely a prohibition on religious personnel from outside of the P.R.C. proselytizing or teaching (Leung 2018; Dubois 2017). Tibetan masters are not technically coming from outside of the country and yet are often treated with heavy suspicions when it comes to their relationship with lay people. These restrictions on religion in the P.R.C. create a situation where religious groups have begun to deliberately avoid political control by presenting their religious activities in alternative forms.

For “The Pure Light Valley Retreat”, these factors have affected how this community has dealt with the pandemic. One critical issue was the community members’ ability to continue communal Buddhist practices and activities. At the beginning of the pandemic, the city lockdown meant the closing of temples to the public (Ashiwa and Wank 2020). This is aligned with a more global approach to public gatherings.

Generally, gatherings are one of the most common activities in the group worship of most religions. This led to religion being one of the catalysts for the spread of COVID-19. Initially, adherents of religions in many countries were distressed and worried that states with tightened social control policies would interfere with the broadly accepted principle of freedom of religion. Throughout the world, various cases were reported of individuals and houses of prayer which violated state regulations during the pandemic, increasing the risk of virus transmission. In many of these reports, mass contractions have occurred among people breaking regulations (DeFranza et al. 2020). One example was the mass gatherings of the Shincheonji Church in South Korea which caused the mass outbreak of COVID-19 among the church members (Quadri 2020). In the Netherlands, statistical data showed that religious events and gatherings were an immediate or collateral cause for mass infections (Vermeer and Kregting 2020).

Yet, it is important to consider counterexamples that show that religious institutions expressed strict discipline and compliance with policies and regulations. One example from Tibetan Buddhist communities is the study of Heng Li and Yu Cao, who explored how religious belief influenced and informed Tibetan Buddhist monks in their compliance with COVID-19 precautionary measures. Generally, they concluded that the Gelug and Nyingma schools of Tibetan Buddhism differ in various aspects. However, one of the striking things that the research finding showed is that strict adherence to monastic discipline and scholarship in the Gelug tradition most likely translated into a high emphasis on compliance with health guidelines in the context of COVID-19 (Li and Cao 2022).

Moreover, the impact of some the policy measures taken by countries, such as lockdowns and social distancing, were adopted by many religious and spiritual organizations (Ebrahim and Memish 2020), which made them change their operations, activities and structure significantly, influencing the way that individuals practiced their beliefs (Baker et al. 2020). Generally, human beings’ reactions and attitudes toward social crises are often shaped by their religious beliefs (Sinding Bentzen 2019). Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, religion was what many people turned to for psychological or spiritual solace (Molteni et al. 2021; Boguszewski et al. 2020). This case study does not show otherwise; my informants expressed a unanimous will to continue their meditation meetings and scripture readings and sought connections and explanations for the pandemic from their belief system and master. Despite these wishes, adjustments were made in their everyday practice as well. The community is based in Shanghai, which meant that the dense urban environment and the regulations forced them to follow various gathering and travel restrictions. In fact, for the first few months of the pandemic, they had to cancel their worship and study sessions (gongxiu 共修), for these entail crowded gatherings of several tens of people in a relatively small practice hall.

The pre-COVID-19 social-political status these lay Buddhist communities held manifests an inherent resilience. For example, their form of Buddhist self-cultivation is rigorous and is compiled from much more than occasional visits to the temple. Therefore, community meetings are important, but they are only one element of a wider repertoire of practices.2

The informants I interviewed during the lockdown via WeChat calls described that many of their daily practice modes have remained active. This aligns with something one of the devotees told me in an interview back in 2018, “cultivation is done in solitude” (xiuxing shi gudu de 修行是孤独的). This further supports my impressions during my WeChat conversations with some of my interlocutors in the first Covid wave, namely; that while the group provides support, the core of the process of Buddhist practice is individual. All nine conversations I conducted in that period conveyed that the daily routine of practice described above had not changed significantly. Ms. Ru explained that she had time to do more daily prostrations and meditation because she invested less time in social meetings with family or friends. Her neighborhood did not go into lockdown, but social control was strict, and people stayed home. That allowed her more time than she would usually spend with her girlfriends outside in the park. Therefore, I suggest that the repertoire of lay devotees who participate in independent communities entails a higher level of agency and responsibility for one’s practice. This is opposed to, for example, Buddhist practitioners of Chinese Buddhist traditions, who depend on the temple to complete their “normal” repertoire of practices due to the availability of temples in their living environment.

