Chinese Buddhism in Catholic Philippines: Syncretism as Identity by Aristotle C. Dy, Sj (review)

The Jesuit priest Aristotle Dy, inspired by his exposure to a mixture of Buddhist and Catholic practices while growing up Chinese in the Philippines, decided to specialize on the study of religions at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he completed the PhD dissertation that produced the book under review. Conducting fieldwork in the thirty-seven temples that dot the small Buddhist landscape of the Philippine archipelago, Dy interviewed ritual masters (monks and nuns) and lay leaders and practitioners, collected and read liturgical texts and spells, and observed elite and popular levels of participation in various temple activities. Armed with rich ethnographic data, he has written an important book detailing Buddhism’s entry into and adaptations to a predominantly Catholic Philippines. These adaptations, open-ended mixtures of two or more religions in a dynamic process called syncretism, are sufficient to tell the story of Buddhism’s small-scale but continued success in penetrating and remaining relevant in the Philippine religious arena. This story is the book’s most important contribution to Philippine studies, where no major studies of local Chinese religious practices exist in English. Dy then could have chosen to reorganize his book to focus solely on this narrative. In what follows I outline the order by which I believe the book should be read to highlight the virtues of Dy’s contribution.

Beginning with the short introduction, one should proceed to the first half (103–15) of chapter 3, “Buddhism as a Chinese Religion,” where there awaits a deft summary of a vast literature on Buddhist adaptation in China from the fourth to the thirteenth century that demonstrates how “unique Buddhist teachings evolved in China independently of India, and provided a direction for its later development among overseas Chinese” (106). The success of syncretism as a strategy of seeking acceptance serves as a valuable point of comparison when Buddhism later enters the Philippine Catholic setting. In China the Buddhist incorporation of Confucian filial piety into its teachings, for example, is mirrored in the Buddhist offering of prayer services in the Philippines on 2 November (All Souls’ Day) as a complement to traditional Chinese days for venerating the dead that usually falls on an April by lunar calendar reckoning (142). Dy’s thoughtful discussion (115–23) of monastic reforms during the Republican Period (1912–1949) in China and corresponding developments in Japanese- and later Guomindang-controlled Taiwan lays the context for the first half (21–39) of chapter 2, “Chinese Buddhism in the Philippines.” Dy first shows that Buddhist temple communities could only be established in the archipelago during the late nineteenth century when “there was declining interest in converting the Chinese” to Catholicism (22). He then goes on to map out the fascinating twentieth-century transnational networks that brought monastics, nuns, and lay sisters called caigu from mother temples in Fujian and Taiwan to the Philippines and shows why they readily went beyond ritual to charitable work. Interestingly, in Dy’s dissertation the book’s chapter 3 is chapter 2 and vice versa, a more logical and chronological progression that leaves one puzzled with the decision to switch the chapters when the manuscript went to press.

Chapter 4, “Scriptures and Devotions,” identifies the key texts, sutras, and spells that inform the liturgies and reveal the ritual concerns of both monastics and lay followers. As in China, predominant in the Philippines are funerary texts and prayers for the dead, which mark great concern for the afterlife, while those for the living lie mostly in the realm of averting disasters (xiaozai). Special attention is given to the popularity of the devotion to the bodhisattva Guanyin. Dy again is good at highlighting the transnational links between southern Fujian, the nearby island of Putuo (which Guanyin traditionally inhabited), and the Philippines. Due to their striking resemblance in appearance and character, Chinese and even Filipinos conflate Guanyin and the Virgin Mary, thereby providing a vivid example of...