Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China (Body, Commodity, Text) Review

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Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China (Body, Commodity, Text) ReviewFarquhar has written a very good book in Appetites. Drawing from conversations, anecdotes, advertising, and--above all--novels, Farquhar is somehow able to convincingly trace a changing subjectivity in China. Never grandiose in her claims, Farquahar addresses this fact: China is changing rapidly, and with its political and economic realignments Chinese personhood is changing too. Careful never to construct a unified "Chinese" experience, the author instead describes mere footprints of an untrapable beast.
She finds in China a subjectivity moving away from, but never forgetting, its histories of socialism and famine. Indeed, eating is a practice through which such histories are thought about, reproduced, and critiqued. Habits, memories, nostalgia, and modernity jostle for positions on contemporary Chinese platters.
At times, the reader may long for more sustained evidence and thicker ethnography. And yet such irritation is inevitably calmed by the author's soothing prose and gentle claims. Unlike some of the medicine ads appearing in Appetites, the author never claims to be providing all of the answers to the body of China.
Farquhar's reading of the changing personage of Lei Feng is striking. She shows that this hero of the revolution has (at least partly) transformed from an image of self-sacrifice, duty, and community, to one now capable of hailing an individual consumer, who can define one's self-centered spending on health as ultimately beneficial to the group. Indeed, the production of such individuality, Farquhar shows, has been necessary to make the segue into new sexual discourses.
Farquhar shows that food, medicine, and sex can never be fully teased apart in China-indeed, they are often blended together so as to whet the appetites.Appetites: Food and Sex in Post-Socialist China (Body, Commodity, Text) Overview

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The Surangama Sutra (Leng Yen Ching: Chinese Rendering by Master Paramiti of Central North India at Chih Chih Monastery, Canton, China, Ad 705 Review

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The Surangama Sutra (Leng Yen Ching: Chinese Rendering by Master Paramiti of Central North India at Chih Chih Monastery, Canton, China, Ad 705 ReviewThis text is a meaningful guide to Mahayana meditation practice. The Famous Ming Ch'an (Zen)master, Han-shan, used the Surangama Sutra to check his own progress with meditation - and wrote an extensive commentary on its practical meaning. What makes this particular translation valuable, is that incor-porates key-elements from Master Han-shan's commentary.
The Surangama Sutra is very complementary to the Lankavatara Sutra, explaining much left unexplained, in the former - concerning the role of the 'Alaya-vijnana' (store conscious-ness). In the Surangama Sutra, the Buddha asks twenty five bodhisattvas to outline their favoured methods of meditation, which all converge - insofar as they entail transforming sense-data into wisdom, breaking up the influence of the alaya
or 'store consciousness' - to reveal the true mind.
This all quite practical. It is impossible to concentrate on - and sublimate,all six sense-organs and sense data, at once. Skilfully, then, this sutra teaches that - if one source of sense/data is sublimated - the other five will also be subli-mated, for they share one and the same root. Each Bodhisattva thus details a method of meditation, focusing on sight, touch, taste etc. The method most praised by the Buddha - and reco- mmended for the present Dharma-age,is that of sublimating the sense of 'hearing' - as advocated by Avalokitesvara. The sense of 'hearing' is the most pervasive, and therefore, likely to maximize the opportunity for insight. Viewed negatively, of course - the impact of 'sound,' unwelcome 'noise,' is what many meditators wish to avoid, most of all. It is fascinating then, to find that it is this very 'devil' - which has been singled out - as especially helpful. It blows large holes in the misguided notion that Buddhist meditation is about AVOIDING sense data. It is not - it is about SUBLIMATING sense data. In fact, eminent masters like Han-shan purposely chose to prac-tice by roaring cataracts - to develop their meditation. The optimistic note here, then, is that very the 'things' which SEEM to be obstacles to Buddhist meditation, may well prove to be the biggest boon, if we direct our meditation aright. This is brilliant stuff and pre-eminently useful. It helps explain those Ch'an (Zen) stories, recounting experiences of awakening, upon the impact of a random noise, shout etc. But this has its own dynamic. Without the direct 'inner-cause' - the inner potentiality aroused by Ch'an or parallel methods, no amount of external 'causes' could trigger enlightenment).
The Surangama Sutra (Leng Yen Ching: Chinese Rendering by Master Paramiti of Central North India at Chih Chih Monastery, Canton, China, Ad 705 Overview

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