Another essential practice for cultivation in the repertoire of the community is the devotional retreat (biguan 闭关), which changes in frequency from practitioner to practitioner. Some only do one or two a year which the community helps to facilitate (usually on national holidays), and some take six to eight a year, of which some are self-organized. Each retreat can last from three to ten days of intense practice. During a retreat, the practitioners isolate themselves in a room to read sutras, do prostrations, and practice meditation, in an isolated setting. The retreat aims to develop the mind, eliminate habits and behavioral patterns, and cultivate compassion. Interestingly, while many people worldwide complain of isolation and loneliness throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns or quarantine periods, those are the ultimate conditions for this practice, pervasive among Nyingma Buddhist practitioners in Han society.

Furthermore, a pertinent element in the lay groups I have studied is the centrality of the lay leaders. The “lay leaders” are a small core group of four who connect the master and the rest of the group members. They are the community’s senior members and hold various teaching, guiding and administrative roles. These lay leaders hold an important and central place in the community structure, which serves as a religious authority in Shanghai. In contrast, the utmost religious authority—the master who is, as mentioned in the introduction—is physically distant. This dynamic is yet another pre-existing element that has yet to significantly alter due to the pandemic. The lay leaders, too, can be seen as a component of resilience, connecting both spiritually and practically between Shanghai and Tibet.

6. COVID-19-Related Ritual Economy

Another aspect that attracted my attention is the economic reaction of the community to the COVID-19 crisis, which I will contextualize in the following few paragraphs, reviewing the material-economic attributes of Tibetan Buddhism. The community members sought the advice of their Tibetan teacher, master Wujin and hoped that he would explain the cause of the pandemic’s outbreak. He, in return, had communicated the following message: “The virus is a disaster which was most likely triggered by the greed of human beings …”. He further explained that “the five poisons (wudu 五毒) are in action” as another explanation for the virus spread. He advised that prayers were necessary to balance their overwhelming power. He further instructed them to chant the dhāraṇī of compassion (dabeizhou 大悲咒) and pray for peace in the world. These kinds of soteriological explanations are responses that had spread throughout various communication channels in the Buddhist world. Several Tibetan Buddhist leaders worldwide communicated that the pandemic requires much prayer, handling each other with generosity and meditation (Salguero 2020).

Another response to the COVID-19 pandemic related to this community was connected to their entrepreneurial nature. When the severe need for face masks became apparent, various Buddhist organizations used their private resources to buy and manufacture masks for populations in shortage. An example from the Chinese Buddhist world is the Tzu Chi Foundation (Ciji jijin hui 慈濟基金會)—a Taiwan-based Buddhist Compassion Relief, which donated significant amounts of masks to various clinical organizations globally (Whitaker 2020). In early March 2020, the members began to produce handmade face masks, using organic textiles and selling them online along with other products by their brand.

Alongside these donations, many individuals and businesses worldwide identified a lucrative opportunity. This decision of the community to produce face masks and sell them should be contextualized in their general entrepreneurial nature. Nevertheless, one can suggest a contradiction within their overall approach to the pandemic. On the one hand, the pandemic is explained in terms of human greed (tanyu 贪欲); on the other hand, the community seized a business opportunity in a middle of a global health crisis. It should be noted here that a basic Buddhist principle explains greed as an attachment (qu 取) to material things and an obstacle to the clarity of mind needed to achieve enlightenment. Therefore, Buddhism strives to generally subscribe to a renouncement of the material world. Therefore, at first glance, the community’s face-mask activity and the profits deriving from it (in times of shortage) seem to not reconcile with the general attitude of most Buddhist institutions to the spread of the pandemic and the general subscription to renunciation.

