Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu by Beverly Foulks McGuire (review)

religion), nor are they the result of individual and voluntary choice. Her conclusion aims to add a slightly different answer to general questions posed to scholars of modern religiosity. In contrast to the rest of this extremely well written and convincingly argued book, this conclusion seems to be the only unsatisfying part of the entire endeavor. In spite of Lin’s claim I would contend that the urban-modern “affective ties” actually are closely related to birth and locality. According to Lin, “affective ties” have come into existence precisely among those members who share a common origin of stemming from the same location in southern Taiwan; in particular, the first generation migrants all have been born there. In addition, the attachment of the younger generation to the shrine has very much to do with them being born into families that already had well-established attachments to each other and the shrine. Of course, the various other visitors and clients are not necessarily related to each other in this way, but apparently the highest degree of “affectiveness” has been observed particularly among the eight core families who are bound together by common origin, location, and history. Furthermore, Lin argues that regular shrine visitors are linked to the deity by an “unexplainable affinity” (yuan 緣) which leads her to perceive this religiosity as clearly distinct from “Western religious individualism premised on individual preference and freedom of will” (p. 173). However, I do not think that the practitioners’ interpretation alone is sufficient to propose that urban Taiwanese popular religion may not be the matter of individual choice. As she also admits, many people consciously visit different shrines but happen to stay attached only to those that they experience to be efficacious in some way or the other. Thus, both efficacy and “unexplainable affinity” represent merely ex post interpretations created by practitioners in order to justify to themselves why staying at the temple is the only right choice. Despite these very minor issues, Lin’s book offers a new and inspiring look at the issue of magic power, how social relationships emerge from different materializations of this power, and how these relationships and conceptualizations have been transformed in an urban and modern setting. I would very much recommend this important contribution not only to scholars of Chinese popular religion or spirit mediumship, but also to everyone interested in the material aspects of religious practice , magic or divine power, and the modern transformation of traditional religiosities. NIKOLAS BROY University of Leipzig BEVERLY FOULKS MCGUIRE, Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. x, 228 pp. US$50, £38 (hb). ISBN 978-0-231-16802-1 The slimness of this book belies the penetrating depth of its contents. In admirably concise and lucid writing, McGuire offers us a rare glimpse into the inner life of the great Ming dynasty Buddhist master Ouyi Zhixu 蕅益智旭 (1599-1655). It is important to note that, as McGuire makes clear from the outset, this book is not a comprehensive biographical study of this eminent monk. Moreover, her focus is not on BOOK REVIEWS 91 the Ouyi Zhixu (who, for some reason, she refers to consistently as Ouyi rather than Zhixu, as is more common) that may be more familiar to many: the author of a vast array of theoretically sophisticated commentaries on a range of Buddhist doctrinal and epistemological texts, not to mention commentaries on Confucian texts and anti-Jesuit polemical writings. While she acknowledges and builds on previous scholarship on these other important aspects, in this book, she has chosen to focus more narrowly on the integral role played by the notion of karma in Ouyi Zhixu’s life. Her primary contention is that for him, karma was not primarily of theoretical or metaphysical interest. Rather, it was absolutely central to “his religious practice, his ethical outlook, and his bodily experience” (p. 15). McGuire begins by reminding us that not only do “Buddhists understand karma differently according to their particular cultural, historical, and religious context but … individual Buddhists hold multiple—even contradictory—understandings of karma simultaneously” (p. 3). She then sets out to skillfully unpack these layers of understandings and the ways in which Ouyi...