Beauty, Media and Religion - Reflection

By Sylvie Shaw

When theorists in the past have defined religion, or developed a universal framework of the various dimensions of religious expression and experience, they have often presented a structural or functional definition that, depending on the theorist, ignores or bypasses deities (God, gods, goddesses) and the values that religion promotes.

The values of love and compassion seem to be universally applied through sacred texts, religious teachings and ritual and other practices, but, for some reason, the theorists of the past have neglected the 'feelings' components of religion. Why?

Emile Durkheim (1912) defines religion as a functional process that brings like-thinking people together in social cohesion. He also separates the sacred from the profane noting that the sacred should be set apart and forbidden. But in pop culture and postmodern shifts in society and religion, the sacred blurs (or as Colleen McDannell (2012) says 'scrambles' or are scrambled with the profane. Sacred things, objects, symbols, music that were once deemed sacred in religious and spiritual tradtions, and were set aside for special occasions or rituals, have merged or been appropriated into the mundane world, e.g. as everyday fashion items and fashion icons.

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1993) developed a five dimensions' definition of religion, seeing religion as a cultural system which is:

'(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic'.

Geetz unpacks these dimensions but like Durkheim fails to include the emotionality of religious expression.

Other writers on religion contend that defining religion is fraught as it is so complex with so many dimensions that each perspective is necessarily narrow. e.g. The Human Rights Commission report Freedom of Religion and Belief in 21st Century Australia (2011) states that:

'Religion can be taken to refer to an organised form of maintaining, promoting, celebrating and applying the consequences of engagement with what is taken to be ultimately defining, environing, totally beyond, totally other, and yet profoundly encountered within life. These activities are usually done by or in association with a group, an organisation and/or a community'.

The report adds that defining religion in relation to its metaphysical, ritualistic, experiential, social or intellectual dimension can limit the expanse of religious expression. Other writers promote religion as a set of beliefs, a panoply of doctrines, dogmas and other teachings, the performance of rituals, a set of values, or the celebration or enhancement of peace and happiness. But even in the Human Rights Commission report's terminology, the words love and compassion are missing.

Another perspective on religion focuses on religious experience rather than religion's structural or functional elements. Theorists such as William James and Rudolf Otto refer to the transcendent and self-transcendent experiences that bring practitioners closer to the divine, with the Holy and/or at one with all things. Religious practices and ritual actions can help focus experience into a Durkheimian 'collective effervescence' of shared engagement.

Religious or transcendent experiences can be garnered through performing ritual but also by spending time in nature, dancing, fasting, meditating, and taking part in other collective experiences which engage the spirit. Moore and Habel (1982) explain that there are two forms of religious experience: the immediate and the mediated.

(i) Immediate experiences refer to spontaneous or direct experiences of the sacred or the divine without the involvement of any mediating actors, actions or connections.

(ii) Mediated experiences refer to experiences of the sacred located though rituals, symbolic objects, special people (e.g. gurus, religious leaders) and places in nature (wilderness, ocean, green and blue spaces).

These religious experiences can be transformative, provide insight, and afford a sense of wellbeing, meaning and purpose.

Another way of explaining religion is to see it as a set of boundary markers and boundary makers between the different expressions and experiences of myriad religions, denominations and spiritualities. What sets one religion apart from the other, especially when both religious streams belong to the same umbrella religion, e.g. the sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland. Then there is a host of other conflicts associated with religiously-mediated violence. Where then, within a conflict framework, do the terms love and compassion apply?

Another perplexing issue emerges with the use of religious expressions such as sacrifice, passion, sacred and morality. What does religious sacrifice mean when it refers to a suicide bomber? What is the sacred when it refers to a place that is considered sacred to two or more groups who all claim 'ownership' and relationship? What is morality when a religious organisation or regime condemns homosexuality in the strongest possible way? What is passion when passions can erupt into violence? What does the commandment mean 'thou shalt not kill' in a world of religious violence.

On ABC radio this morning (Thursday Feb 28), in the Religion and Ethics Report, the granddaugter of the magnificient peacemaker Mahatma Gandhi, Ela Gandhi, spoke about her lifelong commitment to peacebuilding through the World Council of Religions for Peace. She also considered the complexity of the 'no kill' commandment's intention and what happens in practice. She took the idea of 'not to kill' further than the human and added the significant global issue - that of about violence to the planet.

These examples of religiously-mediated terms and dogmas require some reflection. Wishing to promote the ideals of religious values such as the sacred, or sacrifice, or passion can lead to the opposite intention. If one says - The congregation were very passionate - is that a positive or negative emotion or value? Context is needed.