However, Tibetan Buddhism, especially in the context of the P.R.C., shows a very vivid and dynamic flux between spiritual belief and materiality. Tibetan Buddhism is often perceived exclusively as a sublime spiritual discipline, associated with a wholesome philosophy and intense meditation techniques which generate insight and compassion. This perception is tainted with an exoticization of Tibet and its religious traditions, which has been a significant factor in the religion’s appeal to both Westerners and Chinese (Smyer Yü 2012). However, this depiction is also rooted in an image shaped by the actors from the religion itself over centuries. While in fact, this image does not encompass all aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, its workings, and mechanisms within society. For Tibetans, the objectives of religious life are often much more grounded and concrete than the perceived image. Tibetan Buddhists, especially lay followers, undertake meritorious rites and avoid deeds that produce bad karma to be protected and rewarded in this life, not necessarily to accomplish spiritual enlightenment (Kapstein 2009). These materials, concrete objectives for Tibetans, achieved through engagement in esoteric practices, have also begun to be the center of engagement with the religion when it comes to Chinese adherents. Moreover, esoteric practices, which constitute a significant part of Nyingma Buddhism, do not only offer spiritual protection and strength but are designed to bring about direct material prosperity to those engaged with them, or to their loved ones.

For my interlocutors, similar to many Han Chinese devotees, Tibetan Buddhism has particular spiritual efficiency and power, referred to as ling (灵), which can be used to achieve material blessing or spiritual progress. Therefore, the ritual services (teachings, initiations and ritual practices) provided by Tibetan specialists are often remunerated by lay people, which creates a system of economic relations between lay and monastics (Sihlé 2015, p. 376). Thus, money and other material gifts are pervasive in their presence within Tibetan Buddhist circles (Smyer Yü 2012, p. 111).

An intrinsic concept that dominates the economic exchange networks of Tibetan Buddhism among Han Chinese and beyond is the concept of merit (gongde 功德). Apart from its central role in Buddhist ethics, merit or merit-making, has been argued to be the defining social mechanism of Buddhism in Chinese societies (Walsh 2007, p. 373). The historically contextualized understanding of merit can be seen as a cosmic relationship between the giver and the receiver. The giver can build upon the resources they have (for instance: land, money, leisure) and stake them towards what he needs (for instance: good luck or protection or salvation). This dynamic of giving and receiving is then part of a larger exchange network, which accounts for the material fabric of society (Walsh 2007, p. 374).

For modern lay practitioners, material exchanges are often considered an accumulation of merit. In one of my visits to the tea shop of “The Pure Light Valley Retreat” in 2018, I witnessed Ms. Lin, who manages the shop, shouting excitedly every few minutes when her smartphone notified her about an online purchase that was made through the online product shop. I asked her about her view of money and materiality, and she explained: “Money is a blissful, wonderful thing. Getting material things is fine as long as you can see through them”.

Understanding that this contemporary trajectory upholds the tradition’s fundamental principles is detrimental. As described above, in the Nyingma Buddhist worldview, spirituality and materiality are intertwined, and wealth is connected to leisure and the ability for one’s Buddhist cultivation. Attending to the notion of karma, it is vital to note that in most schools of Mahāyāna, there is no absolute distinction between wholesome activities and those that are not. In the same way, good and bad are also terms depending on a specific religious context (Sørensen 2011, p. 206). Therefore, from an emic perspective, gaining material wealth for their community through selling face masks is neither bad nor good.

To conclude this section, the trajectory of Nyingma Buddhism in contemporary P.R.C. is generating creative ways for lay Buddhists to maintain their practice under challenging conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Selling commodities, including face masks, can be seen as means to uphold their cultivation practice, therefore contributing to an existing ritual economy and a living relationship between material objects and merit. According to Mayfair Yang, a ritual economy is financial resources spent on ritual or ethical and social bonds, which do not necessarily lead to profit on the part of the receiver (2020).

Within a ritual economy framework, material exchanges are used, utilizing resources from the material economy. However, these are based on the ethos of generosity and on a spirit of “letting go” of one’s material wealth. (Yang 2020, p. 282). In this framework, one can see that the resources earned from the community’s economic activities are directed towards their devotional activities, in the forms of keeping their centers (rent, bills and other expenses), as well as gifting their teacher and other donations to the monastic community. For the structure of “The Pure Light Valley Retreat”, material exchanges play a prominent role, but the community is not exclusively oriented towards making a profit from these activities. Therefore, I suggest that the soteriological account for their economic activity is an aim for the cultivation and liberation of the members and all sentient beings.

