Author Affiliation: National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan.
關鍵詞
Buddhism; Tzu Chi; Taiwan; whole body donation; cadaver; commemoration; equanimity; emotional practice
摘要
Since 1995, thousands of people in Taiwan have pledged each year to donate their cadavers to the medical college run by the Buddhist Tzu Chi (Ciji) Foundation. The “surge of cadavers” seems intriguing in a society where ancestor worship continues to be salient. Drawing on my fieldwork in 2012–2013 and 2015, the purpose of this paper is to describe a series of practices involving the transformation of a cadaver into a Buddhist moral subject: the donor, the family, and the medical school engage in various endeavors and rituals involving “emotional practices” to honor the deceased; situate the donation as a “good death”; and fulfill the family's obligations to ancestor worship. I argue what makes the ritual transformation efficacious is the dominant currency of emotional practices. Emotional practices “authenticate” the ritual transformation. The main ethic for commemorating the cadaver donation is not generosity or dāna but equanimity.
目次
ABSTRACT 782 1 Introduction 783 2 The Dead Body and the Gift 786 3 Tzu Chi's Donation Theology 789 4 Becoming a Silent Mentor 791 5 The Importance of Pain 796 6 Sources of the Pain: The Cut, the Time, and the Emotional Practice of the Family 797 7 Conclusion 800 REFERENCES 802
