Land of Beautiful Vision: Making a Buddhist Sacred Place in New Zealand. .
By Sally McAra. University of Hawai'i Press: Honolulu, 2007, xiv + 208 pages, ISBN 978-0-8248-2996-4 (cloth), $45.00.
Reviewed by
Michelle Barker
michelle@futureinitiatives.com.au
Land of Beautiful Vision: Making a Buddhist Sacred Place
in New Zealand takes the reader on a journey focused on
the construction of a stupa in New Zealand by the Friends
of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO). The journey is one of transformation,
and McAra uses the central theme of transculturality to explore
a much wider range of issues including sacred space, identity,
liminality, healing and flux. In fact, the book's multilayered
construction is reminiscent of a stupa itselfxxxso laden
with richness that it provokes different ideas on each encounter.
Chapter one explores the historical evolution of the academic
field of Buddhism in the West to explain the book's use of transculturality
as the central theoretical frame. As McAra explains, transculturality
examines how contemporary cultures intermix, highlighting the distinction
that can emerge between local differences and global universalities
in a globalized world. This is highly relevant to Buddhism in the
West because studies in this area tend to focus on how overarching
Buddhist beliefs and practices are translated into different contexts
in a wide variety of ways. Chapter one then explains the history
of FWBO internationally amongst studies of transcultural processes
on Buddhism in the West, allowing effective situation of FWBO in
contemporary Buddhism. This includes elucidation of FWBO's perspective
on transculturation issues and McAra highlights how the building
of a stupa in New Zealand ties in with the FWBO's emphasis
on localization strategies.
Chapter two orients readers to the geographic and religious landscape
in which the transformations occurring around the building of the stupa take
place. The site of the stupa construction is Sudarshanaloka
(Land of Beautiful Vision), a FWBO retreat centre located in the
Tararu Valley on the Coromandel Peninsula in the north of New Zealand. Land
of Beautiful Vision focuses heavily on themes of physical
and sacred space; hence McAra's narration of her impressions of
Sudarshanaloka is an important part of the journey, with the local
landmarks being particularly integral to this tale. Chapter two
also examines the religious landscape of New Zealand as backdrop
to understanding the story of both FWBO's and Sudarshanaloka's
beginnings in New Zealand.
Chapter three continues to expand on this background by exploring
the impacts of the local culture, focusing on the interplay of
Pakeha (the Maori term for European settlers, who were mainly British)
and the indigenous Maori cultures in New Zealand. There has been
little research on Buddhism in New Zealand; consequently McAra's
work is a welcome addition to the field for its exploration of
this cultural sphere, and as such its inclusion in the Topics in
Contemporary Buddhism series is highly appropriate. In exploring
the adaptation of Buddhism to the New Zealand cultural milieu,
McAra highlights identity and land as important themes as both
Maori and FWBO hold sacred space to be important in their respective
belief systems.
While chapters one, two, and three focus on exploring the theoretical
frames necessary for understanding the prelude to the transformations
occurring around the stupa construction, chapters four,
five, and six focus more on the building of the stupa.
This is achieved by the use of a variety of perspectives: of people,
of the lands, and across time. Land of Beautiful Vision is
a story of three key people involved in Sudarshanaloka, of four
events in the early period of the history of Tararu (a death, an
unsettling encounter, the dedication of the stupa, and
a ritual), of three landmarks (the puriri tree, the kauri log and
the stupa), and of three phases in the history of the
Tararu valley. Some of these stories are interwoven throughout
the book while others stand alone. Chapter four evidences the latter,
explaining events that result in a redefining of the relationship
with the land on which the stupa is to be situated as
a friendship with the land, through emphasis on healing past events.
Chapter five follows the development of the stupa at
Sudarshanaloka from design through to consecration. To explore
some of the stupa's effects, the design and agency of stupas is
explained in some detail. The importance of the location of a stupa in
New Zealand is explored for both local and international FWBO members,
illuminating themes of group identity construction and local adaptation.
Chapter six redefines place through bricolage by discussing three
key landmarks, their stories, and their role in the creation of
a sense of place that links FWBO members to the stupa and
the land.
Chapter seven explores how this very rich ethnography contributes
to understanding transculturality. McAra concludes that the construction
of this transcultural religious bricolage has answered questions
regarding the role of a FWBO stupa in New Zealand within
a variety of frames. In my view, McAra's contribution is not only
the study of Buddhism in a new cultural context, but is significant
in the field as McAra's combination of theoretical frames continues
in the vein of Cristina Rocha's study (Zen in Brazil: The Quest
for Cosmopolitan Modernity, University of Hawai'i Press: Honolulu,
2006) to advance concepts of transculturality beyond problematic
dichotomies such as the distinction between ethnic and convert
Buddhists.
McAra's work is fascinating in that—like a stupa—it
points to something beyond itself, by moving beyond the advancement
of theoretical constructs. While McAra's work is successful in
its aim of understanding a series of events from the viewpoint
of transculturality, it also achieves something more. For example,
McAra's identification of her role in this research as that of
an anthropologist results in her approaching Buddhism as a "cultural
phenomenon" rather than "as a source of spiritual insight" (p.
32), although she notes that she believes the two viewpoints can
be fruitfully combined. In my view, McAra not only demonstrates
how these two approaches can inform each other, but moves beyond
this by actually representing and analysing the cultural events
occurring around the building of the stupa in a manner
that invokes religious inspiration. Key to this inspiration is
McAra's own emphasis that the cohesion of her work is fleeting: "for
those who would create typologies depicting adaptive phases of
cross-cultural religious transmission, this is an apposite reminder
that we are concerned with processes that are living, contingent,
and fluid" (p. 5). McAra has succeeded in viewing this cultural
phenomenon through an anthropological lens that also transcends
itself by recognising its own over-changing nature. Land of
Beautiful Vision is a book about a point frozen in a time
that has now passed, yet it is a landmark in its self-positioning
as just that.