This ritual economy dynamics during the pandemic has also been reported in Tibetan areas and communities. Tibetan physicians were prescribing, promoting, and selling Tibetan medicine to the local communities and, at a certain point, as a licensed formula to hospitals in the East of the P.R.C. A prominent example is the Black 9 Pill (Wylie .mani rilbu ch.ganlu 甘露), which was presented as a cure for COVID-19. The pills are called mani rilbu because they are blessed with mantra recitations or mani. Before the pandemic, Tibetan families often collected them at the temple during religious gatherings and distributed them to friends and relatives. The sale of this traditional medicine as a relief drug for COVID-19 also received criticism in the field. For example, Dr. Thubten Phuntsok (physician of Tibetan medicine and professor emeritus of Tibetan Studies at the Southwest Minzu University in Chengdu) strongly objected and posted various warnings on what he referred to as “questionable medicines for inflated prices”. According to William A. McGrath, Black-9 Pill (Wylie: nag po dgu sbyor. a similar pill also prescribed throughout the pandemic) has a long history in Tibet, and fifteenth-century accounts highlight its efficacy in times of contagious disease. Nevertheless, Dr. Thubten Phuntsok stressed that Tibetan Buddhism has no cure for COVID-19 (McGrath 2020).

However, while Dr. Thubten Phunssok expressed rejection against Tibetan medicine in the context of Covid 19 treatment, many Tibetan doctors, as well as Chinese officials throughout the country, were promoting, distributing and selling Tibetan medicine throughout the country as a medicine for mild cases of covid and in a different formula as a prevention drug (Tidwell 2020).3

My familiarity with these pills goes back to my fieldwork in Shanghai in 2018; the Pure Light Valley Retreat members received mail from their teacher to use in their devotional retreats. They explained that the pills were blessed and could help gain strength during intensive chanting and meditation schedules, done in isolation as part of their retreat. Furthermore, the pills are sold in western countries online on websites often under the name “Dalai Lama mani rilbu”. However, very similar pills were circulated for ritual and health purposes and sold as associated with the Boddhisatva Guanyin (guanyin ganluwan 观音甘露丸), a Boddhisatva which is not strictly associated only with Tibetan Buddhism, but also with Chinese schools of Buddhism. This explains that the Chinese state generally treats these pills as traditional Chinese medicines and has authorized the Tibetan formulas to be sold and donated to various hospitals across the country, including Wuhan (Tidwell 2020).

I suggest that accounting for these examples of ritual economy, an emic approach should be considered; selling facemasks and avoiding greed should not be contradictory but congruent. As a material object, face masks are transformed into Buddhist merit, which stands as an element within this Buddhist ritual economy. This response of the community to the pandemic, which is similar to how Tibetan traditional doctors and experts conducted themselves, exemplifies the relationship between material culture and religious values, which is continuously re-negotiated in the contemporary practice of Buddhism.

7. The New Normal or the Old Normal Accelerated

At the time of writing, societies, organizations and communities worldwide were turning to digital modalities for various activities. Some were deploying these technologies for the first time to replace face-to-face communication and activities, while others were expanding the capacity of their existing online platforms. This was also happening in religious institutions and communities conducting digital services, rituals and congregations (Chow and Kurlberg 2020; Xiong and Li 2021, p. 6). In some cases, this phenomenon points to a significant change in religious interactions and participation. For example, Vekemans’s research on Jain communities shows that in the United Kingdom, websites have provided online ritual spaces and resources for religious practices since the early 2000s, but these were not yet available. With the COVID-19 crisis, this fact has changed, and during the pandemic, there was a gradual increase in such websites (Vekemans 2021, p. 3). The social narrative discusses how social practices, work meetings and gatherings were pushed or relocated to cyberspace is overwhelming in magnitude. The discussion is driven by various sentiments such as nostalgia, monetary calculations of efficiency, religion, and teleological and ethical considerations. Nevertheless, we should not neglect societal and political changes in religious practices pre-existed in the COVID-19 era. Through this case study, I stress that social media and online platforms have been a large part of many believers’ lives and practices before 2020.