The inspirational Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh (2011) writes that:

'The essence of love and compassion is understanding, the ability to recognize the physical, material, and psychological suffering of others, to put ourselves “inside the skin” of the other. We go “inside” their body, feelings, and mental formations, and witness for ourselves their suffering. Shallow observation as an outsider is not enough to see their suffering. We must become one with the object of our observation. When we are in contact with another’s suffering, a feeling of compassion is born in us. Compassion means, literally, “to suffer with.”'

Here the essence of beauty lies in the process of engagement with what it means to offer compassion and be compassionate. To suffer with....

In a world of suffering of people, animals and nature, religions are engaged, the world over, in trying to reduce the suffering of the other. But there are religious individuals engaged in actions that create terrible suffering for others - humans, animals and natural 'green and blue' environments.

Questions:
How do we (religionists) deal with the complexity and the paradox?
Does the media (in its various forms) act to enhance differences or bring peoples together?
Can the media act or should or could the media act to bring disparate groups together?
Can the media promote an ethic of care - when it seems that some institutions and some adherents and devotees of religion promote the reverse?
What is the role of the media here in reporting religion - promoting ideology that reflects divisions and drama, or promoting a sense of compassion, care and understanding?
What kind of media would you like to see? Which kind of media do you prefer?

References:
Durkheim E. 1965 [1912]. The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free Press.
Geertz C. 1993 Religion as a cultural system. In: The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. Fontana Press, http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic152604.files/Week_4/Geertz_Religon_as_a_Cultural_System_.pdf
Hahn T. N. 2011. Love is compassion in action (Excerpted from Peace is every step), 
http://www.facebook.com/notes/dashama-konah/love-is-compassion-in-action-by-thich-nhat-hanh/10150398143250159?ref=nf
Human Rights Commission. 2011. Freedom of religion and belief in 21st century Australia, Sydney.
McDannel C. 2012. Scrambling the sacred and the profane. In Lynch G. and J. Mitchell with A. Strhan. Eds. Religion, media and culture: A reader. 135-146. London & New York: Routledge.Moore B. and N. Habel. 1982. When religion goes to school. Adelaide: Texts in Humanities.

Image source:
http://pixabay.com/en/rosette-rose-window-60627/

My Life With Pi

by Sylvie Shaw

 Did you love Life with Pi? What was the story really about? Do you ever feel like acting up like Richard Parker - feeling snarly and a little bit wild? Or do you, like this image shows, like to ponder your life and watch the horizon?

 Ang Lee's masterful movie proved a visionary treat. The dedication to the story showed, as did his love of storytelling.

The film opens in India. I was fascinated in the threads of the narrative that there was a French territory in India established in the 17th century. Called Établissements français dans l'Inde, it even lasted past the difficult separation of India and Pakistan in 1947.

Within this French territory there was a zoo and a family. The hero of the story, Pi, had to deal with school bullying and a father who believed strongly in the 'new India' following Independence and preached a rational and scientific worldview. Undeterred by his father's insistence on rationality, Pi explores religion and adopts three religious perspectives, intertwining Hinduism, Christianity and Islam into his young life.

The story moves from India when the family can no longer afford to keep their zoo. The zoo's animals are packed up and along with the family, board a cargo ship destined for Canada. But on the way tragedy befalls these human and animal migrants. 

Amidst huge seas, wild winds and a wicked storm, the immigrants' boat is shipwrecked and sinks. Pi escapes in a lifeboat with four zoo companiion animals - a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a marvellous and stately Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker.

The life-boat becomes the stage for the rest of the film's action as Pi clings to life knowing he could become prey, not only to the Tiger (the other animals had already become food for one another), but to the sea and its magnificent creatures.

Pi lives by chance and ingenuity. He clevery disgorges the contents of the life-boat and builds a crafty life-raft that keeps him just out of reach of the Tiger's lifeboat haven. He manages to find food and water to keep both of them alive.

Richard Parker is beautiful, fearsome and aloof. Like Pi, he is lost at sea but not to his Tiger instincts. As the adventure unfolds, both human and Tiger arrive at some kind of impasse and understanding that each needs the other to survive. There's a stand off but love is apparent in the 'soul' of the Tiger's eyes.

The key to the film is resilience and the human-Tiger spirit of connection and reciprocity. Humans too are wild creatures - we are nature, and also part of the natural world. To live well, we need to work with and take care of nature (including Richard Parker's wild nature) to sustain our lives.