Overall, the availability and pervasiveness of social media in society have transformed and reconfigured existing religious beliefs, the way these are practiced, and the structures they are based upon. Digital religion has presented flexibility and fluidity in religious practice within the cultural sphere, which are the product of the same qualities that the internet possesses (Campbell 2013). In China, we witness state-of-the-art technology and media devices that organizations and personnel use. This represents a growing phenomenon in the religious landscape of the PRC (Xu and Ji 2020, pp. 105–6). According to Tarocco, Cyber Buddhism is on the rise. She speaks of a trans-local and transnational phenomenon in which “members of smaller China-based communities are as active as those of Taiwan-based Buddhist denominations” (Tarocco 2017, p. 158). One example of this is the WeChat application; we witness many temples, monasteries, and Buddhist masters administering websites and blogs using Weibo and religious teachers and groups which use WeChat for content-sharing and communication. The use of these platforms is still relatively new. Nevertheless, according to Zhang, “Chinese social media’s digital landscape from a religious perspective had been scarcely studied, particularly in China, which claims its prevailing ideology is atheist” (Zhang 2017, p. 45).

When it comes to lay Han devotees from eastern cities of the PRC, religious relationships are often maintained through different cyber modalities of communication due to the distance between them and their Tibetan teachers in TAR or in Tibetan areas of Sichuan and Qinghai provinces. Tibetan Buddhist teachers gather considerable numbers of disciples (at times hundreds under one teacher), often using modern technology (Terrone 2012, p. 107). Weibo is, for instance, a popular way for masters to offer their availability to potential followers with, for example, an official Weibo profile. However, in the communities I have been studying, the direct line of communication is usually saved for the “lay leaders”, who communicate the messages from the master to the larger group of practitioners, serving as mediators. Masters send texts, advice, initiations of chants, and personal practice curriculum to their followers. In some cases, even refuge-taking can be carried out through social media with a mediator already a group member.

Throughout the pandemic, “The Pure Light Valley Retreat” has maintained its connection with the teacher, who even addressed the concrete problems that concerned the pandemic’s devotees (as shown above). Thus, how the Han devotees interacted with their teachers only required a little adaptation to the current conditions of social distancing. Throughout the pandemic, the community members received guidance on their practice through WeChat and recorded lectures.

Social media platforms are also used by community members for communal support in individual practices. The community uses different WeChat groups for designated purposes other than essential communication regarding gatherings and business organization matters. For example, they hold a designated WeChat group in which every practitioner writes his daily number of sutra recitations and a daily number of morning prostrations. This practice is one that indeed existed before the pandemic and is oriented towards maintaining a mediated sense of community, and to supporting and encouraging the practitioners’ Buddhist cultivation, even when they are not physically together in the practice hall. Nevertheless, from interviews conducted during the lockdown period, some informants expressed that while this WeChat group was not invented for COVID-19 lockdowns, they felt it was highly beneficial throughout the months when they could not meet each other in the practice hall. Overall, these accounts show a nuanced picture of the influence COVID-19 has on the use of digital modalities. While there had been extended use of technological modalities in community practice, most of these elements were already applied in use before the pandemic broke out.

8. Tibet Religious Tourism

As mentioned above, the repertoire of Han Chinese practicing Tibetan Buddhism is comprised not only of their grassroots facilities for community practice or home practice but also of a physical and spiritual connection to Tibetan masters and their monasteries and living areas in the West of the P.R.C. This connection is expressed (as described above) through technological communication described in the last section and pilgrimage trips. In the Chinese context, pilgrimage involves journeys to sanctuaries that human beings have conceived as natural, untouched auspicious, and revered environments (Bruntz and Schedneck 2020). The pilgrimage was not a central cultural factor or a religious duty emphasized in important Buddhist texts when Buddhism was initially introduced in China. Nevertheless, pilgrimage gradually became a shared, popular religious practice. The place of pilgrimage in Buddhist practice in China has developed and changed over time and slowly became central as an act taken up by people from various sections of society (Naquin and Yu 1992, p. 10).

However, within this pilgrimage trajectory central to Chinese religious imagination, mountains are central because they embody sacredness. A pilgrim is referred to as xiangke (香客) in the Chinese language. This can be literally translated as “one who offers incense”, and therefore, going on pilgrimage translates as (chaoshan jinxiang 朝山进香), literally meaning “offering incense to a mountain”. So, in Chinese, going on a pilgrimage brings about notions that one sets off on a journey to pay respect through a ritualistic offering. In China, sacred sites are places where the power of a deity is manifest; “places that inhabit a particular kind of spiritual efficacy” (ling 灵). The classic form of pilgrimage involves a journey to a temple on a mountain tops, with stops along the way at other spots which are also perceived as “ling” (Naquin and Yu 1992, p. 11). Therefore, China is abundant with Bodhisattva abodes, which have become a central part of a geographical map of Buddhism in the country. In the center of this Buddhist cosmology, deeply rooted in Chinese geography, are the four great Buddhist mountains (sida fojiao mingshan 四大佛教名山). These are well-known mountainous scenic spots that are all associated with several Bodhisattvas. Devotees travel to these spots, often from afar, to make offerings such as lighting incense which serves as acts of spiritual technology, connecting them to the enlightened being associated with the place. In other words, by physically traversing a specific Boddhisatva’s mountain top, the pilgrim receives various benefits, both in this world and transcendentally. These vital Buddhist geographical locations are, therefore, known among Chinese Buddhists for their unique spiritual efficacy (ling 灵). This unique character of the mountains can empower pilgrims and supply them with various benefits.

This development in the Chinese concept of pilgrimage is also influencing the way Han Chinese practice Tibetan Buddhism. Tibet’s blue lakes, unique mountain landscape, and enchanting wild grasslands are a world-known tourist attraction. However, the landscape is not the only attractive factor of Tibet, and a substantial factor is its religious and spiritual traditions. Aside from that, more and more scholars look at non-Tibetans’ perceptions of Tibet. This has crafted an image of the region which scholars refer to as “an imagined Tibet: a projection of a collective fantasy that is not Tibet itself” (Smyer Yü 2015, p. 3). Nevertheless, Tibet, being the symbolic third pole, is home to a unique civilization that has proved itself a “power culture” (Smyer Yü 2015, p. 9) belonging to a “power place” which people are drawn to because they respond to notions of spiritual experiences (Ivakhiv 2001, p. 228).

Recently, Chinese citizens have been permitted and even encouraged to visit Tibet. This is part of the P.R.C. push to elevate the region’s tourism economy and encourage resettlement (Shao 2017). In recent decades, a section of religious tourism had begun to arise alongside curious Chinese and foreign crowds visiting the highlands of Tibet for sightseeing and hiking, motivated either by leisure or cultural curiosity. This section is connected to the growing interest of Han Chinese people in Tibetan sects of Buddhism discussed in the introduction of this article. Han Chinese conduct pilgrimage trips, adding to the existing religious phenomenon of Tibetan people’s ritual journeys (Huber 1999, p. 13). Patronage by Chinese courts and governments of Tibetan Buddhism stretches back several hundred years in the region’s history. Nevertheless, the increasing phenomenon of private Chinese individuals who donate and give gifts to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and individual monks is relatively new (Caple 2015, p. 462).

A recent qualitative and interpretive study aimed at examining the impact of prior pilgrimage participation (to Tibet) upon individuals and their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among further findings, the researchers have argued for the beneficial effects of pilgrimage on mental well-being, including “resilience building”, which was enacted by the former pilgrims through enhanced religious and spiritual coping and promotion of integration (Benoit et al. 2021).

However, pilgrimage to the phenomenon of pilgrimage to Tibet witnessed a strong decline in the years of the pandemic. Tibet is the P.R.C.’s “cash crop” in the tourism sector, and its popularity as a destination is growing steadily. By the end of 2010, the total number of tourists to Tibet reached six million, a twenty-two percent increase from the previous year. Tourist revenue was seven billion Yuan (Xinhua News 2010). At the end of 2011, the total number of tourists visiting Tibet was 8.6 million (People’s Daily 2012), more than the entire Tibetan population. These developments were celebrated in the P.R.C.; The People’s Daily called Tibet’s tourism growth wave “a colossal business opportunity” (Smyer Yü 2015, p. 10). According to data from the regional government, Tibet received over 40 million visits in 2019 (Li 2020). While a section of the tourists to Tibet is overseas, a significant part is Chinese. Communities such as “The Pure Light Valley Retreat” are a part of this trend. As discussed earlier in this article, the community usually ventures on a spring pilgrimage (chaoshengzhe 朝圣者) via the mountainous area of Serthar to visit their master. This time, the trip, which was to take place in the spring of 2020, was postponed because of the uncertainty that it was possible to enter to the region.