Does the story make us believe more in religion or God as the storyteller intends it to? Well maybe for some viewers. For me, the film clearly shows the spirit of invention and creativity that humans need for survival in a precarious world. It captures the sacredness of the human spirit, the essence of the wild (within ourselves and others), and relishes in the wonders and bounty of the sea.

Pi is cleverly able to adapt to the challenging conditions that the water throws up. As he gets to know the vagaries of the waves, the fish and the capricious weather, Pi learns to engage with a magical environment that delivers food, beauty and sometimes heartache.

In a world endangered by extreme weather events and climate change, where Tigers are themselves endangered by human culpability, it is the actions of Richard Parker that resonated with me. Just as human and Tiger are on the verge of death and resign themselves to their fate, the sea envelops the life-boat and sends it to the shores of Mexico. As Pi lies on the sand, spent, he watches his friend walk into the jungle without once looking back.

Pi and the Tiger live, in part through Pi's smart and rational survival skills, and in part because both have faith.

Questions
- What did you enjoy about Life of Pi?
- Did the effects detract from the story - could you ignore the animation skills or simply put the techical effects to once side and immerse yourself in the story?
- Was it simply a choice of one story or the other? Or could both stories exist in parallel?
- Do you think that rationality removes magical imagination? Why?
- How important is story to humankind?
- How important is a belief and a faith?

Image source
http://screenrant.com/life-of-pi-movie-ending-spoilers/

Senses of the Sacred

Sylvie Shaw 

 What is the sacred? Is this gorgeous eucalypt sacred, and to whom?

The sacred is what's special, precious, tender. It's something to be treasured and held dear. It may be a connection to the divine, the incomparable, to beauty. It can be compared to love, to passion, to the utmost joy, to the ecstatic, to compassion, to taking care of what we deem is beyond understanding, while at the same time, we hold it in our heart.

The religious theorists Emile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade made a distinction between the sacred and the profane or mundane. But in a contemporary post-secular world, this distinction between the sacred and the profane has blurred. The sacred is no longer 'set apart' from the profane, but is embedded within it (Durkheim 1912). Religion not only makes the everyday sacred, it is sacralised in the everyday through ritual, ceremony and relationship.

According to Durkheim (1912): 'All known religious beliefs present one common characteristic: they presuppose a classification of all the things, real and ideal... into two classes or opposed groups, generally designated by two distinct terms which are translated well enough by the words profane and sacred'. 

In contrast, Colleen McDannel (2012) maintains that these two concepts, the sacred and the profane, have become scrambled. Her scrambling imaginary can be seen in popular culture, in mediated 'idologies', phantasmgorical narratives on screen, clever tricks on the sporting arena, in luscious song and dance sequences from Bollywood to Cirque du Soleil, and in the sublime refrains of nature's beauty. Perhaps it is in nature's awesome glory that Durkheim's variance between the real and the ideal are made into one.

Ecopsychology writer John Swanson (2005) maintains that 'we come to know the sacred through our personal experiences'. Swanson continues:
'Nature's powers command our attention and respect. These experiences of nature can take hold of us in ways that cause us to change our ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. The language used to describe these changes will effect us differently based on our unique religious background'.

Connecting to sacred nature is transformative. It affords a new or different way of seeing the world and the process of our lives. Through insight, people may have a change of heart and change their behaviours, becoming more environmentally aware and responible (Roberts 1996). Their sacred nature blurs or scrambles with the sacred in the natural world - and they (or we) become one. 

Questions and comments:
- Write about your own experiences of nature and the sacred.
- What is your favourite place in nature?
- How are your experiences sacred or how do they encourage or create sacred experiences?

References
Durkheim E. 1912. The elementary forms of the religious life. Excerpted in: http://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/forms.html#pgfId=6641
McDannel C. 2012. Scrambling the sacred and the profane. In Lynch G. and J. Mitchell with A. Strhan. Eds. Religion, media and culture: A reader. 135-146. London & New York: Routledge.
Roberts E. 1996. Place and spirit in land management”, in B.L. Driver et al., eds. Nature and the human spirit. Toward an expanded land management ethic. State College, PA: Venture Publishing Inc.
Swanson J.L. 2005. Experiencing the sacred in nature. http://www.ecopsychology.org/journal/ezine/archive2/sacred_nature.pdf 

Image source: http://pixabay.com/en/red-gum-flowers-red-gum-gum-flowers-73648/