Alongside strongly devoted practitioners such as “The Pure Light Valley Retreat”, there are many levels of Buddhist devotion to Tibetan traditions. Scholars often posit a broad distinction between lay practitioners/students, who are serious about Buddhist learning and practice, and a different, larger section of ‘spiritual materialists’ who are motivated to achieve the power of Tibetan Buddhist ritual in order to secure financial success and otherworldly benefits (Smyer Yü 2012). The substantial amounts of Chinese ‘spiritual materialist’ activities are seen in pilgrimage practices and other visits to the Tibetan areas to receive ritual practices and support the monastic communities. Hence, religious tourism in Tibet also accounts for pilgrimage ventures undertaken by the second type of Chinese Buddhist devotees. Tibetan monasteries are almost non-existent in eastern Chinese cities. Therefore, engaging in rituals and merit-making activities demands (although not exclusively) to travel to monasteries, temples and mountains in the Tibetan plateau. As in the context of Tibetan society, lamas/monks, acting as carriers of merit perform divinations for Chinese patrons (these determine which practices they should engage in for a particular problem/issue, such as health concerns or business) as well as rituals. Much wealth and goods are given to lamas/monks as part of a ritual service provider-customer relationship. At times, lay patrons will give monetary donations for projects or monasteries associated with such lamas/monks (Caple 2015, pp. 464–5).

One destination of Chinese spiritual seekers is the city of Lhasain, Tibet, including the Potala Palace and the monasteries around and within Lhasa. When the travel restrictions were lifted on the city for Chinese citizens, I checked with my informants to see if they were scheduling travels to Tibet. This led to my accounts regarding Ms. Feng’s trip to Lhasa in March 2021. I interviewed Ms. Feng throughout her visit to Tibet and after it. Ms. Feng (29) is a lay Buddhist from Shenzhen, but I got to know her initially through my fieldwork on the “Pure Light Valley Retreat”. Congenital in Shanghai, and she is a good friend of one of the lay leaders of “The Pure Light Valley Retreat”. Ms. Feng practices Tibetan Buddhism herself, but not in a group-based structure. Opining regarding Ms. Lin (one of the community’s lay leaders mentioned earlier), she says: “Ms. Lin is very dedicated to the Buddhist cultivation. She has so much knowledge. I could not do what they do. They live in practice”. Ms. Feng follows the teachings of two masters. One is living in Sikkim, where she receives guidance for her everyday practice through Wechat, a practice she considers a “light” and “not devoted” practice.

Furthermore, she relates herself to another teacher who passed away, but she maintains contact with his caretaker monk. Her master in Sikkim is the one that “usually gives me details instructions on what to chant and how many recitations when I go on retreat”, says Ms. Feng. “But I didn’t receive any specific guidance from him to come here”. When she went to Lhasa, there was no longer a restriction for traveling there, but in our conversations, she expressed other difficulties. Ms. Feng suffers from a born heart condition, which makes travel to high places very difficult. When she arrived at Lhasa, she was immediately hospitalized, a situation that she is used to, as her visits to Lhasa are quite regular. She rented a driver for the trip who took her from one site to another and served as her translator from Tibetan.

Being accustomed to both the conditions in Lhasa and her health limitations, I asked her why she risked her physical health to make the trip. Ms. Feng conveyed several reasons. Firstly, her father went through severe health problems recently, so it was vital for her to come to Lhasa and pray for him. She believes he will receive merits from her prayer, which will assist him. Accumulating merit in this world and securing benefits for themselves and their loved ones is a common motivation for lay pilgrims in Chinese Buddhism (Naquin and Yu 1992, pp. 12, 16). This motivation is distinct from the general motivation of pilgrimage in Chinese Buddhism. It is more connected to the specific trajectory of Tibetan Buddhists’ pilgrimage and its distinct ritual economy mentioned above. Another reason for Ms. Feng’s trip to Lhasa was to pay tribute to the monks there, who are, according to her, “also suffering from the situation a lot”. She said that “at regular times, the monks receive enough donations, but in corona, it is tough for them”. Ms. Feng was likely to be right, pointing at the economic shifts in the monastic communities during that period. Of the many effects the COVID-19 crisis holds, a major one is the effect on tourism. According to the Financial Associated Press (Chengdu reporter Xiong Jianan and intern Zhou Xinyu), The P.R.C.’s tourism industry was hit hard by the epidemic in 2020, and Tibetan tourism suffered a sharp drop (Zhengquan zhixing 2021).

Aside from these financial losses caused to Tibetan Buddhist communities, Tibetan Buddhists leaders, monasteries and institutions took the initiative to assist during the pandemic. Preliminary statistics, as of February 2020, Tibet and Gansu, Qinghai, four Tibetan Buddhist circles in Sichuan, Yunnan, and four other provinces accumulatively donated money and materials to the epidemic area valued at more than 50 million yuan. Monks and believers in monasteries raised donations and supplies for the affected areas. For example, the Panchen Lama, Erdeni Chokyi Jeb, paid tribute to Hubei Province in his name (The Voice of Dharma 2020, p. 37).

At the time of submitting the revision of this article, we had already witnessed over three years in which many large religious gatherings, rituals, and assembling that require traveling had been canceled or restricted or shifted to an online format. For extended periods in the past three years, Chinese citizens’ travel between regions was restricted and required quarantine after crossing regional borders. Foreign followers of Tibetan Buddhism, or tourists in general, could not enter the P.R.C. and, therefore, could not visit Tibet.

In my conversation with Ms. Feng, I was curious about her impressions regarding traveling once restrictions were lifted. As a regular visitor to Lhasa, she had experienced the trip before the COVID-19 outbreak. “It was relatively quiet. In regular times, many more Chinese devotees will come but also foreign travelers. So that made me feel very blessed that I have the opportunity to be there.“ Throughout the account of Ms. Feng, I notice her emphasis on the economic damage to the livelihood of monastic communities in Tibet. Nevertheless, considering the experiences of lay followers and the statistical numbers of the drop in tourism, we still cannot assess the damage to the “Tibetan Buddhist economy” described in this article. Because this economy is not regulated, the severeness is hard to measure. These are other components to consider as well. Most significant is that those Han Chinese patrons are not the only ones who donate to monks and monasteries. The delicate Tibet economic dynamic evolves, traditionally, the local Tibetan communities in the Tibetan areas. Furthermore, as many interactions between Han Chinese and Tibetan masters are constructed through cyberspace and not through institutionalized monasteries or temples, there is no concrete numerical record of the number of devotion this phenomenon includes or the accurate sums of money involved. Importantly, the framework I use above to account for the material exchanges within Tibetan Buddhism, namely, the “ritual economy”, is difficult to quantify due to its fundamental definition. As explored above, the ritual economy needs to account for more than just the physical and fiscal materials but also rituals, spells and merit.

9. Conclusions: Resilience and Adaptation

Building on accounts of an urban Buddhist community and an individual pilgrim, the article has explored several aspects of Buddhist values, practices, and political shifts in this turbulent pandemic. The different sections of the article focused on the challenges the practitioners faced and against them the durability of their practice during the corona crisis.

Han Chinese practice of Nyingma Buddhism, similar to the practitioners of Buddhist communities around the world, had been indeed affected by the pandemic and had demanded lay practitioners change some of their habitual religious practices, primarily through the high days if the severe lockdowns. I have explored how pilgrimage trips for most of 2020 were limited and how community gatherings such as scripture reading groups were suspended. On the other hand, I showed how digital modalities of religious community building and ritual economic exchanges had already prevailed in the Tibetan Buddhist religious landscape before COVID-19. During the crisis, these modalities were harnessed and relied upon more strongly for the continuation of Buddhist practice and keeping the function of the community as a structure for religious participation.

The particular political and social context of lay Han people who practice Tibetan Buddhism accommodated the limitations that came with the pandemic. I have explored how the entrepreneurship of Buddhist individuals and groups in the PRC was relevant to creating a COVID-19-minded ritual economy. I have contextualized the relationship of Han Chinese and Tibetan masters within the reality of cyber-Buddhist relationships and practices, which existed before the outbreak of COVID-19. My conclusions suggest a nuanced approach to the effect COVID-19 had on Tibetan Buddhist practice in the P.R.C., which suggests that some of the community’s old political, religious and economic dynamics enabled some resilience to their practice during a pandemic-infected world. These accounts, presented in this article and my analysis, show far from the entire picture, which should be further explored to reach general affirmative conclusions. Nevertheless, these accounts are valuable to understanding how the current pandemic affects religious societies and communities on the personal and organizational levels.